Chapter 1
Sofia Bellandi was wearing my engagement ring.
At least, I had spent three months believing it would be mine.
I was still staring at the diamond when her wrist turned.
The crystal glass tipped.
She never looked away from me.
Luca watched her do it.
He did nothing.
The wine soaked through the white silk and turned it cold against my skin.
Around us, conversations stopped.
Men Luca had warned me never to ask about turned to watch.
Women in evening gowns paused with their glasses halfway to their lips.
Sofia lowered her empty glass.
"Forgive me," she said.
Her voice was light, practiced, and entirely composed.
"Luca said he was bringing a nurse. I assumed you were working."
A few people looked away.
No one laughed.
That would have been less humiliating.
They simply waited in the tense, salt-heavy air to see what Luca would do with me.
So did I.
I stood completely still, waiting for him to speak.
To hand me a napkin.
To look at Sofia and tell her that five years meant something.
Instead, Luca looked at the red stain spreading across my chest.
A brief flash of irritation crossed his features, but his expression remained completely blank.
I should have known.
The signs had been there since I boarded the yacht three hours ago, but I had spent the entire afternoon making excuses for him.
When I couldn't find a place card with my name at Luca's table, I told myself it was just a logistical oversight.
When a crew member carried my duffel bag down to a cramped, windowless cabin next to the humming laundry room, I reasoned that the luxury suites on the upper decks were strictly reserved for the older generation of the families.
I had spent five years being the secret he came home to.
I was so used to protecting his privacy that I didn't realize what he was planning.
"Your cabin is below, Evie," Luca said quietly. "Go change."
Not Are you okay?
Not an apology.
Just a cold command to clear the mess so he wouldn't have to look at it.
My fingers tightened around the wet fabric.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, the same man had stood in my bedroom.
He had folded my old, faded gray sweatshirt into my suitcase because he knew I always got cold on the water.
He had packed my phone charger when he noticed it still plugged into the wall.
He had kissed the back of my neck and whispered against my skin, "This trip is going to change everything."
I had believed he meant our fifth anniversary.
Five years ago, Luca Moretti had stepped back from a bloody trauma bay because I ordered him to.
His shirt had been soaked in his brother's blood, and his jacket had fallen open just enough to reveal the black grip of a gun tucked into his waistband.
Two men in dark suits had tried to follow him through the swinging doors, and Luca had been shouting at anyone who came near the stretcher.
I had stepped directly in front of him anyway.
"If you want your brother alive, stop telling me how to do my job."
He had frozen.
The rage in his dark eyes had flickered.
Then he stepped back and let the trauma bay doors close between us.
At four that morning, after his brother had come out of surgery, Luca was waiting outside the ER with two coffees.
Mine was terrible.
I drank it anyway, sitting on the curb beside a man who still had dried blood under his fingernails.
For five years, I thought I was the only woman in the world who could make a Moretti step back.
Tonight, he wouldn't take a single step toward me.
I should have left.
I should have turned my back on the staring crowd and walked down the teak stairs to the lower deck.
Instead, I stayed exactly where he had put me, because some stupid part of me still believed he would explain.
But Luca didn't look at me again.
He turned his back to me, picked up a silver spoon from a passing tray, and tapped it against his champagne glass.
The yacht went dead silent.
The music faded out.
"Thank you for joining us tonight," Luca said.
His voice carried easily across the deck.
"Our families have shared this city for a long time. Tonight, we begin sharing a future."
He took Sofia's hand and raised it.
The deck lights caught the diamond.
Three months ago, that exact ring had been printed across a jeweler's glossy catalog lying on my coffee table.
Luca had tapped it with one finger, his eyes watching my reaction.
"Too much?" he had asked.
I had laughed and told him yes.
But after he left my apartment that night, I had taken a blue pen and drawn a careful, secret circle around it.
Now it sat on another woman's hand.
"To my fiancée, Sofia," Luca announced.
Applause broke the silence.
Glasses chimed together around me.
The men Luca had warned me not to ask about raised their glasses to him and Sofia.
I stood where he had left me, the wine cooling against my skin.
I hadn't been invited so Luca could claim me.
I had been brought aboard so he could erase me.