Chapter 1 - HE'S YOURS
My Mafia boss husband walked into my birthday dinner with another woman on his arm.
The room went silent.
Alessandro looked perfectly calm in black, his hand resting against the young woman's back while men who had faced guns without blinking suddenly became fascinated by their plates.
“Happy birthday, Adriana.”
I didn't answer.
I crossed the room toward the woman.
Everyone expected tears. Maybe screaming.
Instead, I noticed what they didn't.
A fading bruise beneath the makeup on her wrist.
The champagne trembling in her hand.
Fear.
She wasn't celebrating.
She was surviving.
I stopped in front of her.
“It's okay,” I whispered.
She flinched when I reached toward her.
I slipped off my wedding ring and placed it in her palm.
“He's yours.”
Alessandro's voice hardened.
“Adriana.”
I smiled faintly.
“Enjoy the party.”
Then I left.
Upstairs, I packed only what still felt like mine: my father's jeweler's loupe, my repair tools, my coat, and the key to the apartment above his old jewelry shop.
At the front door, Maso Greco tried to stop me.
“Please don't leave, Signora.”
“I'm not asking permission.”
“I was offering you a ride.”
“I still remember how to walk.”
By one in the morning, I was alone above my father's old shop.
Only then did I cry.
When the tears stopped, I promised the woman in the mirror one thing.
Alessandro would never watch me break.
He didn't come after me.
The next morning, someone knocked.
Maso stood outside carrying coffee and cannoli. Beside him was my oldest friend, Leah Ferraro, still wearing navy hospital scrubs.
“You brought cannoli to a crime scene?” I asked.
“Apology cannoli.”
Leah studied my face.
“Did Alessandro hurt you?”
“No.”
Neither of them believed that was the whole answer.
Maso went to my workbench.
Then he placed something beneath the lamp.
My wedding ring.
Blood streaked the gold.
Fresh blood.
I couldn't breathe.
“Whose blood is that?”
Maso looked at me.
“I was hoping you could tell me something first.”
“What?”
He pointed toward the inside of the band.
“There’s something engraved beneath the blood.”
May you like
I reached for my father's loupe.
And the moment I looked through it, I realized the ring in front of me was not the ring Alessandro had put on my finger seven years earlier.
