Chapter 1 - FOURTEEN WITNESSES
The slap was louder than the rain.
For one terrible second, Emma Romano heard nothing but a thin silver ringing in her ears. Her cheek burned. Her diamond earrings trembled against her jaw. One hand gripped the back of a velvet dining chair; the other spread flat across the seven-month curve of her stomach, as if she could shield the child inside from what had just happened in this room.
Across the table, Bianca Russo stood in emerald silk, her own cheek untouched, her eyes bright with the particular shine of a woman who had received exactly what she wanted. Between them stood Dante Romano, the most feared man in Chicago, his hand still raised.
Emma lifted her eyes.
You protected her from me, she whispered. Who protects our baby from you?
Something moved behind Dante's face — not regret, not yet, only the first crack of awareness that he had done something in front of witnesses that could not be taken back. Fourteen people sat around the long marble table. His mother. His security chief. Men who had killed for him and men who would repeat what they had seen.
Emma stepped away before he could touch her.
That was the last time Dante Romano saw his wife inside their home.
Three hours earlier, the Romano estate had looked like a photograph from a magazine. Crystal chandeliers threw warm light across white roses and Italian marble. Beyond the windows, freezing rain blurred the Chicago skyline into streaks of gold and gray. Emma had chosen the flowers, the menu, the seating. She had asked the kitchen to prepare Dante's mother's favorite lemon cake.
At seven months pregnant, standing for long periods exhausted her. Her ankles had swollen inside her heels, and the baby had spent the afternoon pressing against her ribs. Still, she wanted the evening to go well. Dante had promised her it would be different.
For weeks he had come home after midnight with unfamiliar perfume on his collar and explanations that grew shorter every time she asked a question. She had known about Bianca for almost two months. The truth had arrived as a photograph from an unknown number: Dante leaving a downtown hotel, his hand possessive at the small of another woman's back.
When Emma confronted him, he had not denied it. My private arrangements are complicated, he had said. Nothing changes for you.
May you like
Everything had already changed.
Bianca arrived late, kissed Isabella on both cheeks, and took the chair beside Dante. The diamond bracelet on her wrist caught the chandelier light. Emma recognized it immediately. She had admired it through a boutique window in Paris on their anniversary trip. Dante had told her it was too extravagant, and she had laughed and agreed, because she believed they were saving for something that mattered more.
