Back to My Original Life

On New York's Upper East Side, Mia Valente grew up beside two heirs: Leo De Luca, a daredevil race car driver, and Max Moreau, a brilliant actuary. For ten years the three were inseparable, and both men wore the same rough bronze badge she had carved, marked with a faint "M." Then Ella arrived, the cherished daughter of a rising conglomerate family, and everything changed. She gifted Leo and Max hand-stitched gold-thread patches, and they replaced Mia's badges without a word.

Mia said nothing. She folded away an old newspaper clipping of the three of them and called her father in Sicily, accepting the marriage arrangement she had long refused. She sets the wedding for a week away, to a stranger, and hands in her resignation in New York. When Ella's tears and a shattered vase turn Leo and Max against her, Mia knows it is time to leave.

With the date circled on her calendar, Mia prepares to end the game between the four of them and return to the life she once left behind.