Chapter 3
I watched the snowy city slide past the car window while the two messages burned on my screen.
Do not trust Roman Voss.
The people who destroyed the last Moretti survivors seven years ago may be beside you.
Seven years.
The same year I married Roman. The same year the final known members of the Moretti network vanished.
The Voss driver glanced at me through the rearview mirror. For seven years, he had called me Mrs. Voss without hesitation. Tonight, he seemed afraid to speak.
My wedding ring was gone, but its pale mark remained around my finger.
"Mrs. Voss," the driver finally said, "should I take you back to the estate?"
I looked at him in the mirror.
"Do you think that place is still my home?"
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
He did not answer.
I directed him to a private hotel in Midtown. The suite belonged to me alone. Roman and the Voss family knew nothing about it.
After I married Roman, everyone assumed I had handed my entire life to his family.
They were wrong.
I had never abandoned my own name.
The suite door closed behind me, shutting out the city. In the mirror, I still looked like Vivian Moretti, the actress magazines called New York's Black Rose. My dark hair was smooth, my makeup perfect, my expression trained never to break under a camera.
Tonight, even that name felt unfamiliar.
Roman called.
I let the phone ring once, twice, three times.
Then a message appeared.
WE NEED TO TALK.
I replied with two words.
ABOUT WHAT?
He called again. This time, I answered.
"Vivian."
His voice was controlled, as though he were still the man who could command an entire room by lowering it.
"What you did tonight gave people the wrong impression," Roman said. "You need to come back and explain."
I sat by the window overlooking the Christmas lights.
"Explain what?"
"Why you removed your wedding ring."
I laughed softly.
"Do you really think my ring was the problem everyone saw tonight?"
His breathing paused.
"You're emotional. I understand."
There it was again.
Understanding, offered like a favor while he refused to understand anything.
"Until tonight, I thought you knew me," I said. "You don't even know why I left."
"Then tell me."
I opened a private lockbox and looked at the real emerald ring resting inside.
It had belonged to the Moretti family before blood erased the name from New York.
"Do you know what Isabella's ring means?" I asked.
Roman said nothing.
"You don't even understand the thing you're trying to inherit."
His voice hardened.
"What are you talking about?"
I ended the call.
It was not time to tell him.
Beneath the ring sat an old phone and a faded photograph. A young woman held a little girl in front of a manor scarred by fire.
On the back, someone had written:
THE LAST MORETTI HEIR MUST SURVIVE.
For seven years, I had tried to bury the past. Roman had reminded me that some names never stayed dead.
I turned on the old phone and dialed a number saved for twenty-five years, a number I had never called.
It rang for so long that I almost ended the call.
Then a man answered.
He did not ask who I was.
"Miss Moretti," he said. "You finally decided to come home."
I gripped the phone.
Beyond the glass, Manhattan still glittered beneath Christmas lights.
From that moment on, the city would have to learn who Vivian Moretti really was.
So would my husband.
And he would learn soon.