Chapter 2

I spent the next day in the kitchen, something I hadn't done in months. The staff watched me nervously — the Don's wife didn't cook. The Don's wife sat in the garden and stayed quiet. But today, I needed my hands busy, because if they were idle, they would shake apart.

Osso buco. My grandmother's recipe, pressed into my hands the night before my wedding, tears in her eyes. "When everything falls apart, figlia mia, you cook. You put love into the pot, and even if nobody tastes it, you'll know it's there."

She died two months after my wedding. I never saw her again. The Valentis didn't attend the funeral. Dominic sent flowers — Natalia picked them out.

I braised the veal shanks for four hours, the rich aroma of tomatoes, wine, and herbs filling the house. I set the dining table with the fine china that collected dust in the cabinet — the set Gianna had bought for "special occasions," meaning occasions when Natalia visited.

Candles. Linen napkins. A bottle of Barolo I'd been saving. I even put on a dress — the deep green one I'd worn on our first anniversary, back when Dominic still pretended to notice me.

At seven o'clock, I called him. "Dinner's ready. I cooked. I'd like us to eat together tonight. All of us. There's something I need to tell everyone."

A pause. "Fine. Give me twenty minutes."

Hope is a cruel thing. It arrives uninvited and refuses to leave, even when you know better. I straightened the napkins one more time and sat down to wait.

Twenty minutes passed. Thirty. An hour.

At eight-fifteen, the front door burst open. Dominic's voice filled the foyer, but he wasn't alone.

"Marco, grab the car keys. Gianna, call ahead to the ER."

I stepped into the hallway. "What's happening?"

Dominic was pulling on his coat, his face tight with worry. "Natalia collapsed at her apartment. Chest pains. She's asking for me."

Chest pains. Natalia was thirty-two and ran five miles every morning. But I said nothing.

"Dad, I got the keys." Marco appeared on the stairs — nineteen, tall, with his father's jaw and his dead mother's eyes. He saw me and looked straight through me, the way he always did.

"But dinner—" I started.

Gianna pushed past me, pulling on her fur coat. "For God's sake, Isabella. Natalia could be dying."

The irony hit me so hard I nearly laughed. Natalia could be dying, and the whole house mobilized. I was actually dying, and I couldn't even get them to sit down for a meal.

"I'm actually—"

"Not now, Bella," Dominic said, already at the door. He didn't look back.

Marco followed without a word. Gianna paused just long enough to glance at the dining table — the candles, the china, the osso buco steaming in its beautiful pot — and shook her head.

"So dramatic," she muttered, and then she was gone too.

The front door closed. The engine started. The car pulled away.

I stood in the hallway, listening to the silence settle around me like snow. Then I walked back to the table, sat down in front of the meal I'd spent all day preparing, and didn't eat.

I couldn't.

Instead, I covered the pot, blew out the candles, and opened the pantry. There, behind the imported olive oil and the organic pasta nobody used, I found a box of plain crackers. I ate them standing over the kitchen sink, tears running down my face, crumbs falling into the drain.

Later, lying in my cold bed, I heard them come home. Laughter floated up from the first floor — Natalia's laughter. She'd come back with them, apparently recovered from her near-death experience in record time.

I heard clinking dishes. They were eating takeout. My osso buco sat untouched in its pot, growing cold and forgotten. Just like me.

In the morning, I came downstairs to find Natalia in the kitchen, pouring coffee from my machine into my mug — the blue one with the chipped handle from my grandmother's house.

She looked at me and smiled. "Oh, Bella. I threw out that stew or whatever it was. It smelled off."

My grandmother's osso buco. Hours of love, scraped into the garbage.

"Natalia, that was—"

"Dominic prefers lighter meals anyway," she said, carrying the coffee — my coffee, in my mug — toward his study. "You should know that by now."

As she passed me, I noticed something that stopped my heart.

She was wearing Dominic's shirt. And on her left hand, catching the morning light like a promise — a diamond ring I had never seen before.