Chapter 1

When I entered the dining room, the first thing I saw was my ring on Valentina Russo's hand.

The diamond flashed beneath the chandeliers as she shifted, and only then did I see where that hand rested—over the child she carried for my husband—and that she was sitting in my chair.

Around her, Moretti captains watched with pistols showing beneath their dinner jackets. I stopped in the doorway, my handbag strap cutting into my palm, and found my place card facedown beneath her chair.

I stopped behind Valentina with one palm on the carved chair. “You're in my seat.”

There were other chairs he could have moved, yet Dante pushed the distant one farther away, its legs scraping loudly enough to turn every face toward us.

I waited for him to move her and turn my place card upright. Surely my husband could give me that much. His hand stayed beside her chair, and hope burned hotter than the stares.

“Sit down, Mara,” he said gently, as though patience could make the humiliation private. “Not tonight.”

“You put your mistress in my chair.” The word silenced the whispering. Let him hide her behind business now.

His expression did not move, although the hand beside his plate tightened. “I put the mother of my child where I can protect her.”

“Protection did not require my seat,” I answered, keeping my palm on the carved back while heat climbed my neck.

At the head of the table, Vittorio folded his document. “Put her place card back. Mara prepared tonight's transport report, and she remains at this end of my table.”

Vittorio reached for the silver pill case I collected monthly from Moreau Medical Center. I gave him his usual capsule, but his wineglass shattered as he convulsed backward.

The capsule's smooth shell seemed to return to my fingers; then training took over as I loosened his collar, angled his head and listened to every breath grow thinner.

“Call an ambulance and bring the emergency case.” A harsh medicinal bitterness clung to the wine at his lips, wrong for anything he had swallowed willingly. Who had put it there?

Moreau had filled the syringe before examining him. The room narrowed around the needle.

“His airway is closing.” I caught his wrist before the needle reached Vittorio's arm, feeling the tendons strain beneath my fingers. “Tell me what that is.”

Moreau wrenched against me, and the syringe struck my wedding ring, drawing Dante's eyes to our hands but not the missing label. “It's a counteragent. Release me.”

Dante's grip closed around my forearm, and for one disorienting instant my body recognized his touch as safety before my mind understood its unfamiliar purpose. “Let him work, Mara.”

Dante crouched across from me with his attention beyond my shoulder; in the cabinet's reflection, I watched Valentina retreat toward my open handbag and hide one hand beside it.

Vittorio's pulse stumbled beneath my fingers, yet some foolish part of me still reached toward Dante. Look at me. See who is keeping your father alive, and know me better than her tears.

“Mara just gave him that pill.” Valentina kept one hand over her belly, although her gaze had steadied completely on Dante.

I held two fingers against Vittorio's throat, counting the weakening rhythm beneath them. “It was the same capsule he takes every night.”

“From the case only you manage.” Her crying had vanished; so that was all the tears had been for—to last until someone searched my bag.

“A case Moreau can access.” My voice steadied around the only fact no one in the room appeared willing to hear.

Two guards emptied my handbag and placed a brown bottle in Dante's palm.

Potassium cyanide swam across the label before the torn edge and fresh glue sharpened beneath it. Someone had hidden poison in my bag expecting Dante to find it.

“That isn't mine.” I forced my gaze away from the bottle and back to my husband. “Search her and everyone who touched my bag. If she is innocent, the search protects her too.”

Dante closed his fingers around the bottle. “No one touches Valentina while she is carrying my child.”

“Then you have already decided which woman is allowed to be innocent,” I replied, watching him shelter her from a search he had never hesitated to order for me.

Heat pressed behind my eyes as every swallowed question returned. Some damaged part of me still waited for my husband to remember my face. Please. His cold expression made me swallow it.

Dante's answer hardened before his face did. “Lock the doors.”