Chapter 1

After I hung up, I replied to the employment email from the Chicago headquarters using my new identity.

A confirmation notice flashed on the screen.

Welcome, Stephanie Vale.

I had just closed my laptop when I heard footsteps in the hallway.

A second later, the bedroom door opened.

“Scarlett, you’re still awake?”

His voice was low and gentle in the dark. Adrian DeLuca slipped off his black cashmere coat and draped it over my shoulders with the ease of a man who had done it a thousand times before.

He stood over six-foot-three, with broad shoulders that seemed to block out half the room. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, showing strong, lean arms warmed by a golden tan. When those gray-blue eyes settled on me, they held the same soft devotion that had made half of New York envy me for years.

Everyone knew Adrian.

He was the heir to the DeLuca family, the young don who controlled the ports, the casinos, and half the city’s dirty money. Handsome. Wealthy. Ruthless when he needed to be.

And impossibly patient only with me.

At least, that was what everyone believed.

Before his warmth reached me, I caught the scent on his collar.

Rose perfume.

Not mine.

I stepped away from him.

The coat slid from my shoulders to the floor. Adrian bent to pick it up, his face calm, almost indulgent.

“You’re still upset?” he asked. “Vivian’s situation got worse. Her husband is dying, and the Castro family wants an heir before he does. They’re pressuring her every day. She had nowhere else to turn.”

I looked at him and let out a cold laugh. “So I’m supposed to thank you for sleeping with another woman?”

“It isn’t like that.” He rubbed a hand over his brow. “It’s a medical arrangement. Nothing more.”

I held his gaze. “Then why do you come home from her bed smelling like her?”

For a second, he said nothing.

Then his hand came down over my lower stomach, as if he thought he could calm me that way.

“Scarlett, you’ve already been through enough. Sixty-six IVF attempts. Sixty-six times watching you walk out of that clinic looking like you were about to collapse. I can’t let you keep doing that to yourself.”

My fingers curled tighter around the plastic stick hidden in the pocket of my robe.

Two pink lines.

Positive.

I had taken the test that afternoon. I had planned to tell him on our wedding day.

Now I stood there holding proof of the future inside me while he spoke as if my body had already failed him forever.

Adrian kept going, his voice gentle in the cruelest way.

“Vivian said once the baby is born, you can be the godmother. And if she has twins, she’d even let you raise one. You wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, and you’d still have a child.”

I stared at him.

Then I said, very quietly, “I can have my own child. I don’t need Vivian Castro handing me one.”

He frowned, as if he thought I was only being emotional.

I looked straight at him.

“I’ve spent years trying to give us a child,” I said. “Every treatment. Every appointment. Every attempt. I pushed myself until there was nothing left to give.”

My fingers tightened around the test in my pocket.

“And now you’re standing here telling me another woman can give you what I couldn’t fast enough.”

Something changed in Adrian’s face.

Guilt, maybe.

“I didn’t forget,” he said hoarsely. He pulled me into his arms. “Scarlett, I never forgot. You are the most important woman in my life. After tomorrow, you’ll be my wife. I’ll give you a wedding New York will never forget.”

Before, that kind of voice would have softened me.

Before, I would have believed him.

Then his phone vibrated.

He let go of me almost at once and took a step back, turning the screen away.

That tiny movement told me more than every promise he had ever made.

“Vivian again?” I asked.

The phone buzzed a second time.

He exhaled. “Something happened. I need to go. Scarlett, believe me. I’m just looking after my dead friend’s widow.”

I said nothing.

I walked to the window and watched the man who never lost his composure, not even with blood on his hands, almost run across the courtyard. He got into his black Bentley and drove off in a rush.

The headlights vanished into the dark.

Only then did I take the pregnancy test out of my pocket.

Two clean pink lines stared back at me.

I rested a hand over my stomach and closed my eyes.

I had wanted to give Adrian our child as part of my vows.

Now I wouldn’t tell him a thing.

In forty-eight hours, Scarlett Moretti would die at her own wedding.