Chapter 1 – THE PROMISE HE MADE TO HER

“You promised her what?” I asked again.

My voice didn’t shake.

After thirty years as a mafia wife, you learn how to keep your voice steady when your heart is falling apart.

Vincent looked at the floor.

The powerful man who controlled the Chicago docks couldn’t look his fifty-four-year-old wife in the eye.

Bianca laughed.

It was a sharp, ugly sound in my quiet living room.

“Tell her, Vincent,” Bianca said. “Or I will.”

He closed his eyes. “Bianca, don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she snapped. “She thinks this is just an affair. She thinks you just got tired of her.”

I stepped away from the darkened lamp.

“What is she talking about, Vincent?”

He rubbed his jaw.

It was the same gesture he made whenever his lieutenants brought him bad news.

“Five years ago,” he started, his voice heavy. “When we almost lost the waterfront territory.”

I remembered that year.

It was the year our daughter, Clara, stopped speaking to us.

The year I found blood on the front porch and Vincent told me it was just a stray dog.

“What about it?” I asked.

“I had to make a deal,” he whispered. “With the Russo family.”

I looked at Bianca.

Bianca Russo.

Suddenly, the red silk dress and the arrogant smile made perfect sense.

She wasn’t just a mistress. She was collateral.

“My father wanted you dead, Eleanor,” Bianca said smoothly. “He said you were Vincent’s weakness. He demanded Vincent give up his territory, or give up his wife.”

I stared at my husband.

“And what did you do?”

Vincent finally looked at me.

His eyes were red.

“I told him I didn’t care about you,” he choked out. “I told him my marriage was a sham. To prove it, I agreed to take his daughter as my mistress.”

The room went completely still.

“You’ve been with her for five years?” I asked.

Not eighteen months.

Five years.

“It was to protect you, Ellie!” Vincent stepped forward. “If they thought I loved you, they would have killed you!”

I felt sick.

For five years, every time he kissed my cheek, every time he ate my cooking, every time he slept in our bed.

It was all wrapped in a lie.

“So the promise,” I said quietly. “You promised her you’d never choose me again.”

Bianca smiled.

She reached into her designer purse.

“He promised a lot of things, Eleanor.”

She pulled out an object and dropped it on my coffee table.

It hit the glass with a heavy thud.

I looked down.

It was a solid gold pocket watch.

Vincent’s father’s watch.

The one he swore he had lost on our honeymoon.

“He gave me that on my twenty-eighth birthday,” Bianca said. “Before you even knew I existed.”

I looked at Vincent.

His face was pale.

“Ellie,” he pleaded. “That’s not the whole truth.”

“Then what is the truth?” I demanded.

Before he could answer, Bianca reached for the watch.

But as she lifted it, the back casing popped open.

A small, folded piece of paper fell out onto the rug.

Bianca froze.

Vincent lunged for it.

But I was closer.

I snatched the paper from the floor and unfolded it.

It was a faded ultrasound picture.

Dated three years ago.

With Bianca’s name printed at the top.

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