Chapter 2

When I opened my eyes, I was still on the floor.

The marble was cold against my cheek. The penthouse was silent — the vast, hollow silence of a place that had been emptied of everyone who mattered.

The back of my skull was wet. I touched it. My fingers came away dark.

Luca hadn't called a doctor. Hadn't left a towel. He'd simply walked out with Serena on his arm and left me bleeding on the floor like something discarded.

I lay there for a moment, breathing through the nausea, watching the ceiling blur and resettle. Then I reached for my phone.

Serena's latest post was three minutes old.

A private suite at Lenox Hill. Luca perched on the edge of her hospital bed, dabbing ointment onto her jaw with a cotton pad.

The next slide: him lifting a spoon to her lips, while she gazed up at him with the practiced helplessness of a woman who understood exactly how to perform being wounded.

The caption: My protector.

I almost laughed.

I dragged myself upright, one hand braced against the wall until the room stopped tilting. Then I started packing.

There wasn't much. There never had been — Luca kept most of the "wife things" locked in the estate vault.

Jewelry I couldn't wear without clearance. Gowns I needed permission to access. A life assembled entirely for display, then sealed behind steel and biometrics the moment the cameras turned off.

I moved through the penthouse with the efficiency of someone dismantling a crime scene.

The wedding portrait came off the wall first. I didn't burn it. I just laid it face-down on the floor, like closing a casket lid.

Next: the gifts. A Cartier watch from our first anniversary — before Serena. A silk scarf from Milan. Every small token we'd exchanged over three years of a marriage that had only ever been real to one of us.

Into the trash bag. All of it.

Last — the ring.

I slid it off. It came easily. Three years, and my finger had never quite shaped itself around the band. Like my body had always known this was temporary.

I dropped it into the toilet. Flushed. Watched the water swallow the platinum in one indifferent swirl.

Gone.

I zipped the suitcase and reached for the door.

The lights died.

Two shadows materialized from the service corridor. Fast. Silent. Trained.

I swung the suitcase on instinct, but a gloved hand caught my wrist and wrenched it behind my back. The other clamped a cloth over my mouth — not chloroform, just pressure, enough to smother the scream.

They hauled me to the freight elevator. Down to the parking garage. Into a black van with tinted windows and no plates.

One pinned my arms. The other pulled out a phone, hit record, and aimed the camera at my face.

Then the first one started hitting me.

Open-handed. Methodical. Not wild — controlled, the way men strike when they've been given exact instructions.

Each slap cracked across my cheekbone like a pistol shot, snapping my head sideways, splitting skin against teeth.

I lost count somewhere around forty.

By the time they finished, my face was a swollen, bleeding wreck. My left eye was swelling shut, the skin stretched taut and burning. My lip was split in two places. Copper filled my mouth like a second tongue.

"Ninety-nine. That's enough."

The one with the camera leaned close and pried my eyelid open, forcing eye contact.

"Serena Vitale is under the Don's protection. Touch her again, and we put you in the ground."

They shoved me out onto the asphalt. The van tires screamed and vanished.

I lay on the concrete, staring up at the orange haze of the city sky, and understood with perfect clarity: Luca had ordered this.

Not soldiers acting on their own initiative. Not Serena pulling strings behind his back. This was the Don's justice — calculated, disproportionate, and filmed for leverage.

I hadn't finished pulling myself upright when headlights swept across the alley.

Luca's motorcade.

He stepped out of the Escalade and froze when he saw me. Something crossed his face — not quite guilt, but close enough to borrow its mask.

"Jesus, Aria." He crouched beside me, one hand hovering near my jaw without touching it. "Who did this to you? I'll find them. I swear I'll handle it."

The performance was seamless. Tender voice. Worried eyes. The concerned husband discovering his wife's misfortune by terrible coincidence.

I was too shattered to resist. He loaded me into the SUV and drove me to the family's private medical suite — the same one where Serena was recovering.

The same room.He put us in the same room.

Serena was propped against silk pillows, her bruised jaw artfully lit by the bedside lamp. When she saw my face, she didn't bother hiding the satisfaction.

"Mrs. Marchetti." Her eyes were bright, amused. "Karma moves fast, doesn't it? One punch from you, and the universe responds with..." She gestured lazily at the ruin of my face. "Well. That."

Luca was refilling her water glass. He flicked Serena a half-hearted look. "Don't start."

"I'm just saying." A delicate shrug. "It's almost poetic."

After the family doctor stitched my cheek and wrapped my head, Luca turned to me with the expression of a man ticking items off a list.

"You owe Serena an apology."

I stared at him. Blood was already seeping through the fresh gauze.

"She brought me counterfeits. She paralyzed my mother. And you want me to apologize?"

"You assaulted my consigliere inside my household. That's a breach of protocol and an insult to my authority." His voice was flat, rehearsed. "Apologize. We move on."

I looked past Serena's smirk. Past the water glass in Luca's hand. I looked at the man I'd once hauled out of an alley and stitched back together with my own hands.

"She stole the cash. She delayed the surgery. My mother will never walk again. Why should I apologize?"

"Or maybe," I said, my voice hoarse but unwavering, "you love Serena so much you can't tell right from wrong anymore."

Luca's hand moved before I saw it coming.

The slap landed directly on the stitches.

The gauze tore open. Fresh blood spilled warm down my neck.

I didn't flinch. I looked him dead in the eyes.

"One hundred. Nice round number."

His hand was still raised. His breathing had gone ragged.

"I want a divorce, Luca."

For the first time, something cracked behind his expression. A flash of panic — quick, involuntary, like a man who'd just felt the ground shift beneath his feet.

But he buried it fast.

"I married you," he said, voice too controlled. "I don't do divorce. Get that out of your head."

Behind him, Serena's smirk had disappeared. She was watching Luca with an expression I'd never seen on her before — calculation threaded with the faintest edge of fear.