Chapter 1

I was bleeding out in the dark, bound to a chair, when I heard my husband tell another woman he would burn the world down for her.

Dante Moretti didn't know I was on the other side of the paper-thin wall.

He didn't know that ten years ago, I was the girl who saved his life in a frozen cave, not his mistress, Sofia.

Sofia had stolen my story, and now she was stealing my life.

When I tried to leave him, Dante chained me in his dungeon and whipped me until I passed out, claiming he was "disciplining" his wife.

When Sofia used steel cello strings to slice my fingers open, destroying my ability to ever play again, he looked the other way.

He even chose to save her over me when we fell into the freezing ocean, leaving me to drown because "Sofia is my soul."

That night, I finally stopped fighting for a man who didn't exist.

I called my brother, the Don of New York.

"The alliance is over," I whispered into the phone. "Take me home."

It took Dante three months to uncover the truth. To see the medical records proving I was the one who dragged him from that cave.

He burned his own boat to trap us on an island, begging for a second chance.

"I can fix this," he pleaded, tears streaming down his face as he touched my scarred, ruined hands.

I looked at him, then at the man standing behind him with a rifle-the man who actually loved me.

"You can't fix a shattered vase, Dante," I said.

Then I watched my new protector pull the trigger.

Chapter 1

I was bleeding out in the dark, bound to a chair with rough hemp rope biting into the tender skin of my wrists, when I heard my husband tell another woman he would burn the world down for her.

The irony was sharp enough to sever a vein.

Dante Moretti.

The Underboss of the Chicago Outfit. The man they called the Ice Prince because his heart was supposed to be a fortress no living soul could breach.

He was the man I had loved since I was sixteen years old. The man I married three months ago in a cathedral filled with suffocating white roses and armed guards.

And right now, he was on the other side of a paper-thin wall in this godforsaken safe house, pressing his mistress against the plaster.

I heard the heavy thud of a body hitting the wall.

It made the framed picture in my room rattle against the drywall.

"Let me go, Dante," Sofia sobbed. Her voice was high, frantic, and laced with the kind of weaponized innocence that only a sociopath could perfect. "I cannot stay in that house anymore. I cannot watch her play the mistress of the estate while I am nothing."

"You are not nothing," Dante growled.

The sound of his voice vibrated through the floorboards. It was a low, dangerous rumble that usually made my knees weak. Now, it just made my stomach heave.

"You are everything, Sofia."

My breath hitched. The pain in my shoulder, where the kidnapper had struck me with the butt of his rifle before Mia took him out, suddenly vanished. It was replaced by a cold, hollow ache blooming in the center of my chest.

"Then why did you marry her?" Sofia screamed. "Why did you bring that Vitiello princess into our home?"

There was a silence. Heavy. Suffocating.

Then, the sound of fabric rustling. A hand hitting the wall near my head with restrained violence.

"Look at me," Dante commanded. "I married Gianna Vitiello for one reason. The New York alliance gives me the power to keep the Commission off my back. It gives me the soldiers I need to protect you."

Tears blurred my vision, hot and stinging.

"She is a shield, Sofia. Nothing more. A political necessity to ensure that no one ever touches you again."

A shield.

I wasn't his wife. I wasn't the woman he vowed to cherish. I was armor. I was a tool to protect the girl he was obsessed with.

"But you touch her," Sofia whimpered. "You sleep in her bed."

"I do what is required to keep the alliance intact," Dante said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "But every time I look at her, I wish it were you. You are the one who saved me in that cave. You are the one who bound my wounds when I was bleeding out in the snow. I owe you my life."

The air was punched from my lungs.

My head spun. The cave. The snow. The Spring Hunt, ten years ago.

Dante had been shot in an ambush. He had dragged himself into a limestone cave on the edge of Vitiello territory. I was the one who found him. I was fourteen. I tore up my favorite silk dress to bind his chest. I sang to him to keep him awake while the blizzard raged outside.

He had been delirious with fever. He hadn't seen my face clearly.

When the rescue team arrived, I had been pushed aside by the chaos.

I thought he knew. I thought he remembered.

But he didn't.

He thought it was Sofia.

Sofia, who had been adopted by the Morettis a week later. Sofia, who must have stolen my story, just like she was stealing my husband.

"I belong to you, Sofia," Dante swore. "By blood and by breath. Do not ever try to leave me again."

I heard the wet sound of a kiss. Desperate. Consuming.

I closed my eyes.

The rope burned my skin. The blood dried on my arm. But the real wound was the one gaping open in my heart.

The man I loved didn't exist.

I had married a ghost.

And now, I was going to have to exorcise him.