Chapter 3

The tenth. New York woke up to the clearest sky it had seen all month.

The union of the Moretti and Falcone families — a marriage decades in the making — had claimed Saint Patrick's Cathedral, the grandest in all of Manhattan. Media crews swarmed the perimeter.

Heads of every major Family had made the trip. Politicians, power brokers, old money and new — they had all come to witness.

This was a coronation dressed as a wedding.

That morning, Cassian dressed in his penthouse.

He stood before the full-length mirror in his black formal suit, and I did what I had always done — straightened his tie, smoothed the faint crease from his shoulder.

"It'll be chaotic outside today. Stay in the apartment. Don't go anywhere."

He watched me through the mirror.

"I'll be back tonight, after the ceremony."

He assumed I would do what I had always done.

Wait in my gilded cage, patient and obedient, until he came home carrying another woman's perfume — and then go right back to being his canary, the one he kept in the dark.

I lowered my eyes just enough to hide what was in them.

"Of course," I said softly. "Congratulations on your wedding, Mr. Moretti."

Cassian went still.

He turned slowly, and in his eyes I saw something I had never seen there before — something cold and coiled, like a threat that hadn't decided whether to strike yet.

He said nothing. He reached out, his fingers gripping my jaw with a force that was just short of making me wince.

He bent down and kissed me.

There was nothing tender in it. It was all hunger and possession, the kind that punishes — as though my congratulations had offended something in him, as though he needed to prove a point to me, or perhaps to himself.

He only let go when I could barely breathe.

He was still catching his breath, his forehead resting against mine.

"You've been very well-behaved today." His voice was low, rough at the edges with the last traces of that kiss. "After today is over, I'll put the villa in the south district in your name."

A slap followed by something sweet. It was his oldest trick.

I didn't pull away.

He released me and walked out of the apartment.

The door closed. The penthouse — all that luxury, all that silence — went completely still.

I looked at the clock on the wall. Three hours until his wedding began. Four hours until my flight departed.

I walked into the closet and took out a black canvas bag.

I left behind every designer piece he had ever given me. Left the jewels where they were.

I packed only a few plain T-shirts and jeans I'd bought with my own money.

I went to the vanity, unclipped the diamond studs from my ears, and unclasped the sapphire necklace from my neck — the one that had always felt less like jewelry and more like a collar marking me as Moretti property. I set them neatly on the velvet tray.

Then I opened the safe. The black card. The key fob. The Browning I'd kept for protection. I carried them to the living room and laid them on the vast marble coffee table.

Finally, I reached into my pocket and took out a brass bullet.

Three years ago, when he had pulled me from a street fight — rescued me from a low-level thug with a grudge — he had ejected this round from the chamber and tossed it to me.

Keep it, he'd said. Nobody will dare touch you with that.

I had worn it close to my body for three years, like a talisman.

Now I placed it at the center of everything that belonged to him.

Then I erased every trace of myself from that apartment. Cleared the browser history from the computer. Emptied the bathroom of everything that was mine. Wiped down every surface that might have held my fingerprints.

By the time I was finished, the place was immaculate — the kind of clean that makes it look like no one was ever there.

I shouldered the canvas bag and took one last look around the cage that had held me for three years.

No longing. No grief. Only a deep, long exhale — the particular relief of something finally over.

"Goodbye, Cassian."

I pushed open the door and stepped into the elevator.

The doors slid shut, and the world of the mafia godfather sealed itself off behind me.

I walked out of the building, flagged down a cab to JFK.

Sunlight came through the window and landed on my face. I took out the new passport and looked at it.

The name on it was no longer Valeria.

It was someone new. Someone free.

Miles away, at that same moment, the great bells of Saint Patrick's Cathedral began to ring.

And I flew out of my cage at last.