Chapter 2

In the car, I replayed what I had just seen.

Reese had guided Emily's ringed hand to the crest on his chest, the symbol of his family's honor.

The diamond caught the blue-green of his eyes, and Emily looked radiant.

His face had lost the hard expression I knew. It looked more like snow melting in spring.

At the coffee shop, Mary sat across from me with her silver hair perfectly arranged and her hands trembling slightly.

"Donna, Miss Emily hasn't actually been with the Don for long.

"She's a naive girl."

I stirred my hot chocolate without looking up.

After Reese became Don, his underbosses seemed eager to please him by sending women his way.

As a daughter of the Camorra family, groomed to become his wife, I could not accept his first betrayal.

But I did not confront him.

I coaxed what I could out of Charles and pieced together the rest from the estate staff's gossip.

I learned that her name was Emily Caldwell and found the hotel where she was staying.

I told her no one but me could stand beside Reese.

I was a Camorra and his lawful wife.

I never laid a finger on her. I only made sure she understood that no reputable social circle in the city would accept her.

She received no dinner invitations, and no merchant would sell to her.

Before long, she gave up her apartment and left Chicago.

Reese stormed in soon afterward, fury lacing every word. "Rebecca, the Camorra family sent you here. They did not send you to police me!

"I won't see another woman, as long as you learn how to be a proper wife."

After that, no other women appeared at his side, and I believed he had changed.

I never expected him to find someone else.

I asked Mary, "They got together while I was miscarrying, didn't they?"

Mary said nothing. She handed me a camera.

I took it and began scrolling through the photographs.

The first showed an estate.

It was not the Moretti family's main estate, but a brand-new white villa on the coast.

Juliet roses filled the garden, and a Roman-columned gazebo stood beside the pool.

I recognized the plans.

As a licensed architect, I had spent three sleepless months designing the master plan for the family's newly purchased seaside estate.

The garden layout, the pool placement, every route through the interior. I had poured myself into every detail.

Reese had said that once the family's finances stabilized, we would grow old there together.

More photographs followed, documenting a year of travel across Europe.

They skied in the Alps, watched the northern lights in Norway, and kissed beneath the Eiffel Tower.

During those same months, I lay alone in a hospital, grieving the child I had lost.

Reese claimed he was negotiating a shipment in the Mediterranean and would call whenever he had a moment to ask how I was.

He even had a requiem Mass said at church for our baby.

I once believed the man whose voice sounded so heavy with guilt was the angel pulling me from the abyss.

Now I wondered whether every one of those calls had come from beside her in bed.

I felt sick.

In another photograph, they stood close together before an enormous wishing fountain. Emily had her arms around Reese's waist from behind and held up a card.

"My good-luck charm."

I stared at the picture. After my parents died in a firefight with a Mexican cartel, I had stood before a wishing fountain and wished for someone to take their place and stay with me.

After I married Reese, I asked him to build a wishing fountain at our estate.

He refused. He called it unnecessary.

Now he had built one for her.