Chapter 3

At the New York mafia gala, my seat at the main table had originally been arranged right next to Nathaniel.

After Victoria came over, Nathaniel raised a hand and summoned a server to add a chair between him and me.

Victoria settled in slowly, elegantly swept her long hair aside, and the thin ruby bracelet on her wrist glittered under the lavish crystal chandelier.

That was the bracelet Nathaniel had personally fastened around my wrist at the celebration banquet when the Vance family defeated every rival and officially became New York's number one mafia family, in front of all the family elders and Dons.

Even the tiny scratch near the clasp was identical.

Back then, Nathaniel had searched half the city's top jewelry workshops to have it custom made, because that shade of red was the color of the Vance family crest, and the color of my birthstone.

He'd clasped it on me himself, eyes blazing.

"Audrey, I'm giving you this because you and the Vance family are the most precious treasures of my life."

Before I left home last night, I'd taken that bracelet off and left it quietly on the master bedroom vanity.

So he had seen it.

He just turned around and put it on another woman's wrist.

Marcus, heir to another family, sitting diagonally across from us, clearly recognized it too.

"That bracelet style looks familiar."

Victoria hastily raised a hand to hide it under her cuff, looking flustered at Nathaniel.

"I was in such a hurry I forgot to bring proper jewelry, so Don lent it to me to get through the evening... Donna, please don't misunderstand."

Nathaniel said casually.

"It's just a bracelet. She won't care."

Marcus turned to me, a flicker of pity in his eyes.

The whole table of family elders, investors, and senior officers was watching me, waiting for my reaction.

Once, I'd been terrified of embarrassing Nathaniel in public.

Even when humiliated, I'd smile and step up to smooth things over, protecting his image as New York's revered, imposing Don.

I slowly lifted the water glass in front of me.

"It suits her."

Victoria visibly let out a breath.

A satisfied smile spread across Nathaniel's face, and he raised an eyebrow at me affectionately.

"I knew it. That's my Donna."

Then he turned his head and casually fetched a glass of iced champagne for Victoria beside him.

Looking at that foaming champagne, I suddenly remembered the night four years ago when he'd promised to celebrate my thirtieth birthday with me.

Ten minutes before the restaurant closed, he called to say Victoria had gotten drunk at a bar and been harassed by a rival gang, and he had to grab a gun and go handle it immediately.

That night, I ate the entire birthday cake alone in the empty restaurant.

The next day, he presented me with this ruby bracelet.

I'd thought it was belated thoughtfulness, belated amends. Only today did I fully understand. Amends and cherishing were never the same thing.

Halfway through the banquet, Marcus brought up the multi-hundred-million-dollar underground freight capacity deal signed that day.

Nathaniel smiled and passed the topic to Victoria.

When Victoria got to the altered route in the proposal, she paused.

"Actually... Donna helped me adjust this part of the details."

Nathaniel cut her off.

"You led this deal. Irrelevant details don't need mentioning."

Victoria blinked, then explained in a small voice.

"But the data and the route proposal were Donna's work to begin with..."

"She's the Donna of the Vance family. Checking these things for the family business is exactly what she's supposed to do."

Nathaniel was clinking glasses with a strange Don from across the room, and said offhandedly.

"She's my wife. Keeping an eye on things for us is her duty as the Donna."

Marcus nodded along at the right moment and tapped the table, chiming in.

"Nathaniel's right. Right now, you and Victoria are the face the Vance family shows the world."

I took a sip of water and just wanted to laugh.

After Nathaniel spent years brainwashing and indoctrinating his underworld social circle, in the eyes of these gang bosses, I, the Donna, had become a credit card with no limit and no debt ever owed.

Anyone could come up and swipe it whenever they liked.

As the banquet broke up, Victoria's ragdoll cat suddenly started vomiting in the sports car.

Nathaniel hurriedly scooped up the cat and urgently told the driver to pull the car up to the hotel entrance.

I stood alone with my suitcase at the bottom of the hotel's wide steps.

Nathaniel pulled a luxury car key from his pocket and tossed it to me.

"Drive this one back yourself."

"My car went in for maintenance today."

I looked at him.

Nathaniel didn't turn his head, his tone cold and perfunctory.

"Then get Daniel to arrange a car for you."

Victoria sat in the back of the sports car, clutching the cat, and poked her head out, saying with fake concern.

"Don, why don't we drop Donna off on the way?"

"The pet hospital is the opposite direction from her place. Not on the way."

Only after Victoria was settled did Nathaniel turn back and give my back a symbolic pat, bending down for a perfunctory kiss.

"Sweetheart, don't wait up for me tonight."

The black sports car roared off in front of me.

Not once did he notice that besides my handbag, there was a black rolling suitcase at my feet.

And he certainly didn't notice the moving company van already waiting quietly a short distance down the road.

I stood there for a long time, until the mover walked over and took the suitcase from me.

"Mrs. Vance, the rest of your personal belongings at the house have all been cleared out and loaded up as requested."

My phone buzzed, and a text from Nathaniel popped up on the screen.

[The cat's fine. We're heading back first.]

I shut the phone off without a flicker of expression.

The mover turned and asked me, "Mrs. Vance, should we head straight to the new apartment now?"

I looked up at the estate on the hill in the distance, the one I'd shared with Nathaniel for seven years, its landscape lights still glowing.

"Back to that house first."

"Still something to grab?"

I pulled the car door open and got in, my voice utterly flat.

"One last run."