Chapter 2 - THE BULLET THAT BROKE A SEVENTEEN-YEAR LIE
My husband's 29-year-old mistress walked into our seventeenth wedding anniversary party wearing my dead mother's sapphire necklace.
I didn't scream.
I didn't throw my champagne.
I simply smiled.
Because after seventeen years of marriage to Chicago's most feared mafia boss, I'd learned one thing:
The woman who loses her temper usually loses everything else.
My name is Evelyn Moretti. I'm thirty-eight years old, and my husband, Vincent, is forty-four.
Half of Chicago thinks I'm the luckiest wife alive.
They see the mansion overlooking Lake Michigan, the diamonds, the expensive vacations. They see Vincent kissing my forehead in public like I'm still the twenty-one-year-old girl he married.
What they don't see is the gun beneath his pillow.
Or the fact that we haven't shared a bedroom in eleven months.
That evening, eighty guests gathered inside our estate.
Our seventeen-year-old son, Anthony, stood near the staircase. Vincent's oldest friend and right-hand man, Dominic, watched the room from beside the fireplace.
Then my husband arrived with her.
"Evelyn," Vincent said, resting his hand on the young woman's bare back. "This is Celeste. She's been helping me with the new business."
Celeste wore a red silk dress, diamond earrings, and a nervous smile.
But I barely noticed her face.
Because hanging around her neck was my mother's sapphire necklace.
The same necklace Vincent claimed had been stolen from our safe six months earlier.
I looked at the sapphires.
Then at my husband.
"How beautiful," I said. "You must be very special to him."
Vincent's smile disappeared.
Celeste lowered her eyes.
Good.
At least one of them knew how to feel ashamed.
Dinner began beneath the crystal chandeliers.
Vincent stood, raised his glass, and delivered a speech about loyalty, family, and the extraordinary woman who had stood beside him through everything.
Everyone applauded.
I raised my champagne.
If betrayal had a soundtrack, it would have been eighty people clapping for a liar.
At nine fifteen, Celeste found me alone in the conservatory.
"I know what you're thinking," she whispered.
"Sweetheart," I replied, "you couldn't possibly."
Her hands trembled.
"Vincent told me your marriage was over. He said you were staying together for appearances."
I smiled.
Of course he did.
Men like Vincent could make a person disappear without leaving fingerprints, but somehow they all used the same pathetic excuse when cheating on their wives.
"Take off my mother's necklace," I said.
Celeste obeyed.
But instead of handing it over, she turned the clasp toward me.
Three tiny letters had been scratched into the gold.
E.M.
My initials.
I'd carved them there when I was sixteen.
Then Celeste whispered something that made my blood turn cold.
"Vincent didn't give me this necklace. Your son did."
Anthony.
My baby boy.
The child I'd protected from his father's world. The boy who still kissed my cheek before leaving for school.
"Why would Anthony give you my necklace?"
Celeste swallowed.
"Because he wanted you to know the truth."
She reached into her purse and removed a photograph.
Vincent was kissing her outside a restaurant.
I expected that.
What I didn't expect was the date.
October 14, 2019.
Seven years.
My husband had been sleeping with this woman for seven years.
And reflected in the restaurant window was someone else.
Dominic.
Vincent's most trusted man.
"Your son found this picture three weeks ago," Celeste whispered. "He's been trying to protect you."
"From his father?"
Celeste shook her head.
"From what Vincent plans to do tomorrow."
My heart pounded.
"What happens tomorrow?"
"He's transferring the accounts, the properties, everything. And afterward, you won't be allowed to leave this house."
She pressed a brass key into my palm.
"Anthony said this opens the locked drawer in Vincent's office."
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from Anthony.
MOM, DON'T TRUST CELESTE. SHE'S NOT HIS ONLY MISTRESS. AND DOMINIC KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO GRANDMA.
I stared at the screen.
My mother hadn't died peacefully, as Vincent had always claimed?
Before I could ask another question, the conservatory doors opened.
Dominic stood there.
A pistol in his hand.
And behind him was my husband.
Vincent looked at the key in my palm.
Then he sighed.
"Evelyn, darling," he said, "I was hoping you'd never discover which one of us ordered your mother's murder."
The silence in the conservatory was thicker than the Chicago humidity pressing against the glass.
I looked at Vincent's tailored tuxedo, his perfectly combed dark hair, and the cold, unreadable expression I had once mistaken for strength. Then I looked at Dominic, his gun steady, pointing not at me, but at Celeste.
"Put the gun down, Dom," Vincent said softly.
"She talked, Vince," Dominic growled, his eyes fixed on the trembling twenty-nine-year-old. "I told you this girl was a liability. She gave Evelyn the key."
"I said put it down." Vincent's voice dropped an octave.
Celeste backed into the orchids, her hands covering her mouth, weeping silently.
My mind was spinning. Which one of us ordered your mother's murder.
"My mother died in her sleep," I said, my voice eerily calm despite the violent trembling in my chest. "The coroner said it was an aneurysm."
Vincent finally looked at me. There was a flicker of regret in his eyes, a ghost of the man who used to hold me when it stormed.
"Coroners in this city write what I pay them to write, Evelyn," Vincent said. "She was poisoned. But I didn't do it. Dominic did."
Dominic scoffed, his grip on the pistol tightening. "Don't play the hero now, Vince. You signed off on it. The old lady was snooping around the offshore accounts. She was going to take Evelyn and the kid and run to the Feds."
My legs nearly gave out. My mother. My sweet, fiercely protective mother, who always said Vincent's money felt "too heavy." She had been trying to save Anthony and me.
"You killed her," I whispered, stepping toward Dominic.
"Stay back, Evie," Dominic warned, shifting the gun toward me.
"You let him kill her," I said, turning my venom on my husband. "You slept next to me while I cried for her. You held my hand at her funeral."
"I was protecting our family!" Vincent stepped forward, his composure finally cracking. "If she had gone to the Feds, I would be in a concrete cell, and Anthony would have grown up visiting me through glass. I did what had to be done to keep us together."
"And the mistress?" I held up the photograph Celeste had given me. "Was she keeping us together, too?"
Vincent looked at the photo, then at Celeste. "You stupid girl. I told you to keep your mouth shut and just wear the necklace so Evelyn would ask for a divorce on her own."
Suddenly, the brass key in my hand burned like a hot coal.
Anthony.
My son had given this key to Celeste. But Anthony's text said not to trust her. She's not his only mistress.
I looked closely at the photograph again. The date. October 14, 2019.
In the reflection of the window, Dominic wasn't just standing guard. He was holding a small child's hand. A little girl with dark curls.
"Whose child is that in the reflection?" I asked, my voice cutting through the tension.
Celeste gasped, her eyes darting to Dominic.
Dominic's face went completely pale.
Vincent looked confused. "What child?"
"Answer me," I demanded, holding the picture up. "Dominic, whose child are you holding in this picture?"
Before Dominic could speak, the conservatory doors burst open again.
Anthony stood there. My seventeen-year-old son, dressed in his perfectly tailored suit, holding a worn, leather-bound journal.
"It's Celeste's daughter, Mom," Anthony said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "But Vincent isn't the father. Dominic is."
May you like
Vincent slowly turned his head toward his best friend.
Dominic raised the gun and pointed it directly at my husband's chest.
