Chapter 1

My husband proposed to another woman with the ring I had designed for myself.

He did it at the Rinaldi House anniversary gala, in front of the board, our biggest buyers, and a live camera crew.

"Tonight, I intend to keep a promise," Matteo said from the center of the ballroom.

His eyes found mine across the crowd.

For one breath, I thought my husband was about to tell the world about us.

Then he walked past me.

Bianca Salvatore rose from the front table, and Matteo lowered himself onto one knee.

Applause broke out before he opened the velvet box.

"Bianca, will you stand beside me as Rinaldi House and Salvatore Group build their future together?"

She smiled and offered him her left hand. "I thought you'd never ask."

The ring caught the light as Matteo slid it onto her finger.

Two narrow bands crossed beneath a pear-shaped diamond.

I knew every curve because I'd shaped the first model after our courthouse wedding.

Matteo had been the acting CEO then. He'd asked me to keep our marriage secret until the board made his position permanent. After that, he would publicly propose, give me my own studio, and put my name on the collections I'd designed for his company.

The crossed bands represented the two lives he promised would someday become one: the marriage we lived in private and the future we would share in public.

Now Bianca was wearing that promise.

She raised her hand toward the cameras. "Matteo told me what the design means. Two great houses becoming one."

The guests applauded again.

He hadn't only given her my ring. He'd rewritten the meaning of our marriage and handed that to her too.

Bianca turned to me with a bright smile. "It's beautiful, Elena. Matteo said no one understands what suits me better than you."

Several guests looked toward me, the quiet Rinaldi designer receiving praise from the CEO's new fiancee.

No one knew the plain band hanging from a chain beneath my dress made me Matteo's wife.

No one knew how many of the jewels displayed around the ballroom had begun on my workbench.

Years earlier, I'd stayed awake shaping the ring while Matteo slept on the sofa beside me. When he woke, he'd kissed my ink-stained fingers and promised that my name would hang above the studio door.

But Rinaldi House had needed another collection first.

Then another season without questions about why its CEO's secret wife was also its most valuable designer.

I had given him five years.

Bianca kissed his cheek. Matteo didn't move away.

He looked at me over her shoulder. He knew what those crossed bands had meant when I designed them.

He turned back for another photograph.

I placed my untouched champagne on a passing tray and walked out.

Matteo caught me beside the cloakroom.

"Elena, go home."

Behind him, reporters called for the newly engaged couple to stand beneath the Rinaldi House logo.

"You gave her my ring."

"It's a symbol for the partnership."

"It was a symbol of our marriage."

His jaw tightened. "Not here."

"Nothing about your wife is ever allowed to happen where people can see it."

"I need to finish the photographs. Go back to the apartment. We'll talk after the cameras are gone."

He spoke with the same certainty he'd used whenever the company needed another design or another sacrifice. Matteo still believed that if he called it necessary, I would make it possible.

Bianca called his name from the ballroom.

He glanced back at her. "Don't make tonight harder than it already is."

"For whom?"

He didn't answer.

I collected my coat and stepped outside.

A message from Gabriel De Luca sat near the bottom of my phone. Earlier that week, the CEO of Rinaldi House's oldest competitor had invited me to present a personal piece at his charity auction.

Matteo had called it an attempt to use me against him, and I had declined without speaking to Gabriel.

I opened the conversation.

Is tomorrow night's invitation still open?

His reply arrived before my car reached the curb.

Yes. Bring something that belongs to you.

I went back to the apartment and opened my personal design archive.

By the time Matteo came home, I wasn't waiting for an explanation.

I was separating my life from his.