Chapter 2Too Late, Don Amato

We never took the photo. I brought Nico home and started packing.

While I was booking our flights, Bianca sent me a photo.

She was standing next to Dante, her arm looped through his, wearing an obsidian ring.

I recognized it instantly—the Amato Family's Donna's Ring.

Only the Don's wife was permitted to wear it.

Dante had slid that same ring onto my own finger with his own hands, the day I married him.

And now, somehow, it was on Bianca's.

A second message followed close behind.

"Elena, doesn't it look beautiful? Dante says this ring belongs to the real Donna."

The old me would have bitten back immediately.

Now, looking at the screen, there was only one word left in me: pathetic.

I booked two one-way tickets for the day after tomorrow—to Catania, straight into Rossi territory.

The payment had barely gone through when I heard the front door.

Dante walked in holding a box of tiramisu.

Nico and I both froze at the sight of it.

Dante hated tiramisu. Had refused to touch it since the day I met him.

And of course, Nico loved it just as much as I did.

Every year on his birthday, Dante let him pick his own cake, but never once thought to buy him one himself.

So why was he standing in the house now, holding the one dessert he'd never once chosen on his own?

Nico and I exchanged a look, both equally stunned.

Dante came further in, saw the open suitcases on the floor, and his face changed.

"Gabe was crying hard, so I stayed a while longer. On the way back I remembered you two love tiramisu, so I picked one up."

His eyes moved to the luggage. "What's with all the luggage? Are you going somewhere?"

I shook my head. Then nodded.

"Something like that."

Two days remained before the thirty-day window closed. I wasn't going to risk anything now.

Something in my answer seemed to ease the tension in his shoulders—relief, plain and simple.

He kept going. "The studio called, said you two never showed. I had them move it to tomorrow. This time I promise I won't flake."

He crouched down in front of Nico, his jaw tight, his eyes softening into something that looked terribly like sincerity.

Nico's hands stopped on the little suit jacket he was folding.

He looked at Dante, then at me—caught somewhere between wanting to believe it and knowing better than to.

I saw that wanting. It got me, the way it always did.

"Okay," I said.

It was going to be the last time either way.

Nico's whole face lit up. He bolted straight for his room.

Once he was gone, I went back to folding clothes into the suitcase. Dante drifted over and stood beside me.

"About Nico calling me Don Amato today..."

My heart skipped a full beat.

I looked up at him.

Dante knelt beside me, setting the tiramisu by my hand, his voice worn thin.

"Elena, I know what you're thinking. That I've been too good to Bianca, that I've let it cost you and Nico."

"But I swear to you, I'm only paying back what I owe her father. She's raising that boy alone. I can't stand by and let her carry it by herself."

He took my hand and pressed it flat against his chest, right over his heart.

"Just give me a little more time. I'll get things sorted with Bianca and her son properly. I won't let you or Nico pay for it anymore."

I looked at him, my hand dead against his heartbeat, giving him nothing.

I could hardly remember the last time he'd looked at me that way—like I was irreplaceable.

Maybe our wedding day. Standing on the grounds of the Amato estate, he had taken my hand before both our families, swearing by God and blood that he would honor me for the rest of his life.

Or maybe the day Nico was born. In that quiet delivery room, Dante had cradled our newborn son like porcelain—fragile, sacred.

He'd leaned close to whisper, "Elena, as long as I draw breath, you and our boy will never want for anything. You will never be forsaken."

I sat with those memories a long time, saying nothing.

And then I made up my mind to tell him the truth.

"Dante, actually—"