Chapter 2

"You look like you haven't slept."

Damiano said it the next morning like it was a casual observation, pouring his coffee, not even glancing at her properly. Serena stood at the counter, the folder hidden in the drawer where she'd found it, her whole body still buzzing from the night before.

"I haven't," she said.

"Is Mia keeping you up?"

"No." She watched him carefully. "Something else."

He finally looked at her then, just for a second, and she searched his face for something. Guilt, nerves or anything. All she found was the same easy calm he always wore, like nothing in the world could touch him.

She almost let it go. Almost told herself she'd overreacted, that the folder meant something innocent she just didn't understand yet.

Instead, once he left for the day, she went back to the office.

This time she didn't stop at the first drawer. She went through every folder, every file, every scrap of paper she could find. It took her almost two hours, but she found more.

Emails, printed and tucked between old contracts. A second copy of the same medical report, this one with handwritten notes in the margin. And a name she recognized immediately because she'd known it her whole life.

Talia.

Serena's hands went cold reading the notes. They weren't just discussing the report. They were planning how to use it. A line near the bottom made her stomach turn.

*She'll never think to question it if we get the timeline right. Just needs to look convincing.*

It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't some random clerical error sitting forgotten in a drawer. Someone had built this on purpose, carefully, like a trap set months in advance. And her best friend's name was written right there next to her husband's.

Serena sat on the office floor with the papers spread around her, and for a long moment she couldn't move.

She thought about every dinner Talia had sat through with them, laughing at Damiano's jokes, holding Mia at the hospital the day she was born, telling Serena she was the luckiest woman alive to have a husband like him.

All of it had been a performance.

By the time Damiano came home that evening, Serena was waiting for him in the office, the folder open on the desk, every page laid out where he couldn't pretend not to see it.

He stopped in the doorway. For the first time since she'd known him, she watched something shift across his face. Not panic and not the reaction of a man caught doing something wrong.

He looked almost relieved.

"You found it," he said.

"I found everything," Serena said, her voice shaking despite how hard she tried to hold it steady. "The report, the notes and Talia's name right there next to yours."

Damiano stepped into the room slowly, unbothered, and shut the door behind him.

"I was hoping you wouldn't have to see it this way," he said. "But I suppose it doesn't really matter now."

"Doesn't matter?" Serena's voice cracked. "Damiano, this says Mia isn't yours. This is fake. I know it's fake, because I have never once betrayed you, not for a single day of our marriage."

"I know," he said simply.

The word hit her harder than anything else could have.

"You know?" she repeated. "You know it's fake, and you still had it made?"

He didn't deny it. He didn't even try.

"It was easier this way," he said, like he was explaining a business decision, not the destruction of her entire life. "The families needed a clean break, not a messy one. This gives everyone a reason that doesn't point back at me."

Serena stared at him, waiting for him to laugh, to say it was some kind of test, some sick joke that had gone too far. He didn't.

"You and Talia," she said slowly. "How long?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

"Long enough," he said, and there was no shame in his voice at all. If anything, he sounded bored, like this conversation was keeping him from something more important. "Long enough that Talia and I have already thought this through. Every angle of it."

Serena felt the floor tilt beneath her. "My father will never believe this. He knows me. He knows I would never."

For the first time since he'd walked into the room, Damiano smiled. It wasn't warm. It wasn't even cruel exactly. It was worse than that. It was certain.

"Your father already believes it," he said. "Talia went to him this afternoon. Cried the whole time, from what I heard. Very convincing."

The air left Serena's lungs.

"You went behind my back to my own father," she whispered.

"We went ahead of you," Damiano corrected, stepping closer, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "Because we knew exactly what you'd do if you got there first. You'd try to explain. You'd try to make him understand. And your father has never once chosen understanding over keeping the peace."

Serena's whole body went numb.

"You can still fight this," Damiano said, straightening his jacket like this conversation was already finished in his mind. "If you want to waste what little time you have left trying. But Serena." He paused at the door, looking back at her one last time, that same maddening calm still sitting on his face. "It's already too late. The papers are filed and your father has already made his decision."

"What decision," Serena said, though some part of her already knew.

Damiano didn't answer right away. He just looked at her, almost pitying, before he said the words that would end everything she thought she had.

"You'll find out soon enough."

He walked out and left her standing alone in the office, the folder still open on the desk, the truth spread out in front of her and completely useless in her hands.