Richard French

Chapter 1 Dante Moretti died on the way to marry me. At least, that's what they told me. His convoy hit a car bomb crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the vehicle was ash. The body inside was unrecognizable. They cremated him before I could see his face. Buried an urn I never opened. I was six weeks pregnant. I became a widow before I ever became a wife. For months, I believed every word of it. The grief. The loss. The careful kindness of the Moretti family closing around me like a fist. Then I heard his voice through a closed door — alive, unhurt, unhurried — explaining to his mother why leaving me at the altar had been the right call. He'd faked his death to spend six months with his mistress. He thought I would wait. Grieve. Stay quiet. Keep his child and his secret until he was ready to come home. He forgot what kind of woman he'd spent six years building. I made one call to my brother. I walked out the front door. And I gave Dante Moretti exactly what he'd given me: A body they'd never find. …… I hadn't known Dante had a twin. In six years together, he'd never once mentioned a brother. But Isabella explained it away easily enough — Dominic had left for Sicily at eighteen, a falling-out with their father, old wounds, old pride. He'd built a life there. Married a Brazilian woman named Ivy. Ran the family's European operations from a villa outside Palermo. Now he was standing in the foyer of the Moretti mansion in a black suit, and I couldn't stop staring. Because he looked exactly like Dante. The same sharp jaw. The same dark eyes. The same way he held his shoulders — slightly forward, like he was always ready to move. "You must be Anastasia." His voice was softer than Dante's. Or maybe I was imagining that. "I'm sorry about my brother," he said. "I should have come sooner." I couldn't speak. My throat had sealed shut, and the room was tilting sideways. Isabella caught my elbow before I swayed. "She's been like this," Isabella murmured to him. "She sees Dante everywhere." Dominic stayed. He was kind to me. Impossibly kind. He brought me warm milk before bed. He drove me to my prenatal appointments. He asked about the baby with a gentleness that made my chest ache, and when I cried — which was constantly — he never looked away. "Dante would've wanted someone to look after you," he told me once, standing in the doorway of my bedroom. "Let me do that. For him." And God help me, I wanted to believe him. I needed something in this house to be real. Then one night, I couldn't sleep. The baby was restless, pressing against my bladder, and I padded down the hallway toward the kitchen for water. That's when I heard Isabella's voice—low, raw, furious—leaking through the gap beneath her bedroom door. "You left your pregnant wife standing at the altar—for that woman? You faked your own death so you could run off with some Brazilian puttana?" My hand froze on the banister. The air in my lungs turned to glass. A pause. Then a voice I would know anywhere — in any room, in any lifetime. Dante's voice. "Ivy's dying, Ma. Pancreatic cancer. Six months, maybe less. It was her only wish — to have me with her at the end." "And Anastasia? Your child?" "Six months." Quieter now. Almost gentle with it, like the number made it reasonable. "That's all. Then Ivy's gone, and I come home. Anna and I still have our whole lives. I'll make it right. I swear to God, I'll make it right." I stopped breathing. The hallway shrank to a single white-hot point behind my eyes, and the world I had stitched back together—the fragile, terrible world held up by grief and prenatal vitamins and the memory of a dead man—came apart at the seams. Dante was alive. He had never died. There was no car bomb. No rival hit. No unrecognizable body. There was only my husband, standing ten feet away, wearing his dead brother's name like a mask—because he had chosen another woman over me and our child. My hands were shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone. But I managed to open a text to my brother. Luca. I need a plane crash. Make it real. Make it fatal. He likes playing dead? I'll show him how it's done. Chapter 2 I sent the message and locked the screen. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Inside Isabella's room, the conversation continued. "Is this really fair to her? If it weren't for the baby, she would have followed you into that coffin. She doesn't eat. She doesn't sleep. It's killing me to watch." Dante exhaled—long, heavy, the sound of a man who had already made his peace with the cost. "Ivy only has six months left. This is the one thing she asked of me. I can't turn my back on that." A pause. "Anna and I have a lifetime ahead of us. I'll make it up to her—every single day, for the rest of our lives. Don't worry about it, Ma." Something inside my chest clenched so tight I thought my ribs would crack. I pressed my palm flat against the wall to keep from sliding to the floor. I made it back to the bedroom on legs that barely held. My knees buckled the second the door closed behind me, and I hit the hardwood, phone still clutched against my stomach. Luca's call came through almost immediately. "What happened? What's going on? You said Dante was dead—" I opened my mouth to explain. Instead, a sound came out that wasn't quite crying and wasn't quite breathing—something between the two that tore itself loose from somewhere deep. He was quiet on the other end. Luca always knew when to be quiet. Finally, his voice came back. Low. Controlled. The voice he used when he was already planning. "Day after tomorrow. I'll have a plane on the ground by midnight. I'll handle everything else." The line went dead. I sat on the floor, still holding the phone to my ear, listening to nothing. A knock at the door. "Anna? You in there?" Dominic's voice. Dante's voice. He pushed the door open, a glass of warm milk in his hand, and froze when he saw me on the floor. "Hey—what happened? Why are you on the ground?" He set the glass down and crouched beside me, his hands hovering like he was afraid to touch me. "Are you crying? Is it the baby?" Six years. I knew every micro-expression on that face. The way his brow creased when he was worried. The way his jaw tightened when he was lying. Right now, he was doing both. I thumbed the lock screen and slid the phone under my thigh. "I'm fine. The baby kicked and I lost my balance. That's all." He exhaled—relief washing through his shoulders the way it always did—and helped me up with both hands, careful, like I was made of something that might shatter. "This kid's already giving you trouble," he said, and his mouth pulled into that half-smile I used to love. "Wait till he's born. I'll straighten him out." He guided me to the edge of the bed and handed me the milk. "Drink this. Get some rest." His thumb brushed my knuckle—quick, automatic, the ghost of a habit he hadn't killed yet. "Don't sit up thinking too much. Dante wouldn't want you hurting like this." Hearing him say his own name in the third person—hearing him talk about himself like a dead man while his fingers were still warm on my skin— I looked up and held his gaze. "Are you sure you're not him?" His eyes flickered. Just once. A crack in the performance so small anyone else would have missed it. Then the half-smile came back, easy and rehearsed. "Get some sleep, Anna. You're seeing ghosts." He straightened, stepped back toward the door. "I'll take you to your appointment in the morning. The doctor said the checkup's important—we're not skipping it." The door clicked shut. I sat in the dark, holding the untouched milk, and let six years unspool behind my eyes. Freshman orientation. A boy with too much confidence and not enough subtlety, cutting across a crowded quad to tell me I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. I told him that was a terrible line. He said it wasn't a line. He was right. For six years, he was right. The proposal on the rooftop in Manhattan—fireworks breaking apart over the skyline, each one reflected in his eyes. His voice cracking when he asked. His hands shaking worse than mine when he slid the ring on. Then the pregnancy. The way he'd pressed his forehead against my belly and whispered, Perfect timing, principessa. This baby's coming to celebrate. I didn't know when the man who said those words became the man behind that door. I didn't know how to make those two people fit inside the same skin. I set the milk on the nightstand and didn't drink it. Morning came too fast. Dante knocked at seven. Showered, dressed, performing the role of the attentive brother-in-law like he'd been rehearsing in front of a mirror. "Ready? The car's out front." We were halfway to the door when Ivy's voice floated down the staircase behind us. "Dante—I mean, Dom?" She caught herself, but not fast enough. The name hung in the air like smoke. "I don't feel well." She stood at the top of the stairs in a silk robe, one hand pressed to her temple. "Can you stay? Just for today?" He didn't look at me. He didn't hesitate. He turned on his heel and took the stairs two at a time, his hand finding her waist like it had done it a thousand times before. "Did you take your medication? Sit down—don't move around so much. What if you pass out?" Then, over his shoulder, barely a glance: "Sorry, Anna. She's not feeling great. The driver's waiting outside—he'll get you there safe. The doctor knows you're coming." I watched Ivy's face over his shoulder. She let her eyes meet mine for exactly one second. The corner of her mouth twitched. I turned and walked out the front door alone. The heavy oak slammed shut behind me, and I pressed my palm flat against my stomach—against the tiny heartbeat underneath—and let the tears fall where no one could see them. Chapter 3 The driver was waiting at the curb, just like Dante said. I climbed into the back seat without a word. The door shut behind me with a sound like a coffin lid, and I pressed my palm flat against my stomach as the Manhattan skyline blurred past the window. At the clinic, I moved through the appointment like a ghost wearing my skin. The ultrasound technician smiled and pointed at the screen. "There's the heartbeat. Strong and steady. About the size of a peanut right now." I stared at the grainy black-and-white image—at the tiny flicker of light pulsing in all that darkness—and felt something inside me crack clean down the middle. That was my child. Dante's child. A baby whose father had faked his own death to be with another woman. I thanked the technician, collected the printout, and walked out of the exam room with my face carefully blank. Then I found an empty bathroom stall, locked the door, and cried until my ribs ached. When I came out, I pulled up my phone and booked an appointment at a different hospital. A public one. Somewhere the Moretti name meant nothing and no one would report back to the family. I told the driver I wanted to walk. Clear my head. He could go back without me. He hesitated—Dante's orders, probably—but I held his gaze until he looked away. "Yes, Mrs. Moretti." The title felt like a slap. I waited until his car disappeared around the corner, then hailed a cab and gave the address of the other clinic. I was sitting in the waiting room, filling out intake forms with a hand that wouldn't stop trembling, when my phone buzzed. A video message. From Ivy. I shouldn't have opened it. I knew that even as my thumb moved across the screen. But some part of me—the part that still couldn't believe any of this was real—needed to see. The video was thirty minutes long. Dante was in it. My Dante. The man who had held me like I was made of glass, who had always been so careful, so gentle, so restrained— He wasn't gentle in that video. He wasn't restrained. I watched him move with a ferocity I had never seen. Heard him say things he had never said to me. Saw his face twist into expressions I didn't recognize, didn't know he was capable of making. Six years together, and I had never once seen him lose control like that. Because the person who could make him lose control had never been me. I don't know how long I sat there, watching the same thirty minutes loop over and over, tears streaming down my face while strangers walked past without looking. At some point a nurse appeared at my elbow. "Ms. Anastasia? Are you alright? We're ready for you now." I looked up at her. My face must have been a disaster—mascara streaked, eyes swollen, hands shaking so hard the phone nearly slipped from my grip. She didn't comment. Just waited. I thought about the ultrasound printout folded in my pocket. The tiny heartbeat. The flicker of light. I thought about the life I had imagined—Dante beside me in the delivery room, Dante holding our baby for the first time, Dante being the father I had always believed he would be. Then I thought about the video. I pulled out my phone. One last chance. I would give him one last chance to prove me wrong, to tell me it wasn't real, to say something—anything—that would make this make sense. My fingers found his number. The call connected on the third ring. "Anna?" His voice was rough. Strained. Distracted. "What's going on? I'm kind of in the middle of something—" "I need you to come," I said. My voice cracked on the last word. "Please. I need to talk to you. It's important." A pause. Heavy breathing. Then a muffled sound in the background—Ivy's voice, low and petulant—and the unmistakable creak of bedsprings. "Can it wait? I'll be home later. We can talk then." "Dante—" "I said later, Anna." The impatience was sharp now. Undisguised. "The driver dropped you off, right? Just go home. I'll deal with it when I'm done." A soft moan leaked through the speaker. Then the line went dead. I sat there for a long moment, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to the silence where my husband's voice should have been. Then I looked up at the nurse. "I'm ready," I said. The procedure took less than an hour. When it was over, I lay on the recovery bed and stared at the ceiling tiles, counting them one by one until the numbers stopped meaning anything. I didn't cry. I had nothing left to cry with. It was dark by the time I got back to the Moretti estate. The foyer lights were on, spilling gold across the marble floor, and Dante was waiting at the bottom of the staircase. The concern on his face was flawless. The worried furrow between his brows. The way he reached for me like I might shatter. "Jesus, Anna—where have you been? The driver said you wanted to walk, but that was hours ago. I've been calling—" I looked at him. Really looked. At the face I had loved for six years. The mouth that had promised me forever. The eyes that had once held my entire world. "I went shopping," I said. My voice sounded strange. Hollow. "Lost track of time." He exhaled—relief bleeding through his shoulders—and pulled me into a hug that felt like a lie pressed against my skin. "You scared me." His lips brushed my hair. "Dante would have killed me if something happened to you." Dante. He was still talking about himself in the third person. Still wearing his dead brother's name. Still standing in front of me with another woman's perfume clinging to his collar. I let him hold me. And I felt nothing at all. Chapter 4 The next morning, I woke to the sound of my bedroom door opening. I didn't have to look to know who it was. The click of designer heels on hardwood. The waft of jasmine perfume—too sweet, too heavy, like she bathed in it. Ivy. She stood at the foot of my bed, arms crossed, watching me with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "So," she said. "You finally figured it out." I sat up slowly, keeping my face blank. My hands were steady. My heartbeat was steady. Everything inside me had gone cold and still, like a lake frozen solid beneath the surface. She tilted her head, studying me the way a cat studies a mouse it's already caught. "I knew something was off yesterday. The way you looked at him before you left for your appointment." Her smile widened. "Women always know, don't they? We can smell it on each other." I said nothing. Ivy's composure flickered—just for a second. She had expected tears. Screaming. The hysterical reaction of a woman whose world had just collapsed. She wasn't going to get it. "You want to know why he chose me?" She stepped closer, her voice dropping to something intimate. Conspiratorial. "He told me everything, you know. How boring you are. How being with you felt like—what did he call it?—going through the motions. Like checking a box." She laughed, soft and cruel. "But with me? He loses himself. He says I'm his black pearl. His escape. He says Brazilian women know how to make a man feel alive." The words landed exactly where she wanted them to. I felt each one sink into my chest like a needle. But I had stopped bleeding for Dante Moretti the moment I walked out of that clinic. I moved before I knew I was moving. My palm connected with her face so hard the sound cracked through the room like a gunshot. Her head snapped to the side. She stumbled, catching herself on the bedpost, and when she looked back at me, her eyes were wide with shock. Then footsteps—heavy, fast—and Dante burst through the door. "What the hell is going on?" Ivy's face transformed in an instant. The venom disappeared, replaced by trembling lips and wounded eyes. She pressed a hand to her reddening cheek. "I just came to check on her," she whispered. "She's been so upset lately, and I thought—I thought maybe I could help—" Dante's gaze cut to me, dark with fury. "Anastasia. She's your sister-in-law. What the hell is wrong with you?" I looked at him. At the face I had memorized a thousand times. At the lie wearing my husband's skin. "Is she?" I asked quietly. "Is she really my sister-in-law?" Something shifted in his eyes. A flicker of uncertainty. The smallest crack in his mask. But Ivy was already pulling at his arm, her voice breaking with perfectly calibrated distress. "Dom, please. Take me back to the room. I don't feel well. The stress isn't good for me—you know what the doctors said—" And just like that, he was gone. His hand on her waist. His attention completely consumed by her trembling performance. He didn't look back. I stood in the empty room, listening to their footsteps fade down the hallway, and felt the last thread of something inside me snap clean. My phone buzzed. Luca: The plane is ready. Midnight. East hangar. I read the message three times. Then I deleted it. Slowly, deliberately, I crossed to the antique writing desk by the window and pulled out a sheet of cream-colored stationery. Isabella's stationery, embossed with the Moretti family crest—a serpent eating its own tail. I picked up a pen and began to write. Dante, I can't do this anymore. Every day without you is a day I don't want to live. The baby was the only thing keeping me here, the only reason I kept breathing, but now I realize that's not enough. I need to be with you. I'm sorry I wasn't stronger. I'm sorry I couldn't stay. Wait for me. I'm coming to find you. All my love, forever— Anna The words tasted like ash in my mouth. Every sentence was a lie wrapped in the shape of truth, designed to break him the same way he had broken me. I folded the letter carefully and slid it into the drawer of my nightstand. Let him find it after. Let him read it with his own eyes and understand exactly what his choices had cost. I didn't pack. There was nothing in this house that belonged to me anyway—nothing that mattered. Every dress, every piece of jewelry, every silk robe in my closet had been chosen by Isabella, approved by Dante, locked away in a walk-in vault like I was a doll they dressed up and put away when company left. Six years, and I had never once been trusted with the combination. I grabbed my passport, my emergency credit card—the one Luca had insisted I keep hidden—and walked out of the bedroom. Dante was in the hallway. He looked tired. Rumpled. Like he'd just come from somewhere he didn't want to explain. "Anna." His voice softened when he saw me. The performance resuming, smooth as silk. "Listen, about earlier—I didn't mean to snap at you. Ivy's just been so fragile lately, and—" "I'm going out." I cut him off, my voice flat. "I need some air." He blinked. "Now? It's getting late. Let me call the driver—" "I don't need a driver." "At least take Marco. The streets aren't safe after dark, and with everything that happened to Dante—" He caught himself, adjusted. "You shouldn't be alone." I almost laughed. The concern in his voice. The protective husband routine. Like he hadn't spent the last month lying to my face while sharing a bed with another woman. "I'll be fine," I said. "Stay here. Take care of your sister-in-law." I said the last two words slowly. Deliberately. Watching his face for any sign of recognition. He gave me nothing. But something in his posture shifted—a slight tension in his shoulders, a tightness around his jaw. "Don't be too long." His voice was quieter now. "I'll have the cook make your favorite. That truffle risotto you like." I hate truffle. The smell, the taste, all of it. I'd told him a hundred times, in a hundred different restaurants, over six years of dinners he apparently never paid attention to. I had told him that a hundred times, in a hundred different restaurants, over six years of dinners he apparently never paid attention to. But I didn't correct him. I just nodded and walked past, letting my shoulder brush his as I headed for the stairs. At the front door, I paused. Looked back one last time at the house I had tried so hard to turn into a home. Dante was still standing in the hallway, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. "Anna—" I closed the door before he could finish. The night air hit my face, cold and clean, and for the first time in weeks, I could breathe. Luca's plane was waiting. And Dante Moretti was about to learn what it felt like to bury someone who wasn't really dead.