Chapter 2

Luca finally called the following afternoon.

He didn't ask where Sofia was. He asked why she had sent Dante a vicious voice message from my phone.

At the crash site, she'd told him that if I or my baby died, she would never forgive him. To Luca, the message was proof of emotional blackmail.

Sofia put the call on speaker. "Do you know what happened yesterday?"

"I do. Someone remotely tampered with Valentina's alarm and planted footprints behind her townhouse. She panicked, her old injury flared, Dante handled the arrhythmia, and I secured the property. Right then, the two of you called with matching emergencies - one crash, one premature labor."

His voice slowed as he said it, as though even he heard how suspiciously perfect the timing sounded. But Valentina's screenshots were already lodged in his mind like a bullet.

"You're sisters," he continued. "I know you'll always take Elena's side. But your children can't be props in some contest to prove we're favoring Valentina."

"You think I'm lying about our baby?"

"I hope you're not."

The careful answer was crueler than a direct accusation.

Sofia glanced at me. "Our son died."

Nothing came through the speaker except a faint breath.

"The doctors stopped resuscitation at 11:07 last night. He weighed four pounds and three ounces. His lungs weren't developed. I was afraid to hold him because he was so much smaller than I'd imagined."

"Stop." Luca's breathing broke. "Where are you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Sofia, give me the address."

"You think I'm acting, so keep thinking it. From now on, you can speak to my lawyer about the divorce."

He said her name in the low, coaxing tone that had softened her for four years.

She ended the call.

The room settled into silence again, broken only by the rain and the distant bells of a church.

Sofia and I had been born into the Rossi family. Our father managed warehouse operations in Queens for the Morettis until he died in a dock war. Vittorio Moretti took us into the family estate afterward, and we grew up beneath the same roof as his sons.

Dante and Luca had loved us. Our marriages weren't fake, and neither brother had married us to make another woman jealous.

Their failure was simpler and, in some ways, worse: they had spent fourteen years believing Valentina should always be protected first.

When she was fourteen, Mrs. Moretti was ambushed outside a church. Valentina stepped between her and a bullet. Fragments remained near her heart, and from that day forward, the Morettis treated her like a debt that could never be repaid.

One frightened call from her could pull Luca away from an active case. One complaint of chest pain could keep Dante beside her overnight.

Sofia and I had always been capable, quiet, and unwilling to cause scenes. We solved our own problems. Over time, the brothers stopped believing anything truly terrible could happen to us.

Valentina learned to exploit that assumption.

On my birthday, she found a spent casing in her garage, and Luca locked down the whole block. During Sofia's anatomy scan, Valentina fainted at a foundation gala, and Dante spent the night running tests.

We never demanded that they abandon her. We believed dignity would earn respect.

Instead, she turned our silence into jealousy, trimmed ordinary frustrations into incriminating screenshots, and convinced two men trained to question everything that we were conspiring against her.

[The most dangerous thing about Valentina wasn't that she knew how to perform. It was that Dante and Luca wanted to believe her.]

Our attorney delivered the papers on the third day. Sofia and I signed separately.

I checked the box marked [The marriage is irretrievably broken].

As the pen touched paper, I remembered my wedding beneath the stained glass of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Dante hadn't been playing a game that day. He had looked into my eyes and sworn that my safety would come before his own life.

That promise had been sincere.

Which made the betrayal clearer, not easier.

He hadn't always failed to love me. He had simply chosen not to believe me at the only moment that mattered.

That was enough.