Chapter 1

Two pink lines. I smiled.

My husband's voice behind the door killed it.

"She means nothing. Just a convenient stand-in until you returned."

I froze outside his study, pregnancy test still warm in my trembling hand.

"Vivian, my love," Cassian continued, his voice dripping with tenderness I'd never heard directed at me. "Neve was useful. A placeholder wife while you were in hiding. Nothing more."

My knees buckled. I grabbed the doorframe.

Vivian's laugh was silk and poison. "And the baby rumors? Your men say she might be pregnant."

"Then I'll handle it." His tone went cold. Clinical. "Accidents happen. She's fragile—everyone knows that. A fall down the stairs, perhaps. Tragic, but convenient."

The pregnancy test slipped from my fingers.

Three years. Three years I'd spent loving this man, believing I was his queen, his partner, his everything. I'd abandoned my family's name, buried my identity as Neve Caravello—daughter of the rival Caravello crime syndicate—just to be with him.

He never knew who I really was.

I'd hidden it because I loved him. Because I thought our love transcended the blood feud between our families.

What a fool I'd been.

"When should we announce our real marriage?" Vivian asked.

"After the funeral."

My funeral. He was planning my funeral.

Something inside me cracked—then hardened into steel.

I pressed my palm against my stomach, against the tiny life growing inside me. My baby. His baby. The child he wanted to murder before it even took its first breath.

No.

I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't beg. I wouldn't let him see me break.

I turned silently and walked toward the bedroom, each step deliberate. Calm. My hands no longer trembled.

They wanted Neve Corsetti dead?

Fine.

Neve Corsetti would die tonight.

But Neve Caravello? The heir to the most powerful crime family on the East Coast? The woman they'd underestimated, dismissed, and marked for death?

She was just getting started.

I grabbed my emergency bag—the one I'd hidden years ago, just in case. Old habits from my father's training. Inside: cash, a burner phone, a fake passport, and a single photograph of my mother.

I paused at the window, looking back at the mansion that had been my prison disguised as paradise.

"Goodbye, Cassian," I whispered.

Then I disappeared into the night.