Chapter 2
No one touches the bloodstained medallion beside my plate.
Vivienne pushes back her sleeve. The scars are real—pale ridges pulling the skin around them.
For one second, I forget the accusation and see only what someone did to her.
Roman sees it too. He turns her wrist toward the candles with the gentleness I have spent years wanting from him.
Of course that is what hurts first. Not the accusation. His hands.
“Our convoy was attacked five years ago,” Vivienne begins. “My brother died beside me. Bellini men dragged me from the road and kept me beneath their vineyard outside Verona.”
The De Luca side stiffens. My father stays still.
She describes wet stone, a green iron door, and a guard missing two fingers. Every detail sounds prepared. Questioning those scars will make me cruel.
Then Vivienne looks at me. “Elena came three months later wearing the De Luca bridal ring. She said Roman would forget my name if I stayed quiet.”
No.
My hand closes around the ring before I can stop it. Three months after the ambush, Roman and I were not engaged. His mother still wore this ring. Roman saw it on her hand every Sunday.
He knows Vivienne just lied.
I wait for him to say it. He keeps holding her wrist.
I lean toward her. “Which month did I visit? Tell everyone the date.”
Vivienne’s expression trembles in exactly the right place. “I survived a cellar. I didn’t keep a calendar.”
Several people look at me as if I struck her.
“But you remember my ring.” I lean toward the medallion and take out my phone beneath the edge of the table. One photograph. That is all I need before the screen goes dark again. “A ring that did not belong to me.”
Roman releases her and stands. Relief rises inside me so quickly that I almost hate myself for it.
“Enough, Elena.”
The relief dies.
“She accused my family of torture.” My voice shakes now, and I cannot force it smooth. “She accused me.”
“She returned tonight after five years.” His hand opens between us. “Give me your phone.”
I stare at his palm. First my chair. Then my name. Now my only record of her evidence.
“Roman, listen to the date.”
“The phone.”
De Luca men shift around the table. My father finally looks at me, and for one stupid heartbeat I think he is going to defend me.
“Do as your husband says, Elena.”
There it is again—that small, humiliating hope, punished almost as soon as I feel it.
I lock the screen and give Roman the phone. He passes it to a guard without checking the photograph.
Vivienne lowers her scarred hand. “I don’t blame Elena. Women like us do what our families demand.”
The mercy in her voice is worse than hatred. It makes her the victim and me the woman too heartless to let her speak.
I point to the medallion. “Check the vineyard records.” I will not let her end the story there. “If she was held on Bellini land, the dates and guards will exist.”
The first explosion hits before Roman answers.
Glass falls across the table. A second blast tears through the courtyard, followed by automatic gunfire. Roman overturns the table and pulls Vivienne beneath him.
No one reaches for me.
I crawl through broken glass while men shout vehicle numbers. Outside, Roman’s uncle hangs halfway from the second car, blood covering his collar.
The route changed twenty minutes ago. Only four people received it.
Roman comes into the courtyard with one arm around Vivienne. He looks at his uncle’s body, then at me.
This time, I do not have to wonder what he believes.