Chapter 1 - THE NIGHT HE FINALLY TOUCHED ME
My mafia-boss husband hadn't touched me once in three years.
Not since the cold kiss at our arranged wedding.
Not since the night I became Mrs. Marcus Valentino and moved into a penthouse that cost more than my entire family had earned in three generations.
Then, at 1:30 in the morning, I shattered a vase.
And everything changed.
The storm outside had turned Austin into a city of rain and shadows.
I couldn't sleep.
So I sat curled beside the enormous windows in the living room, watching lightning illuminate the skyline.
Marcus was supposed to be gone until morning.
He usually was.
Our marriage had become a strange arrangement built on silence.
He provided everything I needed.
Money.
Security.
A beautiful home.
A private driver.
A credit card I almost never used.
But he never gave me himself.
We had separate bedrooms.
Separate schedules.
Separate lives.
Sometimes I went three days without seeing him despite living under the same roof.
People assumed I was lucky.
They saw the Valentino penthouse, the designer clothes, the security guards, the black cars waiting downstairs.
They didn't see the loneliness.
They didn't know that sometimes I ate dinner alone at a table designed for twenty people.
They didn't know that Marcus could walk past me in a hallway without looking at me.
And they certainly didn't know that I had once spent an entire night crying because I wondered whether my husband even remembered that I was his wife.
Three years earlier, Marcus Valentino had entered my father's tiny apartment wearing a black suit.
He had looked completely wrong among the peeling wallpaper and broken furniture.
My father had gone pale.
I had never seen him afraid of another man before.
Marcus placed a folder on the table.
"Your debt is twenty-eight million dollars."
My father lowered his head.
"I know."
"I can make it disappear."
My father looked up.
"What do you want?"
Marcus's gray eyes shifted toward me.
I was twenty-one.
He was thirty.
And I had no idea that the glance would change my life.
"You have a daughter."
My father's face drained of color.
Two weeks later, I became Mrs. Marcus Valentino.
I told myself it was a sacrifice.
A transaction.
A way to save my father.
But Marcus never demanded anything from me.
Not once.
On our wedding night, he had stood beside the bed and said quietly:
"You don't owe me your body."
I had stared at him.
"What?"
"This marriage is a contract."
Then he had walked away.
For three years, I had wondered why.
Tonight, I finally got my answer.
The front door opened.
I looked up.
Marcus entered with three men behind him.
His black jacket was gone.
His white shirt was rolled to his elbows.
And there was blood on his jaw.
I immediately stood.
He looked furious.
He was speaking rapidly in Italian to Alessandro, his closest lieutenant.
I didn't understand everything.
But I understood enough.
Someone had betrayed him.
I should have gone upstairs.
Instead, I stepped backward.
My elbow struck the porcelain vase behind me.
Crash.
The sound exploded through the room.
Everyone froze.
I looked down.
"Oh God."
"I'll clean it."
I jumped from the window seat.
Pain shot through my heel.
A porcelain shard had sliced deeply into my foot.
I gasped.
My balance disappeared.
Then Marcus moved.
Three strides.
That's all it took.
He caught me before I hit the floor.
His hand closed around my waist.
His other arm slipped beneath my knees.
For the first time in three years, my husband's body was pressed against mine.
I forgot how to breathe.
His gray eyes dropped to my foot.
Blood ran across my skin.
Something changed in his face.
Fear.
Real fear.
"Don't move."
His voice was low.
I stared at him.
"I'm fine."
"You are bleeding."
"It's just a cut."
"Alessandro."
His lieutenant immediately stepped forward.
"First-aid kit. Now."
Alessandro disappeared.
Marcus lifted me as though I weighed nothing.
His jaw tightened.
"Why were you barefoot?"
"I wasn't expecting anyone."
"Me?"
I looked away.
"No."
He carried me to the sofa.
The men in the room exchanged glances.
I noticed.
They were terrified of Marcus.
Yet they looked almost stunned by what they were seeing.
Their boss was kneeling at my feet.
Marcus removed the broken shard with careful fingers.
I flinched.
His hand immediately stopped.
"Sorry."
The word shocked me.
Marcus Valentino had never apologized to me.
Not once.
He wrapped my foot.
Then his fingers remained around my ankle.
His thumb brushed my skin.
I looked at him.
He looked back.
Something passed between us.
Something neither of us understood.
Then his phone rang.
Marcus answered.
His expression hardened.
"Tell me."
Silence.
Then:
"She's gone."
Marcus stood.
"Who?"
I asked.
He didn't answer.
Alessandro did.
"Elena."
Marcus's mother.
My blood went cold.
His mother had been missing for six hours.
Marcus looked toward me.
And suddenly I saw something I'd never seen in his eyes before.
Fear.
Not for himself.
For his family.
He reached for his jacket.
Then stopped.
His gaze dropped to my bandaged foot.
"You stay here."
I nodded.
But before he could leave, my phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A message appeared.
YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED YOUR HUSBAND WHY HE NEVER TOUCHES YOU.
My heart stopped.
Another message arrived.
HE'S NOT PROTECTING YOU, EMMA.
HE'S PROTECTING HIMSELF FROM YOU.
I stared at the screen.
Then came the final message.
A photograph.
It showed Marcus standing outside a hospital three years earlier.
Beside him was a woman I had never seen before.
The timestamp was two days before our wedding.
May you like
And beneath the photograph were six words:
ASK HIM WHO YOUR REAL FATHER IS.
