Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SEWING TABLE
Nico had walked into the exclusive Manhattan bridal atelier expecting nothing more dangerous than an afternoon of silk, champagne, and Serena discussing details he barely understood.
Then he saw Anna.
She was sitting behind a sewing table, calmly stitching beads onto Serena’s wedding gown.
Eight months pregnant.
For several seconds, Nico forgot how to breathe.
Anna had once been the only woman who could make him imagine a life beyond armed guards, blood debts, and the criminal empire he had inherited before he was thirty. Then their relationship had ended abruptly, painfully, and without the explanation he had always believed he deserved.
Now she was carrying another man’s child.
At least, that was what Nico told himself.
Serena noticed his reaction immediately. She asked whether he knew the seamstress.
Nico called Anna “someone I used to know.”
Anna calmly said they had once been acquainted through mutual friends.
Both answers were technically true.
Neither came close to the truth.
As Anna fitted Serena’s gown, Nico found himself watching every movement she made. Her careful steps. The hand occasionally supporting her lower back. The familiar handwriting in her measurement notebook. The expressionless professionalism she used like armor.
Serena noticed that too.
“You keep watching her.”
Nico denied it.
Serena did not believe him.
Anna pretended not to hear.
The fitting continued beneath the bright atelier lights, surrounded by mirrors that reflected the three of them again and again—the bride, the groom, and the pregnant woman standing silently between their future.
Then Anna suddenly stopped.
Her fingers tightened around the measuring tape.
The color drained from her face.
Nico straightened.
“Anna?”
“I’m fine.”
She took one step.
Her knees buckled.
Nico crossed the room before anyone else moved and caught her against his chest.
For one devastating second, Anna’s face rested exactly where it used to when they slept together.
Then she opened her eyes.
May you like
And whispered the two words that changed everything.
“Not here.”
