Chapter 2

I opened the door to find my things dumped downstairs in a chaotic heap, while Cecilia lounged on the couch, leisurely sipping red wine.

"My dear Emilia, you're finally back. Your room is mine now, by the way."

"Where's Leon?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"Out on business. No point looking for him. Leon agreed to this, you know."

"You're getting more shameless by the day, Cecilia. Can't even wait to move right in?"

"Hit a nerve? Go on then, run and tattle. You really think Leon would take your side?"

I clenched my fists and held myself back. I gathered up my scattered things, then went to the guest room, slammed the door, and left myself a little peace.

That night a sudden ache all over my body jolted me awake. I sat up, my throat killing me too. It seemed I'd caught a cold.

I got up to take some medicine, and I'd only just reached the hallway when I heard the soft, suggestive sound of panting.

Even in the dim light, I could see Cecilia and Leon wrapped around each other on the couch, kissing hungrily.

They kissed like they couldn't bear to part, not even noticing my eyes on them.

Leon was back. He hadn't asked how my night had been, hadn't remembered our anniversary. He'd gone straight to Cecilia's arms.

I turned to go back to my room, telling myself I could just endure one night, but I accidentally knocked into a coat rack.

"Emilia?" Leon quickly pushed Cecilia away, switched on the light, and came over.

"Where did you go last night? My men couldn't reach you anywhere."

His lips were red and swollen, and there was a faint lipstick stain on his neck. One glance was enough to turn my stomach.

"None of your business."

I tried to leave, but Leon grabbed my wrist tight. "What are you making a scene for? It's not what it looked like…"

"Enough, Leon. Do whatever you want, the two of you. I'm the one intruding here."

I ran back to my room and locked the door, ignoring Leon's knocking no matter how hard he pounded, and buried myself under the covers.

I dreamed of the year I turned eighteen, the first time I ever met Leon.

Back then I'd found him in the alley behind a bar, covered in blood. Enemies had been hunting him down, and a long gash had been cut open from his chest all the way to his stomach.

With a needle and fishing line I'd scrounged from the back kitchen, I stitched the wound closed, stitch by stitch. There was no anesthetic, and he gritted through it by sheer will.

His eyes back then were like a beast lying in wait, full of ambition and defiance, and they burned into me until something in my chest trembled.

Not long after, word reached me in our circles about Leon Castellano, the most powerful capo of Chicago's Crimson Flame family, the man who had wiped out the Iron Fist family.

I still remember the evening Leon came to find me. The sunset was beautiful. He held out a bunch of flowers, smiling, and asked if he could court me.

We got through the hardest years together. I did everything I could to win him whatever he wanted, even though I had few connections of my own to call on within the family.

Until, in a power struggle, he killed the muddled, useless boss and took his place, building Crimson Flame into the most powerful mafia family in Chicago. And so, as naturally as anything, we married.

On our wedding night, tangled together, Leon noticed the old scar on my arm. His pupils tightened, and he asked how I'd gotten it.

I told him I'd been kidnapped once as a child, and I'd gotten this scar saving a little boy.

Shock filled Leon's face. "Did you also sing nursery rhymes all night long to comfort that little boy?"

"How do you know that?"

Leon leaned down and kissed me, his eyes softening even more.

"That little boy was me."

"And what if the one who saved you back then hadn't been me?"

"There's no what-if. Because it was you. It could only ever be you."

I marveled that maybe this was what fate had arranged, and I spent the sweetest, happiest days of my life with him.

And all of it ceased to exist once my half-sister Cecilia came back to the country.

Only then did I learn that she'd met Leon before I ever had, that they'd risked their lives together on deal after deal and pledged themselves to each other long ago. If Cecilia hadn't been sent abroad by our father for four years over a single mistake, it would have been the two of them walking down the aisle.

When Cecilia came back, her eyes went red with hatred. She blamed me for stealing her man and swore she'd take everything of mine away.

And Cecilia truly did it. She engineered chance encounters by every means she could, offered help through the family's connections, and with her status as the legitimate daughter on top of it all, little by little the old flame between them rekindled, and Leon grew colder and colder toward me.

Only then did I understand that what mattered most to Leon was self-interest. Between a "little girl" who'd become nothing but a dusty memory and the heir to the Rosse family, he would surely choose the heir.

I woke from the dream, my eyes sore, a large patch of my pillow soaked through.

I took the trade license out of my pocket and tore it to shreds, along with my own heart.