When the Don Buried His Wife

My phone vibrated.

That anonymous number had sent me another photo.

I tapped the screen. The woman in it was Sofia Romano.

She was wearing a clinging deep wine satin gown, the straps so thin they barely seemed to exist. Faint marks still stained the side of her neck and along her collarbone. She was half-reclined against a black leather sofa, and in the lower right corner of the frame, a man’s hand rested possessively on her knee.

I recognized that hand instantly.

The wedding band on his ring finger caught the light with a cold, merciless gleam. Kayson had designed those rings himself, then had them custom-made by a Swiss jeweler. I still remembered the way he had held my hand and told me there would never be another pair like them in the world, because anything he gave me was meant to be mine alone.

Now the memory felt like a joke.

He was wearing the ring that was supposed to mean forever, supposed to mean only me, while touching another woman.

For one awful moment, I found myself wondering what had been on his mind. Excitement. Desire. The thrill of getting away with it. Or maybe, somewhere beneath it all, the smallest flicker of guilt.

Before I could stop staring at the photo, the front doors of the estate opened.

Kayson was home.

He did not even bother taking off his coat before crossing the room straight toward me. There was still the look of someone who had rushed back in his face, but his voice, when he spoke, was as warm and low as ever.

“I’m sorry, tesoro. The capos kept dragging things out. The meeting ran late. I almost missed our anniversary.”

Had family business kept him, or had another woman?

“What’s wrong?” His eyes landed on my face, and the concern in them was immediate, almost convincing. “Who upset you?”

The one man with the greatest right to make me miserable was him, and still he could stand there and ask me that.

I forced back the tears burning behind my eyes and said only one word.

“You.”

Kayson paused, then gave me that familiar look, half helpless, half indulgent. He thought I was upset because he was late.

“Then I’m guilty,” he said softly, looking down at me like I was something precious. “From now on, you come before everything. I won’t make you wait for me like this again. Don’t be angry with me, hm?”

Then he bent and pressed the lightest kiss to the corner of my eye.

If this had happened before, I would have melted. I always did.

But now all I could think about was where he had been before he came home to me. I could not stop thinking about the fact that those hands had touched someone else, that mouth had kissed someone else, and now he was using both to comfort me as if I would not know the difference.

My stomach turned.

I lifted a hand to stop him and stepped back without meaning to.

Kayson froze for a second. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler.

“Lucia, I know I was wrong tonight. Just don’t be upset yet. At least look at what I brought you, all right?”

He reached into his coat pocket and took out a dark blue velvet box.

“I designed it myself,” he said. “A bracelet. Our names are engraved on it.”

He opened the box slowly.

Inside lay a diamond bracelet, extravagant and flawless. Exactly the kind of gift Kayson Moretti would give me. Rare. Expensive. One of a kind.

That only made it hurt more.

The betrayal was real.

The tenderness was real too.

The lies were real.

So was the effort.

He could wear his wedding ring while touching another woman, then come home and hand me an anniversary gift meant to prove how much I mattered. He could break every vow he had ever made to me, then look me in the eye and play devoted husband so perfectly I almost wanted to believe him.

Kayson Moretti.

Which part of you is real?

Then I stopped myself.

It did not matter anymore.

A few hours earlier, I had already put an end to this rotten, beautiful lie.

“Miss Bellini, are you certain you want to erase your identity completely? Once this takes effect, you disappear for good. No one will be able to find you.”

“I’m sure.”

By the time I walked out of that office, Lucia Bellini was already beginning to disappear on paper.

In forty-eight hours, the rest of the world would believe she was gone too.

A new passport. A new name. A new country waiting for me on the other side of the sea.

Before our wedding, I had made one thing very clear to Kayson. If he ever betrayed me, I would vanish so completely that even the Moretti family, with all its reach and power, would never find me again.

Now I was only doing exactly what I had promised.

By the time I returned to the estate, it was already nine-forty.

Today was our third wedding anniversary.

Kayson said he had a gift waiting for me, something only I deserved to have.

I believed I was waiting for my husband.

Instead, what reached me first was the photo Sofia sent.