Chapter 2

Rudolf made the welcome-back party look like a blessing.

A private estate on the coast. Strings of warm lights. Men with earpieces pretending they were just “staff.” A table long enough for a dynasty.

He placed his hand at my lower back as we entered, the picture-perfect couple. The Don and his wife.

“Smile,” he murmured, lips barely moving.

So I did.

Inside, I was still bleeding.

Inside, I was already gone.

Valerie arrived in a cream coat, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes wide like she’d just stepped into a dream she deserved. Rudolf’s gaze found her instantly—fast, hungry, familiar—and then he looked at me like he was checking whether I’d noticed.

I pretended I hadn’t.

“Valerie!” I said brightly, because that was the role.

She hugged me, and I felt her heartbeat—steady, comfortable, alive. She smelled like the perfume I once bought her for her birthday.

“I missed you,” she whispered into my hair.

I almost laughed.

Because I had missed her. The real her. Before my husband turned her into an altar and me into a mask.

Rudolf stepped forward, all charm and power.

“Welcome home,” he said, like he was the reason her plane landed safely.

Valerie’s eyes softened. “Thank you… for everything.”

For everything. Not just the party. Not just the protection. The tuition. The housing. The distance.

His doing.

The dinner began. Conversation flowed like expensive wine. Rudolf played the devoted husband so well the room practically applauded him with their eyes.

But his body betrayed him.

Every time Valerie shifted, his attention shifted with her. When a waiter offered her water, Rudolf intercepted it himself, set the glass in front of her like she mattered more than gravity. When she mentioned a cough, his jaw tightened, and he asked which doctor she’d seen.

No one noticed.

Or maybe they did, and in Rudolf’s world it didn’t matter.

I sat between them like the decorative centerpiece—beautiful, silent, replaceable.

At one point, Rudolf leaned close to me, voice low.

“You’re pale. You should rest.”

Concern. Possession. Performance.

“Just tired,” I said.

His fingers squeezed my hand, gentle enough to look loving, firm enough to remind me who owned the narrative.

Across the table, Valerie watched us with something complicated in her eyes. Not jealousy.

Guilt.

A slow, ugly question rose in my throat: Did she know? Did she always know?

Or just Acting?

I could ask. I could shatter the dinner with one sentence.

Instead I smiled, lifted my glass, and played the wife a little longer.

Because the divorce he’d signed hadn’t hit him yet.

And I wanted it to land like a bullet he never saw coming.