Chapter 4

After that night Matteo started sleeping in the main bedroom.

He never said anything like "I think I might be falling for you," but life still changed, one small piece at a time.

Before he left in the morning he would check the clasp on my holster. I didn't like my coffee too sweet, so he had the kitchen staff take away the syrup. At one family gathering a distant cousin drank too much and started making jokes about the years I'd spent chasing Luca.

"Matteo, you've got nerve. A woman like her—"

Matteo set his glass back on the table before the man could finish.

"She's my wife."

That was all it took. The cousin shut his mouth.

I thought at the time that this was trust.

My heart seemed to beat a little faster.

Later I got pregnant.

Rosa was ridiculously happy. The next day she had a whole suite on the ground floor of the estate cleared out and redone, so I wouldn't have to climb stairs later in my pregnancy.

Whenever Bianca came to see me, we traded the usual barbs, but on her way out she always left behind the cake I liked.

I loved cake, even if I still couldn't stand her. As the sweetness filled my mouth, I felt a little happy. Damn it.

When I was seven months along, she got pregnant too.

Twins.

Bianca waved the ultrasound picture in my face. "Two."

I rolled my eyes. "Did you come here to gloat?"

"Obviously."

She sat down on the sofa with one hand over a stomach that wasn't showing yet, insufferably pleased with herself.

"You have one. I have two. Finally there's something you can't win."

The old me would have lost her mind over a line like that.

That day I just smiled and rested my hand on her stomach.

"Fine. They can grow up together."

Bianca went still for a second, then slapped my hand away.

"Don't touch."

Neither of us knew it was the last time we would ever talk like that.

Four days later, on Bianca's way home from a private clinic, her car suddenly went out of control at the exit ramp. In the traffic camera footage, it looked as if something had yanked it sideways. It went through the barrier and rolled twice.

She lived.

Neither baby did.

When the news reached the estate I was in the nursery choosing wallpaper. The roll of pale green paper fell out of my hands, and my first thought was to get to the hospital.

I had just come downstairs when the head of Rossi security stopped me.

"Mrs. Rossi, Mr. Rossi wants you to stay home for now."

I stopped. "Why?"

He didn't answer.

I understood immediately.

The crash wasn't the only thing that had happened.

It had already been tied to me.

Two hours later, the police arrived with the Rossi family lawyers right behind them.

The evidence was straightforward. A device used to interfere with the car's electronics had been bought through a Moretti security account in my name. The account was managed by a longtime bodyguard I'd brought with me from my father's household.

The press quickly dug up every ugly fight Bianca and I had ever had.

Moretti heiress eaten alive by jealousy.

Rossi sisters-in-law at war for years.

Serafina argued with Bianca at a private party after the twin pregnancy was announced.

I sat in the living room and watched the old photographs go by on the screen.

Every one of those things was true.

I had shoved Bianca. I had smashed her glass. I had told a room full of people that one day she would lose to me.

I had gone at her for years and the whole world knew I couldn't stand her.

So when the evidence pointed to me, I understood all too well why it was so convincing.

Matteo came back from the hospital and the first thing he did was have the television turned off.

He stood in front of them all and spoke in a low voice. "It wasn't her."

Rosa looked at him. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

One of his men spoke up quietly. "But that account—"

Matteo turned his head. "Out."

The man blinked. "Sir, I was only—"

"I said out."

Matteo didn't raise his voice, but nobody dared say another word.

I sat on the sofa with my palms soaked in sweat.

In that moment, I actually thought, This is enough.

Let the whole world suspect me, as long as he believes me.

That night I had the kitchen make some food.

Matteo hadn't eaten anything since he got back from the hospital. I carried the tray to the study door, and someone inside was talking.

I was about to knock when I heard his voice. "Freeze the security budget in her name."

My hand stopped in the air.

"Make a complete copy of her phone.

"Question everyone she brought from the Moretti household separately."

Someone hesitated. "And your wife?"

"Until the investigation is finished, she doesn't leave the estate."

Another man spoke up. "Sir, didn't you say you believed her?"

The study was silent for two seconds.

Matteo said, "I can't let loving her stop me from investigating."

The tray shifted slightly in my hands. Soup spilled over the rim of the bowl and scalded my fingers.

I didn't feel it.

Whatever he said after that, not one word of it reached me.

So he hadn't decided I was guilty.

Matteo had simply never stopped believing there was reason to suspect me.

I went back to my room, changed, took my car keys and drove out through the side garage.

By the time the men at the gate came after me I was already on the road.

My phone would not stop ringing.

Matteo. The head of security. My father.

I answered none of them.

The rain came down fast.

I drove fast. I wasn't trying to escape; I just couldn't bear another moment in the place I'd thought of as home.

Ten minutes out, a car with no plates hit me from behind.

I had barely straightened the wheel when a second car cut across from the on-ramp ahead.

Glass shattered almost at the same moment the gunfire began.

I ducked without thinking. A flash of heat struck my stomach. A second later, pain exploded.

The car hit the barrier, the airbag burst open, and everything in front of me was white.

The shooters were closing in when I finally heard the Rossi cars in the distance.

They pulled back.

Matteo got there first.

The moment the car door opened, he dropped to his knees in the rain, his face frighteningly pale.

"Sera."

I looked down.

There was blood all over my skirt.

Not only mine.

The baby had stopped moving.

The ambulance came fast, but it was already too late.

All I remember is Matteo still clutching my hand when they lifted me onto the stretcher.

"Look at me.

"Sera, look at me.

"I was wrong."

His voice was shaking badly. "I shouldn't have had them investigate you. I shouldn't have had them stop you. I only—"

I looked at him and felt tired in a way I never had before.

It felt as if a hand were reaching inside me and tearing me apart. Looking at him, I couldn't even feel the pain in my body. All I could feel was my heart breaking.

"Do you love me?"

He stopped short, then nodded hard.

"Yes."

I gave him a small smile.

"Then that's even more disgusting."

Every trace of color left his face.

It took a long time to get enough breath for the last thing I had to say.

"It isn't that you don't love me.

"It's that you never... really trusted me, not once..."

His grip kept getting tighter.

But I no longer had the strength to squeeze back.

When I opened my eyes again, my father was sitting in the study.

Niccolo's photograph was on the table.

Bianca and Luca's wedding was one week away.