Chapter 2

He walked in still holding his phone.

He didn't look at the bag by the door. He looked at the screen.

"Delete it."

"No."

His jaw locked. "Maren. Half the families follow her. Do you understand what you just did to her name?"

I actually laughed.

"So other people have noticed what she does. Good."

"You humiliated a woman who has spent three years keeping this house running."

"Running over who, Nico?"

He finally lifted his eyes, and there it was — the tired, disappointed look. The one that said I was a bad investment he was too proud to write off.

"You want to be a decorative wife who contributes nothing? Fine. I've paid for that."

"But not every woman is as small and useless as you."

He set his keys down. Straightened his cuff.

"And if you keep going at Giada," he added, calm as weather, "think about who's keeping your brother alive."

I stared at him.

There it was. The leash. He reached for it so easily he didn't even feel it in his hand.

I opened my bag right there on the marble.

"Luxury," I said. "Come look at the luxury of being Mrs. Castellano."

Two pairs of jeans. Four T-shirts. One dress from a clearance rack, bought with grocery money. A hairbrush. Tiago's school photo, age seven.

"I file a form to get a haircut. A form to see my brother. A form to sit at your table as your wife."

I walked to the closet and pointed at the panel.

"You know how this opens? Code. Fingerprint. Retina."

"Your gun room has one lock. Your wife's shoes have three."

"What kind of husband makes his wife beg his employee for permission to own a coat?"

Nico looked genuinely confused.

Then he said the sentence I'll hear on my deathbed:

"This is what this is about? Closet codes?"

"You dragged a woman's name through the mud because you're jealous of a closet code?"

Something in my chest went very quiet.

Because if he'd ever once believed it was degrading, he wouldn't have let it stand for three years.

"Whatever," I said. "Believe what you want."

I took the divorce papers out and set them on the console.

"I'm filing. We're done."

He laughed.

Really laughed, like I'd finally delivered the punchline.

"Enough. Nobody divorces a Castellano."

He smoothed the crease I'd left in his sleeve, generous as a king.

"Tomorrow I'll send our lawyer to county for your brother. Giada gives you the vault codes. Your own car. Your own driver."

"And a card. No asks. No limits."

To him, that was surrender.

He didn't say Giada's name once. Not what she'd done. Not why one phone call took four days.

Because he didn't care.

Which meant if I stayed, next month, next year, she'd bury me under the word "procedure" again, and he'd call it discipline.

"I don't want your protection," I said. "I want out."

Something finally cracked in his face.

"Maren. You walk out that door, you walk out with nothing. And no one in this state will stand between you and the Rossis."

"I know."

"Your brother—"

"Do whatever you want," I said.

That stopped him.

He'd never heard those words from me. Not once in three years.

He didn't know what to do with a threat that didn't work.

So he stood there while I picked up my bag and walked to the door.

I heard him breathe in like he was going to say my name.

He didn't.

Later — much later — Enzo told me why.

Giada had already prepped him that afternoon.

"She's bored, Nico. She's playing a movie. Don't chase her. Give her four days and she'll be back on her knees."

So he let me go.

Enzo said that after the door shut, Nico put his hand in his coat and found the St. Christopher medal I sewed into the lining every winter, because he drove too fast and never wore a seatbelt.

He rolled it between his fingers and said, to an empty house:

"She's not completely useless."

"When she comes back, I'll make her admit she was wrong."

He believed it.

He told his capos I was "visiting a cousin."

He told his mother I was "being emotional."

For six weeks he didn't call. Not because he was cruel — because he was certain.

And in all six weeks, he never once asked Enzo about county.

If he had, he would have heard the word at the top of my brother's file.

DECEASED.

Three days before he texted me that he'd generously lifted the hold.