Chapter 5

"Don't you dare." The warning silenced the ballroom. Dominic stood in front of Helena, and I remembered another night twelve years earlier when he had stood in front of me.

He had not been the Don then. He had been the least favored Valenti heir. He had knelt on the steps of the Moretti estate and sworn to my father that he would never let anyone hurt me. I did not lower my hand.

The slap turned Dominic's face to the side. Helena covered her mouth, and several Valenti soldiers reached toward their weapons. None of them stepped forward after they saw the Moretti signet on my hand.

"That was not because of her," I said. "That was because of you." Dominic turned back to me. Shock came first, followed by anger over being struck in front of the other families.

He asked whether I understood what I had done. I told him that twelve years earlier, he had loved the woman who could sit beside him at a negotiation table and answer every challenge. Later, he asked me to leave those rooms and spend my time on dinner, our family, and the estate. I agreed because I believed we had chosen that life together.

I looked past him at Helena. "Then you decided the wife you created was too ordinary to understand you. You turned me into a woman whose world centered on this family, and then you used that woman as your excuse to betray me." The color left his face.

Dominic said he had never said those words. I told him he had lived them, which was enough.

Helena stepped forward with red eyes and a gentle voice. "Mrs. Valenti, this is my fault. If you stay, I will take the baby and leave Chicago." Dominic looked back at her at once and told her she was not going anywhere. That answer ended every argument he had made about loving me most.

I removed my wedding ring and placed it in his palm. His hand closed around it before he realized what I was doing. Dominic told me not to act in anger because one mistake could not erase twelve years.

"I am not erasing them," I said. "I am done hiding what you did to them."

The ballroom doors opened. Victoria entered with six attorneys and a line of Moretti enforcers. She placed the divorce papers and the asset schedule on the long table.

"Effective tonight, Isabella Moretti is resuming her place in the Moretti succession. Her premarital trust, New York shipping shares, and every security asset registered to the Moretti family will be removed from the Valenti organization."

The room filled with quiet reactions. Dominic stared at the papers and then at me. When he asked whether I had planned all of it, I told him I had finally accepted that he was no longer worth staying for.

I turned toward the doors, and Dominic called my name from behind me. I did not look back. Twelve years earlier, I had removed the Moretti signet for him. Twelve years later, I left with it on my hand. I closed the first half of my life behind me.