Chapter 3

Tessa was sitting in my chair when I returned to the anniversary dinner. Dante lounged beside her with his arm along its back, and he told me to sit elsewhere before the quieting table could pretend it had not heard him.

I took the empty chair across from them. Tessa claimed her aching back required the better seat, while Sofia, Dante's mother, watched the three of us with an expression that said she understood more than she admitted.

"A guest should never make the hostess stand," Sofia said, her voice soft enough to sound like etiquette. Tessa rose halfway before Dante told her to stay, and Sofia returned to her meal without giving her son the argument he seemed to want.

I watched Sofia count that small refusal against him. She had spent years keeping peace at his tables, and I wondered whether she had seen the same behavior when I was too busy defending it as love.

During dinner, Dante kissed my temple whenever a photographer passed. When nobody important looked, he leaned close and ordered me to fix my face.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked, holding his gaze long enough to unsettle him. He expected anger he could punish; I gave him a smile he could not read.

Before dessert, Dante stood and announced that Tessa was pregnant. Guests applauded while she covered her mouth with theatrical surprise, and he said the father was absent and she would remain with us throughout the pregnancy.

He turned to me before anyone could ask whether I agreed, and the whole table watched him put a promise in my mouth.

"Sienna already offered to help," Dante said, supplying a promise I had never made.

Tessa squeezed my hand and spoke softly about how difficult pregnancy had been for me. To the room it sounded like sympathy, but she knew exactly where to press the knife.

Dante announced another change: we would all go to Switzerland for New Year's. Tessa wanted to ski, he said, and I could stay at the chalet in case she needed anything.

We had canceled that same trip two years earlier because my IVF appointments conflicted with it. Dante had complained for months, yet now he was ready to arrange it around Tessa's pregnancy.

"You want me to stay inside?" I asked him, keeping my voice even. Dante smiled and said I was better than a hired caretaker, as though years of caring for his family had prepared me to serve his mistress.

I reached for my champagne, remembered the child inside me, and lifted my water instead. The room waited for the obedient wife who had spent years swallowing humiliation to speak.

Sofia watched the exchange over the rim of her glass. I could not tell whether she wanted me to refuse Dante or survive him, but for the first time her attention felt like something I might earn rather than a family duty.

"Of course I'll help," I said, and Tessa exhaled while Dante relaxed in his chair. Neither noticed me start a recording beneath the table.

I toasted Tessa and my husband, then said Switzerland sounded like a New Year neither of us would forget. Dante laughed because he thought the smile was surrender, and Tessa smiled because she believed she had won.

By morning, Rebecca would have the evidence, and by New Year's Dante might learn what his affair had cost him. I touched my glass to his and wished him a happy anniversary, knowing I wanted something larger than half his money.

Dante could keep the woman in my chair. I wanted the empire beneath it.