Chapter 1

I had barely made it home and settled into bed with my mother’s help when the doorbell rang.

Ten minutes later, Santino’s mother stood in my bedroom doorway.

She paused when she saw me.

“Elena.”

I already knew why she had come.

Seven years ago, she had appeared in my hospital room the same way.

That day, I had just received my cancer diagnosis.

Lucia closed the door behind her and dropped to her knees in front of me.

“Elena, I’m begging you. Don’t tell Santino.”

I reached out to help her up, but she caught my hand and refused to move.

“Santino has just been formally named the Moretti heir. Next month he leaves for Sicily to take his place in the family’s inner circle.”

“If he finds out you have cancer, he won’t leave.”

I answered without hesitation.

“Then he doesn’t have to go.”

Lucia’s face changed.

“Elena, he’s the only Moretti heir.”

I said nothing.

Then she asked the question that silenced me.

“Can your doctors promise you’ll recover?”

They couldn’t.

Lucia told me the Morettis would pay for every treatment, every specialist, anything I needed. She asked only one thing in return.

Let Santino go to Sicily.

Later, she arranged for a man to help me stage the betrayal.

All I had to do was let Santino see us kiss, tell him I had fallen for someone else, and reject his proposal.

That day, Santino stood outside my house with the ring he had planned to give me.

I told him, “I don’t love you anymore.”

He stared at me for a long time.

“Say it again.”

So I did.

“Santino, I don’t love you.”

A month later, he left for Sicily.

I started chemotherapy.

“Elena.”

Lucia’s voice pulled me back to the present.

She had taken a seat beside the bed.

“What happened seven years ago was my fault. But Santino is getting married now. Sofia Bellini has known him for years, and the Bellinis have long-standing business ties with the Morettis. This marriage matters to both families.”

I looked at her.

“So you came here to ask me to keep lying to him.”

Lucia was silent for a moment before nodding.

“I don’t want you to tell him what happened back then.”

Her gaze shifted to the medication on my bedside table.

“And with your health like this, it would be better if you avoided seeing Santino for a while.”

My mother stood immediately.

“Lucia, do you have any conscience at all?”

I caught her hand.

“Mom. Enough.”

After she sat down again, I looked back at Lucia.

“I won’t tell Santino the truth about seven years ago.”

Relief crossed her face.

“Thank you.”

“But I can’t promise not to see him.”

Her brows drew together.

“Elena, what are you planning to do?”

“Nothing.” I met her eyes. “I just want to see him.”

During these seven years of fighting cancer, there had not been a single day when I truly forgot Santino.

When chemotherapy became unbearable, I would take out the photograph of us at seventeen and tell myself that if I survived, I could still go to Sicily one day and find him.

After several surgeries, when I stayed unconscious in intensive care far longer than I should have, my mother would stand beside the bed and call my name.

“Elena, remember what you promised. When you get better, we’ll go to Sicily.”

“You still owe Santino an explanation.”

That promise pulled me back more than once.

In the end, I still lost to cancer.

Santino had a new life now, and a fiancée he was about to marry.

I had no intention of explaining what happened seven years ago anymore, and I would never interfere with his wedding.

I would not explain the past, and I would not interfere with his wedding.

But before I died, I needed to look at him once and know whether the seven years I had spent holding on had meant anything at all.

So when I learned Santino had returned to New York, I signed the discharge papers even after the doctor made it clear that leaving the hospital meant going home to die.

I came back for an answer. Even if that answer destroyed the last thing keeping me alive.