Chapter 2

Serafina giggled. He hung up.

I sat there beside him, pinned to the cold seat, watching his profile, that jaw, that mouth I used to think I understood.

I finally understood.

He hated me. He hated me a thousand times deeper than I had ever let myself believe.

Massimo's car didn't take us home.

It turned into the French Quarter, down the narrow streets I knew by heart, and stopped in front of a bridal shop with the ivory dresses in the window. I knew that place. Massimo and I had come here once, right after we signed the papers in secret, and he'd been so eager then—dragging me through the door with that same long stride, that same rush in his shoulders.

He walked in exactly the way he had that day. Some things about him never changed. It just wasn't me he was rushing toward anymore.

Serafina was already inside, standing in front of the tall mirror in an ivory gown. She looked like she'd been poured out of honey, gold and soft and glowing. Massimo crossed to her without a word, and his fingers came up to brush a loose strand of hair back from her ear.

"You look perfect," he said, low.

He took out a ring and slid it slowly onto the middle finger of her hand.

Shock paralyzed me, and I watched, completely helpless, as Serafina leaned up and kissed Massimo on the cheek.

I lunged forward to stop it, desperate to tear them apart.

But my fingers phased right through Massimo's chest like empty air.

I just stood there, staring blankly as he pushed that ring onto her finger.

How could he do this? Why Serafina, of all people?

She was the one who actually murdered his mother!

Massimo! I opened my mouth, screaming until my throat felt raw, choking on a grief so heavy it felt like drowning. But no sound came out, leaving me totally numb as I watched the nightmare play out.

Serafina ducked her head, and her eyes shone with tears. "Massimo, I've waited so long for you."

"So our wedding." Serafina watched him in the mirror. "Are we inviting Tess?"

He lowered his lashes so I couldn't see what was underneath. Then his mouth curved, and it was an ugly thing.

"Of course," he said. "She's a very important guest."

I understood him then. He wanted me there. He wanted me to watch the wedding I'd once dreamed about, even if he thought I was only hiding, playing dead somewhere to spite him.

Outside the glass the rain started, thin and steady.

It was the same rain that fell the day we buried his mother. Lucia never let me set foot in the Messina house while she was alive—she'd made it plain that I wasn't fit to carry her son's name.

On Christmas Eve her heart gave out, and the last call she ever made was to me. I had no way in the world to explain how it had gone so wrong so fast

At the funeral, in the pouring rain, Massimo had shoved me down against the slate in front of the vault and screamed in my face, his eyes red.

"Tess. From today on—one of us doesn't leave this alive."

After that he treated me like an enemy.

He brought different women home to sleep in the house that was supposed to be ours. When he found me standing at the top of the stairs with my eyes wet, he would smile and take my chin in his hand and pat my cheek, almost tender.

"Hurt?" he'd say. "You wanted this marriage. You chose this."

Serafina was still turning in the light, and Massimo was still watching her softly.

Then something crossed his face. He pulled out his phone and scroll down to my number, still buried in his blocklist, and drag it out.

He pressed call.

Not a ring. Just the flat, cold busy tone, over and over, going nowhere.

His jaw tightened. The tenderness drained out of his face by degrees, and then all at once his fist came down on the counter beside her.

"Tess Reinhardt." His voice shook with something that wasn't quite anger. "You don't pick up my calls—you're dead."

He didn't know the number was ringing into nothing, that the woman on the other end would never pick up again......