Chapter 2

In the back seat of the taxi, Manhattan's neon lights slid across my face through the window.

As the car passed the old jazz bar on the corner of Fifth Avenue, I turned and looked.

Six years ago, Julian confessed to me on those damp back-alley steps.

I was barely twenty then. To escape the endless feuds and arranged marriages of my Sicilian family, I'd hidden the surname "Corsini"—a name that made the entire European underworld tremble.

I used my mother's maiden name, "Linton," and rented a tiny apartment in New York with unreliable heating. I just wanted to be an ordinary girl, to have a relationship untainted by family interests.

Julian was a restaurant manager then.

He brought me a hot latte on every rainy evening. He waited with me at street corners for taxis late at night. He remembered every little thing—that I didn't eat cilantro, that I was allergic to pollen.

I turned him down five times.

Until the sixth time, when two drunk men cornered me in a dark alley. He rushed in and took a punch for me.

His lip split and bled, but he shielded me behind him and shouted, "Claire, would it kill you to let someone take care of you for once?"

In that moment, the wall I'd built around my heart for twenty years collapsed.

That night, in the noisy, dim underground bar, he held my cold fingers and said:

"Be with me. You'll never be alone again."

I believed that promise for six whole years.

In those six years, my parents sent word countless times, urging me to return to Sicily to inherit the family business and consider an engagement with Luca Rossi, heir to the Rossi family.

I refused again and again, braving my parents' anger, because I thought Julian was my home.

And tonight, Julian smashed my naivety to pieces with his own hands.

I took out my phone and opened the encrypted email.

Inside was a message from the family's second-in-command, Matteo Russo, sent five days ago:

"Miss, come home. The seat of the Corsini heir will be held for you until midnight on April 2nd. The family jet is waiting at Teterboro Airport."

I took a deep breath and typed a reply:

"Claire Corsini agrees to return. Please tell my parents that after I land in Sicily, I will immediately discuss the marriage arrangement with the Rossi family."

I hit send. The taxi pulled up in front of Julian's penthouse.

I went upstairs, took a hot shower to wash off the pungent champagne smell, and dragged two large suitcases out of the closet.

I didn't touch a single expensive gown or piece of jewelry Julian had bought me.

The suitcases held only a few dresses I'd bought myself, some old books, and at the very bottom of the safe, a black velvet box stamped with the Corsini family's silver rose emblem, plus a pair of black lambskin gloves my father had sent last year.

At three in the morning, I zipped the suitcases and walked to the entryway.

Just as I put my hand on the lock, the door was pushed open from the outside.

Julian walked in half-carrying a staggering, drunk Sophie, reeking of alcohol.

He saw me standing in the entryway but didn't even lift his eyes. He casually handed me the paper bag in his hand.

"Sophie drank too much and her stomach hurts. Go make her some hangover soup. Honey and lemon are in the usual spot in the kitchen."

I stared at the brown paper bag and didn't move.

The year we moved into this penthouse together, Julian had a bad cold and a high fever. I got up in the middle of the night to make him soup.

The clay pot exploded. Scalding soup splashed across the back of my hand, raising huge blisters.

Julian went pale with panic. He held me and rushed me into the bathroom, running cold water over my hand for half an hour.

The next morning, he taped a handwritten note to the kitchen glass door:

"Danger zone. Claire is forbidden to enter."

After that, he never let me into the kitchen again. Even the fruit I ate was cut and brought to my hand.

I thought that was love carved into his bones.

But tonight at the charity auction, when Sophie held the microphone and bragged to everyone about how I washed his shirts and cleaned his kitchen, he raised his glass and said nothing.

Now Sophie just had too much to drink, and he ordered me to the kitchen without a second thought.

So he had never forgotten the pain of my burn.

It was just that whenever Sophie needed something, my pain was worth nothing.

I let go of the suitcase handle, walked to the kitchen door, peeled off the note that had been there for five years—its edges yellowed—crumpled it, and threw it in the trash.

"I don't owe her anything."

I gripped the suitcase handle again and looked at Julian coldly. "If she wants hangover soup, tell those friends who were bidding tonight to buy her a coffee."

I dragged the suitcases toward the door.

Julian finally noticed the two large suitcases by my feet. His face darkened, and he grabbed my wrist, pinning me against the entryway wall.

"Enough, Claire!"

He stared down at me, his tone carrying suppressed impatience. "Making a scene at the dinner was one thing. Dragging suitcases around in the middle of the night—who are you performing for?"

"I know you wanted me to announce the engagement publicly, and you're upset I didn't tonight. Next year. I promise I'll marry you at next year's dinner. Satisfied?"

I met his charitable gaze and said, word by word:

"I'm not marrying you. I told you. We're over."