Chapter 1

My boyfriend got arrested in a public garden with the woman he swore he hated.

By the time I reached the precinct, December rain had turned the streets black. I stood at the front desk in my black coat.

Evan Cole sat near the interview rooms with Mara Vale tucked under his arm. Her lipstick was smeared, his collar was open, and their necks carried enough evidence to save the officer a report. When he saw me, relief crossed his face.

"Leah, thank God. This whole thing is a stupid misunderstanding."

Mara leaned closer to him, all blond hair, wet lashes, and perfect timing. "I lost my job today. Evan was only trying to cheer me up."

"In the Conservatory Garden after closing?" I asked.

"Don't start," Evan snapped, already annoyed that I had brought facts to his little rescue scene.

The officer had clearly seen uglier stories and better liars. I signed where he pointed, paid the fine, and kept my voice even because screaming would have given them exactly what they wanted.

"Relationship to the detainees?" the officer asked.

I smiled and said, "Roommates."

Evan’s face tightened. I was supposed to cry, make a scene, take him home, and let him talk me into thinking I had overreacted.

Instead, I stepped away from the desk and called my father, Vittorio Moretti, the man who controlled half the East Coast underworld and still answered my calls on the second ring. "Alessia?"

Hearing my real name nearly cracked something open in me. "I'm coming home. Tell Nico I accept the alliance."

Silence held for a beat before his voice dropped into the calm, dangerous register I remembered from closed doors and men who knew better than to waste his time. "When?"

"Christmas Eve. Have the papers ready."

To Evan, I had always been Leah Moreland, a girl with no family worth mentioning and no one powerful enough to miss her. He had no idea Leah was the name I used when I ran from the Moretti family six years ago.

"Are you safe?" my father asked.

I looked across the precinct at Evan helping Mara into his coat while I stood alone with the bail receipt in my hand. "I am now."

Outside, the rain came down hard enough to sting. I flagged down a cab after fifteen minutes, but before I could slide in, Evan pushed past me with Mara's suitcase in one hand and his palm at her lower back.

"I'm taking Mara home first," he said, like the cab belonged to him and I was just weather in his way. "She's shaken up."

Mara dabbed at her eye. The second Evan looked away, she smiled at me through the rain-streaked window.

"Get another cab," I said. "This one stopped for me."

"Why do you always have to make everything ugly? She had a terrible night."

"So did I."

"Because you took forever. Do you have any idea how humiliating it was to sit in there? I called you nine times."

"You were arrested with your ex in a park, Evan. I don't think the delay was the embarrassing part."

"Nothing happened. People saw what they wanted to see." He said it with the confidence of a man who believed my love made me stupid. Mara touched his sleeve and murmured, "Don't fight with her because of me."

Evan's voice softened for her in a way I had not heard in months. "You don't have to defend her." Then he took the umbrella from my hand, shut the cab door, and told the driver to go.

The taillights disappeared into traffic while rain soaked through my coat and ran down my neck. I stood there long enough to understand one simple thing: that was the last time I would let Evan Cole leave me behind.

By the time I reached the apartment, my throat burned. My father had sent a photo of Nico De Luca, the man I had run from six years ago: dark suit, calm eyes, old money in his posture and old blood in his name.

[What do you think?] he wrote.

I barely looked before typing back, [Perfect.]

Six years ago, I left the Moretti estate with two suitcases and a fake last name because I thought love should be chosen, not arranged. I met Evan in a basement bar in Queens, where he had a bad job, a worse boss, and a dream he could not sell alone.

So I helped. I rewrote his proposals, coached him before investor meetings, cleaned up his pitch decks, and introduced him to money through shell contacts he never knew were mine. When Saint Jude Capital backed his logistics company, Evan called it luck. I let him.

Every time I asked about marriage, he told me to wait until the next funding round, the next promotion, the next excuse. Tonight, I finally understood he had been ready for a long time. He just had not been ready for me.

I opened my laptop and created a folder named CHRISTMAS. Into it went the police receipt, the officer's card, Mara's messages, photos of Evan's travel stubs, and six years of proof that the life he bragged about was built with my hands.

Then I set a countdown on my phone. In three days, I would be gone.