Chapter 2: The Agreement

Sera's POV

There were 43 photographs, and I looked at every single one, because I needed to be certain. Hotel lobbies. A parked car with its windows fogged. My husband's hand resting at the small of my sister's back. Vivienne's fingers tangled in Grant's hair. Grant carrying her shopping bags through a market I had never been invited to. The two of them laughing over breakfast in a restaurant where I had once asked to go for our anniversary, and he had said it was too expensive.

Then came the messages. Dante had printed them page after page, in neat black type.

I miss you already.

Does she suspect anything?

Tell her it's a supplier meeting. She never asks questions.

Sera is too trusting to notice. She always has been.

That last one came from Vivienne. I read it three times, then made a sound I did not recognize and pressed my hand over my mouth.

Further down the page, one more line caught my eye.

Everyone fears the Don's supplier. Nobody fears a man like Dante. Thank God I have you.

I lifted my gaze to the man across the table. He was watching the rain, his face unreadable.

"I'm sorry," I said. "She had no right."

"Do not apologize for her," he said quietly. "I have been called many things in my life, Sera. Nobody is a new one."

It almost sounded like a joke, and that unsettled me more than anything else.

When we were children, Vivienne borrowed my dolls, broke them, then cried until Mom blamed me. I had spent my whole life forgiving her. I was so tired of forgiving her.

Dante did not reach for me. He did not offer empty comfort. He slid a glass of water across the table and waited.

"The hotel records are at the back," he said. "Fourteen months."

"Fourteen months," I said, my voice cracking. "I sat at her birthday dinner. I hugged her and told her I loved her."

"I know," he said.

"How long have you known?"

"Three weeks," he said, and a muscle tightened in his jaw, the first crack I had seen in his calm. "I wanted certainty before I came to you."

I stared at him. This man had discovered his wife was a liar, and he was sitting across from me with his hands folded as if we were discussing the weather.

"How are you so calm?" I asked.

"I am not." His eyes met mine, and something cold and dangerous flickered behind them. "I have simply had longer to decide what to do about it."

I wrapped my arms around myself, though the café was warm.

"Grant is going to answer for this," I said, my hands shaking again, but with rage this time. "I'm going to drive home and throw his clothes onto the lawn."

"And then?" he asked.

"And then I'll tell everyone what they did."

"You will cry. He will lie. Vivienne will cry harder." Dante tilted his head. "He will say it was a mistake. She will say she was lonely. By the end of the week, half your family will be telling you to forgive them."

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. My mother adored Vivienne. She would find a way to make this my fault.

"Grant wouldn't dare," I said weakly. "He supplies the Don. He knows what happens to men who bring shame on a family."

Something shifted in Dante's expression, so slight I nearly missed it.

"Does he?" he asked softly.

"Everyone in this city is afraid of that man. Grant says the Don has never forgiven a betrayal."

"Then Grant should be afraid," Dante said, so evenly that a shiver crept down my arms. I told myself I was only cold.

"So what do you want from me?" I asked. "Sit at my own dinner table and smile at them?"

"Yes," he said.

"Not forever," he added. "Only long enough."

"Long enough for what?" I asked.

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. His voice dropped low. "They believe they were clever. They believe we are too blind and too grateful to see the truth. I want them to feel what we felt. The doubt. The sleepless nights. The slow sickness of not knowing who to trust."

"And how do we do that?"

"We give them something to watch."

It took me a moment to understand. When I did, my pulse began to race.

"You want us to pretend to have an affair," I said.

"I want them to find us," Dante said. "A late dinner. A phone call you take in a hallway. A hand on your waist when they are looking."

"That's insane," I said.

"Yes," he agreed, without a trace of apology.

"Vivienne would never believe I could do that."

"Exactly. That is why it will destroy her."

I looked down at the photograph of my sister's smiling face. Then I looked at the man across from me, the man everyone called a nobody. Something hard and quiet took root in me.

"If we do this," I said slowly, "there are no half measures."

"None," he said.

"And when it's over, we walk away. No feelings. No complications."

A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth, the first I had seen from him. "No complications," he agreed.

"One more thing," I said. "No lies between us. Whatever we do out there, we do it knowing the truth about each other."

The pause was so brief I might have imagined it.

"I will never lie to you, Sera," he said.

He held out his hand. I hesitated for only a heartbeat, then took it. His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady, and I had the strange sense that I had just made a deal with something far more dangerous than I understood.

"There is one more thing you must know," Dante said. "Once we begin, you tell no one. Not your mother. Not a friend."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the people watching us will not be only Grant and Vivienne."

The rain had stopped. In the sudden quiet, I could hear the clock above the counter.

"Then who?" I whispered.

He did not answer. He released my hand and rose to his full height, buttoning his jacket. Through the window, across the wet street, a dark sedan idled beneath a streetlamp. Its engine was running. A man sat in the front seat, watching our table without even pretending not to.

Dante followed my gaze and did not look surprised.

"Good," he said quietly. "We begin tonight.”