Chapter 1

I pulled a document from beside my pillow and held it out to Nicolo.

“Sign.”

A moment earlier, my father had walked into my hospital room with him. The joy still lingered on both their faces, as if they had stepped out of a celebration and come here only because duty demanded it.

After I gave birth, the hospital room had felt unbearably still. I had sat on the bed with my newborn in my arms while tears slid down into his blanket. The city lights spilled in through the windows, cold and distant, and there had not been a single person beside me to wipe my face clean.

My father glanced at the document and laughed. “What is this? My daughter asks her husband for everything now and not her father?”

Nicolo crouched in front of me and took my swollen ankle gently in hand. His voice was warm, flawless, practiced. “Why didn’t you wait for me? Where’s the baby? Are you upset with us? Tomorrow I’ll have the hospital director come to the estate and examine you himself.”

If I had not seen that video, maybe I would have believed them.

Right before I was wheeled into the delivery room, my phone had rung.

The moment I answered, Elena’s sweet, sticky voice came through the speaker.

“Honey, standing through the wedding wore me out. My back hurts. The baby just kicked again. Come keep me company.”

Then the line went dead.

My fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned white.

Before that call, an anonymous video had landed on my phone.

Nicolo was wearing a groom’s suit.

Elena stood beside him with a hand resting on her pregnant stomach. She was wearing my wedding dress. Her arm was looped through my fiancé’s as if she had won him fair and square.

At the end of the clip, my father asked in a lowered voice, “If Valentina remains your bride in name only, what happens to the child she gives birth to?”

Nicolo was quiet for two seconds before he answered. “Valentina grew up with everything. Elena spent her whole life carrying the stain of being illegitimate. Her child will not grow up the same way.”

So all that tenderness had never been for me.

It had all been for Elena.

Nicolo did not even read the page. He signed his name and handed it back with a low chuckle. “Everything I have is yours. You never need to stand on ceremony with me.”

I lowered my eyes to the paper and smiled until tears blurred the ink.

It was a declaration relinquishing all paternal rights to my child.

From this point on, Nicolo had no legal tie to my son.

At that exact moment, both their phones buzzed. My father’s expression changed first. Nicolo leaned down, kissed the top of my head, and said in the same gentle tone, “Something came up at home. I’ll be back soon. Be good and wait for me with the baby.”

They left in a hurry.

After the door shut, two groom’s boutonnieres slipped from my father’s coat pocket and landed on the floor.

I stared at them and finally let myself cry.

Tonight was their wedding night.

My father had never really loved me. When Elena had a fever, he would stay by her bed all night. When I burned with fever badly enough to hallucinate, a maid was the only one who came in to change my cooling patch.

For Elena’s coming-of-age party, the estate had blazed with light, and a ten-tier cake had been wheeled from the grand hall to the garden. As for me, I had never even been told where my mother was buried.

For years I believed my mother had died giving birth to me, and that I deserved every scrap of coldness that followed.

Then the earthquake came.

Elena pushed me off the third floor, leaned down near my ear, and whispered that a girl who had killed her own mother deserved to die dirty.

Nicolo caught me before I hit the ground.

At the time, he had only recently taken his seat as head of the family. His black suit fit a tall, powerful frame, and his steel-blue eyes were cold enough to cut. He sent me to the best hospital, and once I was stable, he looked at everyone who had mocked me and said, “Valentina is mine. Anyone who makes her suffer will pay for it.”

That single sentence became the rope I clung to. I thought he loved me. Now I knew the truth. The proposal, the care, the indulgence, all of it had only been a road built for another woman.