Chapter 4

The next morning, I woke to the sound of my bedroom door opening.

I didn't have to look to know who it was. The click of designer heels on hardwood. The waft of jasmine perfume—too sweet, too heavy, like she bathed in it.

Ivy.

She stood at the foot of my bed, arms crossed, watching me with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"So," she said. "You finally figured it out."

I sat up slowly, keeping my face blank. My hands were steady. My heartbeat was steady. Everything inside me had gone cold and still, like a lake frozen solid beneath the surface.

She tilted her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse it's already caught.

"I knew something was off yesterday. The way you looked at him before you left for your appointment." Her smile widened. "Women always know, don't they? We can smell it on each other."

I said nothing.

Ivy's composure flickered—just for a second. She had expected tears. Screaming. The hysterical reaction of a woman whose world had just collapsed.

She wasn't going to get it.

"You want to know why he chose me?" She stepped closer, her voice dropping to something intimate. Conspiratorial. "He told me everything, you know. How boring you are. How being with you felt like—what did he call it?—going through the motions. Like checking a box."

She laughed, soft and cruel.

"But with me? He loses himself. He says I'm his black pearl. His escape. He says Brazilian women know how to make a man feel alive."

The words landed exactly where she wanted them to. I felt each one sink into my chest like a needle.

But I had stopped bleeding for Dante Moretti the moment I walked out of that clinic.

I moved before I knew I was moving.

My palm connected with her face so hard the sound cracked through the room like a gunshot. Her head snapped to the side. She stumbled, catching herself on the bedpost, and when she looked back at me, her eyes were wide with shock.

Then footsteps—heavy, fast—and Dante burst through the door.

"What the hell is going on?"

Ivy's face transformed in an instant. The venom disappeared, replaced by trembling lips and wounded eyes. She pressed a hand to her reddening cheek.

"I just came to check on her," she whispered. "She's been so upset lately, and I thought—I thought maybe I could help—"

Dante's gaze cut to me, dark with fury.

"Anastasia. She's your sister-in-law. What the hell is wrong with you?"

I looked at him. At the face I had memorized a thousand times. At the lie wearing my husband's skin.

"Is she?" I asked quietly. "Is she really my sister-in-law?"

Something shifted in his eyes. A flicker of uncertainty. The smallest crack in his mask.

But Ivy was already pulling at his arm, her voice breaking with perfectly calibrated distress.

"Dom, please. Take me back to the room. I don't feel well. The stress isn't good for me—you know what the doctors said—"

And just like that, he was gone. His hand on her waist. His attention completely consumed by her trembling performance.

He didn't look back.

I stood in the empty room, listening to their footsteps fade down the hallway, and felt the last thread of something inside me snap clean.

My phone buzzed.

Luca: The plane is ready. Midnight. East hangar.

I read the message three times. Then I deleted it.

Slowly, deliberately, I crossed to the antique writing desk by the window and pulled out a sheet of cream-colored stationery. Isabella's stationery, embossed with the Moretti family crest—a serpent eating its own tail.

I picked up a pen and began to write.

Dante,

I can't do this anymore.

Every day without you is a day I don't want to live. The baby was the only thing keeping me here, the only reason I kept breathing, but now I realize that's not enough.

I need to be with you.

I'm sorry I wasn't stronger. I'm sorry I couldn't stay.

Wait for me. I'm coming to find you.

All my love, forever—

Anna

The words tasted like ash in my mouth. Every sentence was a lie wrapped in the shape of truth, designed to break him the same way he had broken me.

I folded the letter carefully and slid it into the drawer of my nightstand.

Let him find it after. Let him read it with his own eyes and understand exactly what his choices had cost.

I didn't pack. There was nothing in this house that belonged to me anyway—nothing that mattered. Every dress, every piece of jewelry, every silk robe in my closet had been chosen by Isabella, approved by Dante, locked away in a walk-in vault like I was a doll they dressed up and put away when company left.

Six years, and I had never once been trusted with the combination.

I grabbed my passport, my emergency credit card—the one Luca had insisted I keep hidden—and walked out of the bedroom.

Dante was in the hallway.

He looked tired. Rumpled. Like he'd just come from somewhere he didn't want to explain.

"Anna." His voice softened when he saw me. The performance resuming, smooth as silk. "Listen, about earlier—I didn't mean to snap at you. Ivy's just been so fragile lately, and—"

"I'm going out." I cut him off, my voice flat. "I need some air."

He blinked. "Now? It's getting late. Let me call the driver—"

"I don't need a driver."

"At least take Marco. The streets aren't safe after dark, and with everything that happened to Dante—" He caught himself, adjusted. "You shouldn't be alone."

I almost laughed. The concern in his voice. The protective husband routine. Like he hadn't spent the last month lying to my face while sharing a bed with another woman.

"I'll be fine," I said. "Stay here. Take care of your sister-in-law."

I said the last two words slowly. Deliberately. Watching his face for any sign of recognition.

He gave me nothing.

But something in his posture shifted—a slight tension in his shoulders, a tightness around his jaw.

"Don't be too long." His voice was quieter now. "I'll have the cook make your favorite. That truffle risotto you like."

I hate truffle. The smell, the taste, all of it. I'd told him a hundred times, in a hundred different restaurants, over six years of dinners he apparently never paid attention to.

I had told him that a hundred times, in a hundred different restaurants, over six years of dinners he apparently never paid attention to.

But I didn't correct him. I just nodded and walked past, letting my shoulder brush his as I headed for the stairs.

At the front door, I paused. Looked back one last time at the house I had tried so hard to turn into a home.

Dante was still standing in the hallway, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Anna—"

I closed the door before he could finish.

The night air hit my face, cold and clean, and for the first time in weeks, I could breathe.

Luca's plane was waiting.

And Dante Moretti was about to learn what it felt like to bury someone who wasn't really dead.