The Stand-In Marriage

On our fifth wedding anniversary, I walked into the penthouse suite at the Plaza with twelve bodyguards at my back.

The room was thick with smoke, and the music was loud enough to make the floor shake. Seven or eight of New York's most well-connected heirs were sprawled across the sofas. When I came in, their champagne glasses stopped halfway to their mouths.

Dante Moretti sat right in the middle.

His shirt was open three buttons down, and he had his arm around a blonde. When he saw me, he didn't even change position. He just lit a cigarette, taking his time about it.

"Vivian." He blew out a stream of smoke and smiled lazily. "You're five years older than me. You should have figured out by now that you can't keep me on a leash. You've been managing me all these years. Aren't you tired?"

The girl in his arms giggled and traced little circles on his chest with one finger.

"Honey, once a woman's past thirty, she should just accept it." She batted her lashes at me. "Men like things fresh."

The whole room laughed.

I laughed with them.

Five years. I had wrestled the family back from his uncles and put him in the seat as head of the Moretti family. And he had dumped the entire weight of it on me and gone off to enjoy himself all over the world with one new face after another.

Every time I came to drag him home, his excuse was always the same: "I'm still young. I'm not done having fun."

In those five years, I had cleaned up more of his messes and buried more of his tabloid stories than I could count.

All of New York said Vivian Moretti must be desperately in love with her young husband to put up with this much.

No one knew the real reason.

I indulged him only because of his face.

That face of his — a striking mirror of his own elder brother, my white moonlight who had left this world too soon.

For five long years, I had spun for myself an elaborate dream.

And now, it was time to wake.

Chapter One

My laugh cut the laughter in the room off dead.

Dante stubbed out his cigarette and frowned. "How many did you bring this time? It's the same routine every time. It's boring."

On the way over, that had been exactly my plan: drag him out, send the girl away, kill the story. The same as the last five years.

But standing there, all I felt was tired.

"When you're done playing, rein it in." I pulled a stack of photos from my clutch and tossed them at him. "I just came to remind you not to go too far."

The photos scattered across the floor. All of them were of him and this girl. On the steps of a private jet. By a pool in the Hamptons. His profile as he tucked her hair behind her ear.

Her name was Bella Cross. She was twenty-two. She'd been with him for three months, and she was his current favorite.

"Today is our anniversary," I said. "Remember to come home tonight."

Dante glanced at the photos, and something like embarrassment crossed his face.

But the next second, he pulled Bella in by the waist, tipped up her chin, and kissed her, deep and slow, as if he were putting on a show just for me.

"Got it, Mrs. Moretti." His voice was rough against her lips. "Bella and I have business to take care of. I won't see you out."

Whistles and applause exploded through the room.

I turned and left, the twelve bodyguards falling in behind me like a funeral procession.

At eight that evening, I got back to the Moretti estate on Long Island.

The candles on the long dining table were already lit. My assistant, Margot, had even ordered a heart-shaped cake with "V & D, 5 Years" written across it in chocolate.

No matter how wild Dante was out in the world, he always came home for dinner on our anniversary.

Not because he cared about me that much.

But because we had to take a photo together and post it, to tell all of New York that the couple at the head of the Moretti family was rock solid. That photo kept a lot of people from trying to take a bite out of us.

But that night, I waited from eight until ten, and he never came home.

I picked up my phone to call him, and the screen lit up first.

It was Dante's number, but he wasn't the one texting.

Honey, Dante's showing me the city lights. He won't be home tonight.

A video came right after it.

The footage was dark and shaky. All I could make out were two shadows tangled together. But the audio was perfectly clear.

"Dante, it's your anniversary. Won't she be mad?"

He was breathing hard. He gave a low laugh.

"A thirty-year-old woman actually thinks she can control me?"

In those five years, I'd gotten more messages like this than I could count. Dante always let his women use his phone to provoke me. It was one of the ways he got back at me.

But skipping our anniversary for a woman was a first.

In the past, I would have sent people to drag him home right away.

This time, I put down my phone, picked up my knife and fork, and ate every last bite of the cold steak.

Halfway through, my phone started buzzing like crazy.

Page Six alerts. Trending on TikTok. One after another.

Someone had caught Dante Moretti making out with a blonde on a yacht on the Hudson. The neon lights from the far bank shimmered on the black water, and he was holding her face in his hands, kissing her like nothing else existed.

Every other year on this night, the trending post had been our anniversary photo.

This year, the headline read: Moretti Boss Cheats on Anniversary Night While His Wife Waits Home Alone.

People in the comments were tagging my account. All of New York was waiting to watch me humiliate myself.

Margot called almost at the same moment, her voice tight. "Ma'am, should we bury it? PR is on standby."

In the past, all of it would have vanished from the internet within ten minutes.

I looked at the GIF of that kiss looping on my screen and said calmly:

"No."

The moment I hung up, my stomach suddenly lurched.

I clapped a hand over my mouth and ran to the bathroom. I knelt by the toilet and threw up for a long time, until there was nothing left but bile.

When I lifted my head again, the woman in the mirror was as white as paper.

From the inner pocket of my clutch, I pulled out a sheet of paper folded very small.

It was a pregnancy test result from three days earlier.

This baby had come completely by surprise. I hadn't told anyone, and I had already decided I couldn't keep it.

I tore the report into pieces and threw it in the trash.

The tears only came after that, falling one by one onto the backs of my hands, ice-cold.

I pressed my hand against my still-flat stomach and cried without making a sound in that big, empty house.

After I married into the Morettis, I rarely cried. I couldn't afford to.

To everyone else, Vivian Moretti was the woman who sat at the end of the long table at family meetings and made a room full of old foxes shut up. She held the Moretti family's lifeline in her hands. Untouchable. Invincible.

But I could hurt too.

Once, I had also fought with everything I had to carry out one man's last wish.

Now, what he had asked of me was done.

I had no reason left to stay.