Chapter 1

Ten days after giving birth, I told my husband, Ethan Reed, that something was wrong with me.

He turned his phone face-down on the coffee table and looked at me for a full three seconds. "Sophia, you just had a baby. It's normal to feel tired."

Then he flipped the phone back over and went on texting his office nurse, Serena Blake.

That was the last time I brought it up.

Everything that happened after that, I assumed was my own fault.

That changed when I reached into his coat pocket and felt a collar I'd never seen before. Real leather, brand new, with a round metal tag hanging from it.

It wasn't my size.

Chapter 1

Ten days after giving birth, I told my husband, Ethan Reed, that something was wrong with me.

He sat on the living room couch, head down, typing on his phone. He didn't even look up.

"Sophia, every woman goes through mood swings after having a baby." He turned his phone face-down on the coffee table, shutting me down with one sentence. "You'll be fine once you get enough sleep."

He got up and went back to the bedroom. I didn't stop him.

I'd lost count of how many times Ethan had turned his back on me and walked away.

He was one of the best surgeons in Manhattan, so I always trusted him blindly. This time was no exception.

I went to bed early. At two in the morning, my son Luca started crying, and I forced myself upright.

My incision hadn't healed. Every step felt like a knife driving into my belly. I braced myself against the wall and shuffled to the nursery, poured formula into a bottle, and set it in the warmer. The bottle slipped out of my hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.

I crouched down to pick it up. My hands shook so badly it took me three tries to grab the bottle.

Two minutes later, Ethan appeared in the doorway, frowning, his voice thick with impatience. "Can you keep it down? I have surgery in the morning. I need my rest."

He swept his eyes over the room, and the displeasure on his face deepened. "Sophia, I've seen plenty of women give birth at the hospital, and none of them were as dramatic as you. It's been ten days since your delivery. You can't spare half an hour to tidy up this room?"

"I..." I clutched the hem of my shirt, and before I could get a word of explanation out, he cut me off again.

"The postpartum nurse is coming tomorrow. I want this room clean, Sophia. Don't embarrass me." Ethan delivered the last line coldly, then turned and left.

He pulled the door shut behind him, sealing me, Luca, and the whole room off in the dark.

The next day, a postpartum nurse from the hospital came by. She asked how I was sleeping and whether my mood had been off.

I was about to answer when Ethan walked out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee and a perfectly polished smile. "She's doing well. Just still adjusting."

He set the coffee down in front of the nurse. "I'm a surgeon. Of course I'm keeping a close eye on Sophia's recovery."

The nurse glanced up at me. I kept my head down, hands pressed flat on my knees, and didn't contradict him.

She sighed and wrote something in her notebook. When Ethan wasn't looking, she tore the page out and pressed it into my palm.

After she left, Ethan shut the door and stood in the entryway without moving. "You look terrible. Don't let anyone else see you like that."

He turned and went into his study. I unfolded the note. "If your mood stays low after the birth, try getting a small pet. It can help."

That afternoon, I took a cab alone to an animal shelter in Brooklyn and brought home a three-month-old golden retriever. I named him Milo.

Milo slept on the mat outside the nursery door. Every morning at six I filled his bowl, and he would rest his chin on my knee and watch me with those black eyes. The fifteen minutes I spent feeding him were the only part of my day when my hands didn't shake.

Ethan frowned every time he saw the dog, but he never said anything. I took that as permission.

With Milo around, that unnameable sense of wrongness slowly faded. I thought I'd be well again soon. Then on Thursday, I took Luca out on my own for his vaccinations.

When I got back and turned my key in the door, the living room was too quiet.

The mat was gone. The food bowl was gone. The half-chewed rope toy was gone.

Ethan sat at the dining table, a surgical report spread out in front of him. He didn't look up. "Stop looking. I had someone take him away."

"What?"

"Dogs carry bacteria. The baby is tiny. One infection and he could die at any moment. Don't you know that?" He finally raised his head, and that look in his eyes was the one he used when explaining basics to his interns. "Sophia, I'm a doctor. I won't stand by and let something happen to my child."

"When did you decide this?"

"Yesterday."

"You didn't tell me."

"Do I need to report every little thing to you?"

I stood in the doorway, staring at the empty corner.

Every morning, Milo would wait for me there. He didn't understand the rules of this house, didn't know my last name. He only knew that when I walked in, his tail would start wagging.

"That was my dog," I said.

"That was a source of infection." He turned a page of the report. "If you actually cared about your child, you'd be thanking me."

I said nothing. I walked to the window and stood there for a long time.

A single golden hair was caught in a gap between the floorboards. The cleaner had missed it. I crouched down, worked it out with my fingernail, and closed my fist around it.

That night, I turned on the other phone, the one with only a single contact in it.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Three years ago, I said I wanted to marry someone clean, and my father, the Don of the Moretti family, didn't stop me.

On the day I left home, my older brother, Gabriel Moretti, placed this phone in my hand and coaxed me softly. "If the world out there ever wears you down, remember you still have us. You will always be the Moretti family's only princess."

I used to think the day I'd need this phone would never come.

I typed and deleted, typed and deleted, over and over, and in the end I sent only a few words. "Thirty days from now, come get me."

Gabriel replied almost instantly. "Sophia, welcome home."

Chapter 2

After Milo was given away, I got worse by the day.

I began going entire nights without sleep, and every so often I would fall apart out of nowhere and sob.

One afternoon, I frightened Luca into crying in the middle of his feeding.

Ethan came home just then and roughly snatched Luca out of my arms. He looked at me coldly. "Sophia, in your current mental state, I don't think you're fit to keep caring for a child."

After that day, I was stripped of the right to care for Luca. Ethan ordered me not to go near him at all.

Then came Luca's baptism. Ethan booked a restaurant for the luncheon.

The baptism was at eleven, the luncheon at twelve thirty. He left early that morning, saying he was picking up someone who'd be helping out.

I got dressed and sat waiting in the living room. At ten twenty, the door opened, and I saw Serena, the nurse from Ethan's practice.

I had met her three times, each one in passing.

Today she wore a cream cashmere sweater, her hair pinned back without a strand out of place. My son was in her arms. "Mrs. Reed, you're looking so much better."

She smiled at me. Ethan stood beside her, draping her coat over the back of a chair for her. "Serena is a professional. She's been looking after Luca these past few days, and you can see how much better he's doing. Let her hold him today. You just rest."

Before I could say a word, Serena carried Luca from table to table with Ethan beside her.

She stood beside Ethan, laughing and chatting with guests I barely knew. The two of them looked so intimate together, as though they were the real family.

The luncheon lasted two full hours. I sat in the last seat at the corner table from beginning to end.

For those two hours, I counted two things.

The first: Ethan went over to Serena to talk to her nineteen times.

The second: Ethan said exactly four things to me. "Sit here." "Don't get up." "You look a little pale." "We'll talk in the car."

Before the party broke up, Ethan stood and raised his glass. He thanked every guest in the room, thanked the hospital, and made a point of thanking Serena, saying that without her this past month, the family wouldn't have held together.

He didn't mention me. Not one word.

The whole room applauded. Sitting in my corner, I clapped twice along with them.

On the drive home, Luca slept on Serena's lap. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the streetlights slide past one by one.

Back at the apartment, Serena went upstairs, changed the baby's diaper, rocked him to sleep, and only then got up to say goodnight.

Ethan walked her out. The nursery window faced the building's front steps, and I hadn't drawn the curtains. I stood behind the glass and watched them linger at the bottom of the steps for about forty seconds.

I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I saw him lower his head and smile. It was the only time he smiled all day.

I looked down at my son in the crib, little fists clenched, mouth slightly open, brow furrowed, as if he was having a bad dream.

"Mommy's here." I patted his back gently. He wriggled twice, settling in, and slowly sank into sleep.

Chapter 3

After the baptism, Ethan started taking his phone into the bathroom.

He used to leave it on the nightstand when he showered. Now he brought it in and set it face-down on the sink, and when he came out, the screen was always dark.

I said nothing, because I didn't have proof yet.

I couldn't afford to panic and give Ethan an opening to take Luca from me.

The next morning, while washing Luca's little clothes, I took down the dark gray coat Ethan kept hanging in the entryway.

There was something stiff in the right pocket. I thought it was the rubber connector of his stethoscope. What I pulled out was a collar. Real leather, dark brown, with a round metal tag hanging from it.

I turned it over toward the light from the window and made out a single engraved letter: S.

I checked the style and the length. It wasn't my size.

I said nothing. I tucked the collar back exactly as I'd found it, hung the coat back on the rack, and straightened the buttons.

I almost had enough.

At eleven that night, with every light in the apartment out, I crept into the nursery.

Luca was sound asleep, little fists clenched, mouth slightly open. I reached out and touched his cheek, so lightly. Soft. Warm.

"Mommy had a dog once," I said quietly. "I was going to wait until you could walk, so you two could play together. Daddy sent him away. But Mommy's still here. Luca, would you come away with Mommy?"

The light snapped on behind me. Ethan stood in the doorway, pajama collar open, hair a mess. "What time is it? You've been unstable lately. Stay out of here at night."

"He's my son."

"I know." He pulled open the drawer by the crib and took out a pacifier. "But the state you're in worries me."

"Are you worried my condition will get worse, or worried it'll get better and stop giving you excuses to see Serena?"

Ethan frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I took a parking receipt out of my pocket. It was dated last Wednesday afternoon.

I had asked him where he was that day. He said he was in a four-hour surgery.

But the truth was that he'd spent two hours and fifteen minutes in the garage beneath Serena's building that afternoon.

"I was visiting a patient's family."

"I saw that address on the guest list for Luca's baptism. I know it's Serena's building. What a coincidence that your patient's family lives there too."

"Sophia." He braced one hand on the door and tugged at the open neck of his pajama shirt, irritated. "The state you're in really worries me. You've started going through my things."

"I was doing laundry. The receipt fell out of a pocket."

"I don't want to fight with you. I think you need to calm down." With that, Ethan turned and left.

I sat down against the crib, head bowed, both hands clenched on my knees.

When he'd stepped close just now, I had smelled it. Rosewood. The same scent I'd caught on Serena.

He hadn't set foot in an operating room today. He had gone to her place, then come home, stood across from me, and told me in that fake-concerned voice that my condition worried him.

I let out a bitter laugh. Just then, my phone buzzed.

It was a scheduling notice from one of Ethan's colleagues in the practice group chat. "Reminder: Dr. Reed is out of New York all day tomorrow. Flying to Boston in the morning, back after the evening shift. Send emergency cases to me."

Boston. I stared at the word. In the world I grew up in, Boston meant exactly one thing.

That was Castiglia territory.

Three years ago, the Castiglias tried to move in on the East River docks, and my father drove them straight back out.

They never tried a second time, because they changed tactics.

They stopped going after docks. They started buying the people who could walk freely in and out of every family's bedrooms and operating rooms.

Lawyers. Accountants. Doctors.

A third of this city's secrets sat in Ethan's records cabinets, and tomorrow he would be in Boston all day.

If the Castiglias controlled Ethan, their next targets would be his wife and son. Me and Luca.

In the crib, Luca smacked his lips, squirmed, and settled back into sleep.

I stared at his face for a long, long time.

I stood up and walked to the window. The Upper East Side night was quiet. Down on the street, a black SUV sat in front of a fire hydrant, engine running. It had been there for forty minutes.

I watched it for a long while. Then I took out the phone with its single contact. Gabriel's last message was still on the screen.

I typed a line, deleted it, typed another, deleted that too. What I finally sent was one short message. "Move it up."

Gabriel replied even faster than last time. "When."

"Seven tomorrow morning. Once he's on the plane."

After I sent it, I went back into the nursery and sat down beside the crib. Luca was fast asleep. I reached out and pulled his little blanket up a bit higher.

"Luca." I kept my voice very low. "Tomorrow morning at seven, someone is coming to pick us up. He'll call you by your name. He'll call you Moretti. I'm sorry, baby. Mommy wanted you to grow up ordinary."