Chapter 1

The call was simple.

"I’m not getting married."

My mother’s voice on the other end held no surprise, only a weary understanding that tasted of Sicilian lemons and old regrets. "Come home, Joanna. The family needs you. And you deserve better than a Rossi’s leftovers."

I ended the call and stared at the diamond on my finger — Alexander’s engagement promise, a glittering lie. In three weeks, I would vanish. But first, I had to endure the pantomime one last time.

Tonight was the engagement gala at The Velvet Room. A display for the Five Families: the Moretti name restored to respect through my marriage to the Rossi heir. My victory lap. My final performance.

I should have known the script would change.

Isabella Conti walked in.

My half-sister. The living reminder of the woman who destroyed my mother, draped in white silk and a smirk.

When my champagne flute slipped, staining her pristine Louboutins, instinct made me reach for Alexander. He pushed me away.

"Control yourself, Joanna," he snapped, his eyes never leaving Isabella. "Apologize to Bella."

The room froze. Made men, their polished wives, associates with cold eyes — all witnessing the Rossi heir choose a Conti over his own fiancée.

Humiliation burned, sharp and clean. I called security.

Alexander’s face darkened, a storm gathering in features I once traced with devotion. "You’re drunk and embarrassing this family," he said, each word a public lashing. "You’re not fit to be a Rossi wife."

Then he left. With her.

I wandered the Red Hook docks for hours, the salt air doing nothing to cleanse the shame seeping into my bones. By the time I returned to Harborview Mansion, my feet were bleeding through the satin of my Valentino heels — his engagement gift. A size too small. A fitting metaphor.

Then I saw their shadows through our bedroom window, tangled against the drawn curtains.

My hands were steady as I opened the encrypted security app. The feed showed Isabella on our leather sofa, Alexander feeding her soup, his hand gentle on her ankle.

"You still love me," she purred, a cat with its prey. "This whole wedding… it’s just to make me jealous, isn’t it? The ring, the mansion… even her shoes were ones I rejected."

Alexander didn’t deny it.

He kissed her — a deep, hungry, claiming kiss he’d never given me in seven years. A kiss that held all the passion his reserved touches to me had always lacked.

My knees gave out. The phone clattered to the marble floor, the screen still playing the scene of my undoing.

I looked at the heels, those exquisite, painful lies. I pulled them off and dropped them into the bronze trash bin by the door.

"Shoes that don’t fit aren’t worth keeping", my mother once said. "Neither are men."

"In the quiet that followed, a plan began to form — cold, precise, and patient. The next three weeks would not be a countdown to a wedding, but to a reckoning. And I would be the one holding the clock."