Chapter 4

The next day, our wedding anniversary arrived.

I woke before sunrise and went downstairs before the kitchen staff had even started the day. For once, I wanted to make Vincent breakfast with my own hands.

When he walked into the kitchen and saw me standing at the stove, he crossed the room in seconds, snatched the spatula from my hand, and pulled me against his chest, half angry, half frightened.

“What are you doing in here? You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t be standing over a hot stove. Where’s the staff?”

“Today’s our anniversary,” I said softly. “I wanted to be alone with you for a little while.”

His eyes reddened at once. He buried his face in my hair and held me as if I might vanish the moment he let go.

“I should be the one doing this for you. All I want in this life is for my wife to be happy. Every single day.”

If Isabella hadn’t shown me the truth, I might have believed I was the luckiest woman alive.

But the blood oath had already been broken. There was no going back.

Just then, the phone he had left on the kitchen counter lit up and began to vibrate.

I glanced at the screen, then picked it up and handed it to him.

“You have a message.”

Vincent tensed for a split second, then relaxed when he saw my calm expression.

“That’s my girl. Never checks my phone, never gives me grief. Trusts me.”

He thought I was noble.

He thought I was naive.

He never imagined I knew every single detail of his betrayal.

He’d hidden behind my trust, making up endless excuses to slip away and be with her.

Every time she called, he ran.

Isabella had just texted me, gloating that she was pregnant, that my greatest leverage was gone, that she would be the one to sit on the Castellano throne.

She told me Vincent was taking her for a “prenatal checkup” that morning, and had promised to find a way to make me accept her child as my own.

Vincent read the message, then turned back to me, his voice smooth.

“Baby, I have to go. Those Moretti bastards are making trouble on the docks again...”

I didn’t call him out on his lie. I just smiled up at him.

“Be careful. And when you get back, don’t forget to open the anniversary gift on the coffee table. It’s for you.”

Vincent kissed the top of my head, grabbed his gun from the hall table, and hurried out the door.

The second his car pulled out of the driveway, I sent my steward a one-word text: Execute.

Then I placed my phone, along with every photo, video, and chat log Isabella had ever sent me, into the hand-carved wooden box. My anniversary gift to Vincent.

By the time he opened it, Seraphina Corleone would already be dead.

I picked up my pre-packed bag, and got into the unmarked car waiting at the gate.

As we passed Seraphina Private Hospital, I saw Vincent’s Rolls-Royce parked outside.

He was already there.

I watched him go around to the passenger side and help Isabella out with the same care he had once reserved for me.

Beneath the gold letters of the hospital built in my name, my husband escorted his mistress inside for her prenatal checkup.

My steward met my eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Donna, should I stop?”

I looked at Vincent one last time.

At the hospital.

At the woman beside him.

At the life I had once mistaken for love.

Then I turned away.

“No,” I said. “Keep driving.”

Let him go to her.

Let him lie to me one last time.

Let him open the box and learn what his betrayal had cost him.

From this moment on, Seraphina Corleone no longer existed.

She died on her wedding anniversary.