Chapter 2

When class ended, Leo was the first one through the school doors.

A black armored SUV was waiting at the curb, one of Matteo's men at the wheel and another up front. In the back, Sofia sat in a cream dress and heels, polished enough for a gala, not a school pickup.

Leo ran straight to the open door. "Mom!"

Sofia laughed and pulled him into her arms without hesitation. Then she looked at me over his head, pleased with herself.

Matteo was beside her, one arm stretched along the leather behind her shoulders. "Twenty-five and already playing lady of the house?"

Sofia arched a brow. "If you don't like it, I can always let someone else spoil me."

Matteo caught her wrist and tugged her closer. "Try it."

Their laughter followed me into the rain.

At the corner, a sedan from the estate rolled up beside me, all dark glass and quiet obedience. Usually I would have gotten in. This time I kept walking.

I was too humiliated to let one of Matteo's drivers carry me neatly back into his world. Rainwater slid over my phone as I tried to unlock it. Right then, Matteo called.

"Why haven't you been picking up?" he snapped.

"It's pouring. I was just--"

"Doesn't matter. Leo's not coming back to the estate tonight. Sofia's taking him to Bellucci's."

Bellucci's was one of Matteo's restaurants, the kind with a private room upstairs where family business got done behind closed doors.

Then Leo shouted into the phone, thrilled. "Tell Chef Marco not to make that boring healthy plate for me. I'm having truffle fries and steak."

Sofia laughed in the background. "See? I told you. He's a kid. Let him enjoy himself."

And Matteo laughed with her. "At this rate, you'll have the whole house listening to you."

Then Leo asked in a much smaller voice, "Mom won't be mad, will she?"

When the call ended, my fingers closed around two coins in my pocket.

A week earlier, Matteo had asked for roasted chestnuts from an old man outside Leo's school. The vendor only took cash. I had gone out of my way to get some for him. He forgot the bag on the dining table, and I was the one left cleaning up the grease.

That was what loving him had become. I was always the one wiping up what he left behind.

I did not go back to the estate. I went to a lawyer.

By the time Matteo carried a sleeping Leo through the front doors that night, I was waiting in the sitting room with a folder on the table.

"I want a divorce," I said.

That stopped him cold.

"You're serious?" he asked. "Over a birthday?"

"Not one birthday. Five. Five years of being told to step aside while you handed my place to someone else."

He dropped into the armchair opposite me and flipped open the folder without really seeing it. "Sofia is young. She needs more attention. That doesn't change what you are in this house."

"What am I, Matteo?"

His gaze lifted, cool and impatient. "You're my wife. You have my name, my home, my protection. Why are you still fighting a girl for rank when nobody is taking your seat?"