Chapter 3

The driver was waiting at the curb, just like Dante said.

I climbed into the back seat without a word. The door shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid, and I pressed my palm flat against my stomach as the Manhattan skyline blurred past the window.

At the clinic, I moved through the appointment like a ghost wearing my skin.

The ultrasound technician smiled and pointed at the screen. "There's the heartbeat. Strong and steady. About the size of a peanut right now."

I stared at the grainy black-and-white image—at the tiny flicker of light pulsing in all that darkness—and felt something inside me crack clean down the middle.

That was my child.

Dante's child.

A baby whose father had faked his own death to be with another woman.

I thanked the technician, collected the printout, and walked out of the exam room with my face carefully blank. Then I found an empty bathroom stall, locked the door, and cried until my ribs ached.

When I came out, I pulled up my phone and booked an appointment at a different hospital. A public one. Somewhere the Moretti name meant nothing and no one would report back to the family.

I told the driver I wanted to walk. Clear my head. He could go back without me.

He hesitated—Dante's orders, probably—but I held his gaze until he looked away.

"Yes, Mrs. Moretti."

The title felt like a slap. I waited until his car disappeared around the corner, then hailed a cab and gave the address of the other clinic.

I was sitting in the waiting room, filling out intake forms with a hand that wouldn't stop trembling, when my phone buzzed.

A video message. From Ivy.

I shouldn't have opened it. I knew that even as my thumb moved across the screen. But some part of me—the part that still couldn't believe any of this was real—needed to see.

The video was thirty minutes long.

Dante was in it. My Dante. The man who had held me like I was made of glass, who had always been so careful, so gentle, so restrained—

He wasn't gentle in that video.

He wasn't restrained.

I watched him move with a ferocity I had never seen. Heard him say things he had never said to me. Saw his face twist into expressions I didn't recognize, didn't know he was capable of making.

Six years together, and I had never once seen him lose control like that.

Because the person who could make him lose control had never been me.

I don't know how long I sat there, watching the same thirty minutes loop over and over, tears streaming down my face while strangers walked past without looking. At some point a nurse appeared at my elbow.

"Ms. Anastasia? Are you alright? We're ready for you now."

I looked up at her. My face must have been a disaster—mascara streaked, eyes swollen, hands shaking so hard the phone nearly slipped from my grip.

She didn't comment. Just waited.

I thought about the ultrasound printout folded in my pocket. The tiny heartbeat. The flicker of light.

I thought about the life I had imagined—Dante beside me in the delivery room, Dante holding our baby for the first time, Dante being the father I had always believed he would be.

Then I thought about the video.

I pulled out my phone.

One last chance. I would give him one last chance to prove me wrong, to tell me it wasn't real, to say something—anything—that would make this make sense.

My fingers found his number. The call connected on the third ring.

"Anna?" His voice was rough. Strained. Distracted. "What's going on? I'm kind of in the middle of something—"

"I need you to come," I said. My voice cracked on the last word. "Please. I need to talk to you. It's important."

A pause. Heavy breathing. Then a muffled sound in the background—Ivy's voice, low and petulant—and the unmistakable creak of bedsprings.

"Can it wait? I'll be home later. We can talk then."

"Dante—"

"I said later, Anna." The impatience was sharp now. Undisguised. "The driver dropped you off, right? Just go home. I'll deal with it when I'm done."

A soft moan leaked through the speaker. Then the line went dead.

I sat there for a long moment, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to the silence where my husband's voice should have been.

Then I looked up at the nurse.

"I'm ready," I said.

The procedure took less than an hour.

When it was over, I lay on the recovery bed and stared at the ceiling tiles, counting them one by one until the numbers stopped meaning anything.

I didn't cry.

I had nothing left to cry with.

It was dark by the time I got back to the Moretti estate. The foyer lights were on, spilling gold across the marble floor, and Dante was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.

The concern on his face was flawless. The worried furrow between his brows. The way he reached for me like I might shatter.

"Jesus, Anna—where have you been? The driver said you wanted to walk, but that was hours ago. I've been calling—"

I looked at him.

Really looked.

At the face I had loved for six years. The mouth that had promised me forever. The eyes that had once held my entire world.

"I went shopping," I said. My voice sounded strange. Hollow. "Lost track of time."

He exhaled—relief bleeding through his shoulders—and pulled me into a hug that felt like a lie pressed against my skin.

"You scared me." His lips brushed my hair. "Dante would have killed me if something happened to you."

Dante.

He was still talking about himself in the third person. Still wearing his dead brother's name. Still standing in front of me with another woman's perfume clinging to his collar.

I let him hold me.

And I felt nothing at all.