Chapter 4

I looked up at the hotel one last time — counted the floors, wondered which window was theirs — then put the car in drive and pulled away.

By the time I got home, the sun was already sinking behind the skyline. Somewhere across the city, firecrackers popped in an alley. New Year's Eve, coming in fast.

My phone buzzed. A text from Danny — my college roommate, now a private investigator.

"Got what you asked for. Read it somewhere quiet. And for God's sake, Clara — don't do anything stupid."

I sat at the kitchen table and opened the attachment.

It was thorough. Danny was always thorough.

Sienna Valenti. Born four blocks from the Marchetti estate. Same age as Luca. Same parish school from kindergarten through eighth grade. Same prep school after that.

The photographs showed two kids growing up side by side — gap-toothed grins at a communion party, matching uniforms on the steps of St. Ignatius, a prom photo where his hand rested on her hip with the ease of someone who'd never been told no.

The families had been intertwined for decades. Marchetti and Valenti — old money marrying old muscle. According to Danny's notes, an engagement had been informally discussed before either of them turned eighteen.

Then Sienna's father took a federal indictment, the Valenti name became toxic overnight, and she was sent to Milan to wait out the fallout. The engagement evaporated. Luca stayed behind.

Three years later, he married me.

The next line in Danny's report was bolded, timestamped, and sourced from a hotel booking database I didn't want to know how he'd accessed.

Sienna Valenti's first documented return to the U.S.: eighty-seven days after my wedding.

That same New Year's Eve — the Waldorf Astoria. A suite booked under a shell company tied to Marchetti Holdings.

I stared at that number until it stopped looking like a number and started looking like a sentence.

Eighty-seven days.

That was the night I'd sat on this couch in a new dress I'd bought for no one, eating Chinese takeout from the container, watching the ball drop on a muted television.

He'd called at quarter past midnight. "Sorry, babe. My uncle Antonio cornered me for two hours. You know how family is."

I told him it was fine. I told him I loved him. And I'd gone to sleep believing every word he said, grateful that he'd thought of me at all.

While she was with him. In a suite I'd paid for without knowing it — because every dollar in Marchetti Holdings had my silence built into its foundation.

I closed the file and set my phone down.

Then I went to the hallway closet and pulled out a suitcase.

It didn't take long. That was the part that gutted me — not the packing, but how little there was to pack.

Clothes first. Most of them were things I'd brought into the marriage — old blazers, worn jeans, a winter coat with a broken zipper I kept meaning to replace.

Luca had never offered to buy me new ones. Occasionally he'd glance at something I was wearing and say, with that detached Marchetti precision, "You should probably update your wardrobe."

But the suggestion never came with a credit card or a store name. Just the observation, hung in the air.

A camera I'd bought secondhand the year we married, thinking I'd document our life together. The memory card was nearly empty.

Last, from the bottom drawer of my nightstand, a photo album. Thin. The kind you buy at a drugstore and never fill.

I sat on the edge of the bed and opened it.

The wedding photos were near the back. Me in white. Him in black. The photographer had positioned us under an arch of pale roses. I was looking at him. He was looking slightly past me — at nothing, or at something only he could see.

There was a close-up of the ring exchange. I was gazing down at our joined hands with the kind of unguarded hope that makes me sick to look at now. His expression, caught in perfect focus, was something else entirely.

Not joy. Not even nerves.

Resignation.

The last photo was a selfie taken in this apartment on our wedding night. My arm extended, his around my shoulder. I was beaming. He was smiling with his mouth but looking past the lens — past me, past the room, past everything.

I closed the album and laid it in the suitcase.

It had always been there, written across every image in a language I refused to learn. I was simply never the person he wanted to come home to.

I was a placeholder — a practical solution to a problem that resolved itself eighty-seven days after the wedding.

I zipped the suitcase shut and called Danny.

"You read it?" he said.

"Yeah." My voice was steady. Surprisingly steady. "I need you to get me a divorce attorney. A good one. Someone fast and someone who doesn't scare easy."

"Clara, he's a Marchetti. You know what you're walking into?"

"I know exactly what I'm walking into. That's why I need it done before he knows I'm walking at all."

Danny went quiet for a long moment. "What about the assets? You've been married seven years — you're entitled to —"

"I walk away clean. The apartment, the cars, the accounts — it's all Marchetti money. I came in with nothing. I'll leave the same way."

"You sure about that? The man cheated on you for seven years. Any judge in New York would —"

"I don't want it." I cut him off. "Keep it simple. Keep it fast. The only thing I need from Luca Marchetti is my name back."

Three hours later, the documents arrived in my inbox. Clean. Concise.

The attorney Danny found had drafted them like a surgical instrument — no excess, no loose threads, nothing for a Marchetti lawyer to grab onto.

I signed every page. Attached them to an email. Typed my husband's personal address into the recipient field.

The message body contained seven words:

"Happy New Year.

Let's end this."