Chapter 2

The doctor examined me and confirmed that both the baby and I were fine; my due date was still a few days away.

The pain had been nothing more than Braxton Hicks contractions, brought on by stress.

Lying on the hospital bed, I stared blankly at the ceiling, my mind drifting back three years to the day I married Jack.

At the age of twenty, I erased my true identity and moved to Milan. I didn't want anyone to love me just for my last name, so I did it.

That was where I met Jack. Back then, he was a newly graduated intern with nothing but ambition and a humble background. He had seemed earnest, diligent, and reliably kind.

I still remembered the day our supervisor singled me out for unfair treatment, forcing me to finish the entire department’s financial report alone overnight.

Without a word, Jack stayed behind to keep me company, working alongside me until the early hours of the morning.

On another occasion, the supervisor falsely accused me of company theft and threatened to fire me on the spot.

Jack had defended me fiercely and declared he would resign alongside me if I was dismissed.

In that moment, I firmly believed I had found the person I wanted to spend my life with.

We got married quietly, with no lavish banquet.

My father had never approved of Jack.

It was not because Jack came from an ordinary background. My father had never cared about that. What bothered him was something else. He thought Jack was too eager to prove himself, too good at saying the right things, and not nearly as capable as he wanted people to believe.

“He has ambition,” my father once told me. “But ambition without judgment is dangerous. And a man who wants power before he learns responsibility will eventually hurt the people closest to him.”

I refused to listen.

I told my father Jack only needed a chance. I said he was hardworking, sincere, and unfairly underestimated by everyone around him.

So my father gave him that chance.

Through the Bellandi family’s private investment fund, he became the anonymous investor behind Jack’s new company.

Jack never knew the money came from my family.

To him, it looked like a miracle. A mysterious investor had recognized his potential, trusted his vision, and handed him enough capital to build the life he had always dreamed of.

For the past three years, Jack had been running the company built on Bellandi money. To the public, he was a remarkable self-made entrepreneur who had risen from nothing and built a thriving business from scratch.

No one knew the truth.

Jack lacked sharp business instincts and decisive judgment. Every critical partnership, every major contract, every decision that truly expanded the company had been reviewed, corrected, or quietly arranged by me and the Bellandi team behind the scenes.

Jack thought he had built an empire.

In reality, he had been standing on one the Bellandi family had lent him.

All core collaborators were well aware of this unseen truth.

Six months ago, Jack returned from a business trip with a quiet, timid young woman in tow.

“This is Lily,” he had explained to me with a sympathetic tone.

“She just graduated from university, and her mother is critically ill in the hospital. She’s drowning in medical debt and struggling to make ends meet. I hate to see her suffer, so I want to give her a hand.”

I arranged a comfortable apartment for her and privately covered all her mother’s exorbitant medical expenses.

In the beginning, Lily treated me with excessive deference, waiting on me hand and foot.

Yet she was clumsy and inexperienced at work, making frequent costly mistakes.

Jack would fly into fits of rage, repeatedly threatening to terminate her contract.

Every time, I softened his anger, persuading him to give the newly graduated girl more time to adapt.

I had genuinely thought I was helping a vulnerable, hardworking young woman.

Now, it was painfully clear.

From the very start, Jack and Lily had been acting out an elaborate lie, tailored just to deceive me.