Chapter 3

That evening, Dante announced we were attending a family dinner at his father's Manhattan townhouse. He laid out a dress for me on the bed—blood-red Valentino, backless, with a slit that climbed to mid-thigh.

"I chose it myself," he said, watching me hold it against my body in the mirror. "You'll be the most beautiful woman in the room."

"It's too much," I protested softly.

"Nothing is too much for my wife." He came up behind me, his hands settling on my waist with proprietary weight. In the mirror, we looked like a magazine cover—the powerful don and his young bride, perfectly composed, devastatingly attractive.

But behind my smile, my mother's name pulsed like a wound. Rose Voss. Key witness. Found dead.

The townhouse was a brownstone fortress on the Upper East Side, its exterior deceptively modest compared to the opulence inside. Crystal, marble, oil paintings that belonged in museums—the Moretti family displayed their wealth the way other families displayed vacation photos.

Dante's father, Enzo Moretti, greeted us in the foyer. He was smaller than I'd expected—compact, silver-haired, with hands that looked like they'd never been dirtied by the violence his name implied. But his eyes were Dante's eyes, dark and calculating, and when he kissed my cheek in welcome, I felt the assessment behind the gesture.

"So this is the girl," Enzo said, holding me at arm's length. "Pretty. Young." His gaze slid to Dante. "Controllable?"

"Father." Dante's voice carried warning.

Enzo laughed, releasing me. "I'm teasing, Scarlett. Welcome to the family."

The dining room held fifteen people—Moretti relatives, business associates, their wives and girlfriends arranged around a table laden with enough food to feed a small village. I was seated between Dante and his younger brother, Luca, who had the same dark features but none of Dante's controlled intensity. Where Dante was a locked vault, Luca was an open flame—charming, reckless, his smile too wide and too frequent to be entirely trustworthy.

"The blushing bride," Luca murmured, leaning close enough that I could smell whiskey on his breath. "Tell me, Scarlett, has my brother shown you the family business yet? Or does he keep you locked in the tower like all his other pretty things?"

"Luca." Dante's voice cut across the table like a blade. "Enough."

"I'm just making conversation." Luca raised his hands in mock surrender, but his eyes held something sharp—curiosity, maybe, or something more dangerous. "She should know what she married into. It's only fair."

"She knows exactly what she needs to know," Dante replied, his hand finding my thigh under the table and squeezing with enough pressure to convey both reassurance and warning.

Dinner proceeded with the forced civility of people who conducted violence as casually as commerce. I ate without tasting, smiled without feeling, and counted the minutes until I could escape to somewhere private enough to breathe.

Then Valentina spoke.

"Dante tells me you lost your mother young," she said from across the table, her voice carrying the practiced sympathy of someone who collected other people's pain like currency. "How tragic. What was her name?"

The question was innocent on the surface. Beneath it, I felt the tremor of something seismic.

"Rose," I said carefully. "Her name was Rose."

Something flickered across Enzo's face—so brief I might have imagined it, a twitch of recognition that vanished behind his composed mask in less than a heartbeat. But I didn't imagine it. I was certain.

"Beautiful name," Valentina said smoothly. "For a beautiful woman, I'm sure."

"She was," I agreed, my voice steady despite the earthquake happening inside my chest. "She was the most honest person I ever knew."

The word honest landed on the table like a grenade. Enzo's fork paused mid-bite. Dante's hand tightened on my thigh. Across the table, Luca watched me with new interest, his playboy mask slipping just enough to reveal the sharp intelligence beneath.

"Honesty," Enzo said slowly, setting down his fork with deliberate precision, "is a luxury few can afford in this family, Scarlett. I hope you understand that."

"I'm beginning to," I replied.

After dinner, while the men retreated to Enzo's study for cigars and conversations I wasn't permitted to hear, I excused myself to the bathroom. But instead of turning right toward the powder room, I turned left, following the corridor toward the back of the house where Luca had disappeared moments earlier.

I found him in a small courtyard, smoking beneath a canopy of ivy, the ember of his cigarette glowing like a tiny fallen star.

"Couldn't sleep either?" he asked without turning around.

"Your father knew my mother." It wasn't a question.

Luca exhaled slowly, smoke curling upward into the night air. When he finally turned to face me, his expression had shed every trace of charm, leaving something raw and almost pitying.

"Scarlett," he said quietly, "everyone in that dining room knew your mother."

My blood turned to ice.

"She didn't die of cancer, did she?" I whispered.

Luca dropped his cigarette, grinding it beneath his heel. He looked toward the house, checking for witnesses, then stepped closer until his mouth was near my ear.

"Your mother was going to destroy this family," he breathed. "And my father doesn't let anyone destroy what's his." He pulled back, his dark eyes boring into mine. "The question you should be asking isn't how she died, Scarlett."

"Then what should I be asking?"

Luca glanced toward the study windows where shadows moved behind heavy curtains.

"Ask yourself why Dante chose you—the daughter of the one woman who almost brought the Moretti empire to its knees." His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Because I promise you, it wasn't love."

The courtyard spun around me as Luca walked away, leaving me alone with the ivy and the stars and the devastating realization that my marriage wasn't a love story.

It was a continuation of whatever had killed my mother.