Chapter 2

Rainy nights in Chicago were always bitterly cold.

I leaned against the taxi window and closed my eyes.

Everyone knew I loved Cillian. Loved him enough to willingly step into the blood-soaked world of the Mafia for him.

I fell in love with him at first sight at a charity gala at Northwestern when I was eighteen.

He was the youngest heir to the Donovan family. Cold, dangerous, and fatally attractive.

But he never spared me a glance. His eyes were always glued to his childhood sweetheart, Zelda.

As long as he guarded Zelda, I loved him in secret.

Until five years ago, when Zelda ran away from her wedding for the ninth time. She left a room full of Mafia bosses for an underground rock singer, humiliating the Donovan elders beyond repair.

The elders laid down the law. Zelda was banished from the family forever.

Cillian hit rock bottom. But a month later, he snapped back to his old self and started looking for a new bride.

My heart hammered when I heard the news. I used my law firm's connections with his family to get close to him. I showed him everything I had to offer. My competence, my care, my quiet devotion.

Finally, I got the words I’d been waiting for. "Let's get married. We need a Don's wife who can hold her own."

No flowers. No ring. Not even an "I like you."

He just needed the perfect Mafia wife.

But I said yes. Because I loved him too much, naively believing that time could melt a heart of stone.

For five years of marriage, we were the envy of Chicago. He bought me the most expensive diamonds and paraded me at the most exclusive galas.

But in the privacy of our bedroom, he was so stingy he wouldn't even grant me a kiss.

Only when he was drunk. Only when I wore the white dress he forbade me from taking off, curling my hair exactly the way Zelda wore hers.

Only then would he press me into the mattress, losing himself completely.

"Zelda..." he would whisper in my ear.

Every time, it felt like a serrated blade carving out my heart.

But I pretended not to hear it. I thought that as long as I was sensible enough, we could just live our lives.

Until two months ago, when Zelda returned to Chicago.

I was three months pregnant.

That afternoon, my stomach was cramping badly. I was just about to call my private doctor when the manor doors burst open.

Zelda strutted in like a proud peacock in her stilettos.

"So you're Alessia?" She looked me up and down, her eyes brimming with contempt. "I hear you stole my spot while I was gone."

I was pale from the pain, lacking the energy to argue. I just wanted to go to the hospital.

Suddenly, Zelda shoved me hard.

I tried to protect my stomach and barely dodged her, crashing onto the Persian rug. But Zelda shoved too hard, lost her footing, and tumbled down the grand staircase.

"Ah!" she screamed.

Right then, the front doors flew open. Cillian rushed in.

He didn't even glance at me. He sprinted straight for Zelda at the bottom of the stairs.

"Cillian, it hurts..." Zelda buried her face in his chest, sobbing pitifully.

"Don't be afraid. I've got you," he said, scooping her up and heading straight for the door.

A tearing agony ripped through my lower abdomen. Warm liquid soaked through my thighs.

"Cillian..." I collapsed in a pool of my own blood, reaching my trembling hand out toward him. "Help me... our baby..."

He never looked back. His silhouette disappeared out the door, leaving me in dead silence.

I passed out from the excruciating pain.

When I woke up two days later, the sterile stench of the hospital burned my nose.

My baby was gone.

Cillian stood by the bed. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his face etched with heavy guilt.

"It's my fault. When you get out of the hospital, I'll give you another baby. If you hadn't pushed Zelda, she wouldn't have gotten a concussion. She was hurt really badly, and I thought you were fine. I panicked. I can make it up to you..."

I turned my head and looked at the face I had loved for ten years.

And in that moment, I laughed.

I laughed until the tears freely fell.

"Cillian."

"What makes you think anything you do could ever pay for a life?"

He froze.

That was the last time I ever cried in front of him.

The cab's sudden braking pulled me back to the present.

"We're here, ma'am," the driver announced.

I paid the fare and pushed the door open. The freezing wind dried the tear tracks on my cheeks.

I looked at the flight itinerary my boss had texted me and hit confirm without a second thought.

Whatever happened between him and Zelda, I didn't give a damn anymore.

Because I was completely, irrevocably, out of love with him.