Chapter 2

If I stayed alive, Matteo would never stop looking for me.

But what Matteo didn't know was that I had chosen to become a "dead woman."

From then on, he would never find me again.

Halfway through dinner, his encrypted phone rang.

He glanced at the screen. Something shifted almost imperceptibly in his expression. Then he declined the call and turned the phone face-down on the table.

"Family business?" I asked, cutting my carrots without interest.

"Small friction at the docks. Luca's handling it." He said it without a single crack in his story.

But the phone buzzed twice more in quick succession.

In the Moretti family, no one dared blow up Matteo's private line repeatedly. Except on the night the old Don was dying.

Unless it was the woman he kept on the side, or the twins running a fever.

"Go handle it." I set down my fork and knife and wiped my mouth with the napkin. "The steak's getting cold anyway."

Matteo stood. A flicker of guilt crossed his eyes.

He came around the long table and leaned down to wrap his arms around my shoulders.

"Sorry, Elena. Our eighth anniversary is in three days. That night, I won't go anywhere. I'll be with you the whole time. Okay?"

"Okay." I looked up at him and even curved my eyes into a smile. "Whatever you say."

He left in a hurry. He didn't even put on his coat. His bodyguard handed it to him in the foyer.

The black armored convoy roared out of the iron gates. The estate fell back into dead silence.

I stood and went up to the study on the second floor.

The safe on the wall was hidden behind a Renaissance oil painting. The code was my birthday.

Matteo had always used that to declare to the entire family that he had no secrets from me.

I opened the safe. On the top shelf lay a thick stack of property transfer documents, all signed with my name.

But beneath those papers were two birth certificates and an inheritance agreement drafted by a Swiss private trust.

The beneficiary column listed two names clearly:

Leo Moretti. Lorenzo Moretti.

The guardian column: Sofia Castiglia.

Notarized six years ago.

Six years ago, I had just undergone my third failed round of artificial insemination. I was hemorrhaging in bed. Matteo had smashed an entire glass wall outside my hospital room, swearing he would never put me through that again.

And in that same week, Sofia gave birth to healthy twins in a private Swiss hospital.

He really didn't want me to suffer.

But he had also betrayed me. Betrayed the vows we'd made together in that church.

I put the agreement back exactly as I'd found it, closed the safe, and straightened the painting.

Then I pulled out another disposable satellite phone and dialed that number.

"Alexei."

"Ma'am, everything's ready." The man's voice on the other end was low and steady. "The identical car with the fake plates will be in position tonight. Once it breaks through the guardrail and goes off the cliff, the timed fuse in the fuel tank will make sure the entire vehicle burns to nothing."

Alexei paused. "Once it catches fire, you'll be 'dead'. Officially, legally, to the whole world."

"Good." I looked out at the pitch-black night, my palm pressed against my flat stomach. "Three days from now, on our anniversary, detonate it as planned."

"And you?"

"I'll leave Sicily by cargo ship from the private port." My voice was cold. "I will never set foot on this filthy land again."