Chapter 1

My sister gets kidnapped, and the husband I've fed for six years turns out to be a Mafia don.

It starts with a phone call. Vanessa's voice, screaming, then the line goes dead.

Ryan goes white. Then he grabs his keys and asks me to stay home.

I figure he's calling the cops. I turn on the news to check for updates.

That's when I see it.

A black armored SUV crashes straight through the gate of an abandoned factory. Armed men pour out behind it. And the driver, the man who jumps out and charges in like he owns the building and everyone in it, is my husband.

My husband, the one who can't drive two blocks without gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles go white. The one who told me he volunteered in a disaster zone overseas and came back with PTSD so bad he couldn't handle a grocery store, a crowded sidewalk, or a dark room.

The news banner reads: FORMER MOB BOSS TURNED SECURITY CEO RESCUES KIDNAP VICTIM.

I read it three times. Then I laugh.

They bring Vanessa out on a stretcher. She's shaken but fine. The cameras love it, the dramatic rescue, the brave man, the beautiful victim.

At the hospital, I find them. Vanessa's tucked into a clean white bed, and Ryan's sitting beside her like a guard dog. My parents, well, my aunt and uncle who raised me, though I've called them Mom and Dad my whole life, are fluttering around her, smoothing her blanket, whispering for her to rest.

Nobody looks at me.

I stare at Ryan. "You can't drive, huh?"

He doesn't answer.

"Lily had a hundred-and-four fever in the middle of the night. I begged you to drive us to the ER. You sat behind that wheel shaking like a leaf, telling me your trauma was too bad. Remember that?"

He still doesn't answer.

"She almost died, Ryan. She ended up in the ICU because we got there too late. Because I had to carry her fifteen blocks in the dark. And tonight you crash a bulletproof truck through a wall with five million in cash to save someone else's sister?"

Vanessa shifts in the bed. She leans into Ryan's arm, her voice soft and shaky. "Don't blame him. Years ago, he got into an accident while driving me. After that, he promised he'd never drive anyone else. Only me."

She looks at me with those wide, innocent eyes. "Don't misunderstand, Emma."

Ryan finally speaks. He pulls me toward the door. "Let's talk outside."

"No. Right here."

He sighs. The way he always sighs, like I'm the unreasonable one.

"I didn't want you to know what I used to be. I didn't want you and Lily depending on that version of me. If you'd just asked—"

"Asked what? 'Hey honey, are you secretly a mob boss?' Is that what I should've asked?"

"You're making this bigger than it is."

Uncle Mark cuts in. Quietly, because Vanessa just fell asleep. "Ryan's right. He never hid anything. You just didn't ask. That's on you, Emma. You didn't care enough about your own husband."

I stare at him. At all of them.

Six years. I worked three jobs for six years. Waitress in the morning, clerk in the afternoon, cleaning offices at night. I paid for his therapy. I paid our rent. I put food on the table. When Ryan got into a fight and ended up in county jail, I was seven months pregnant, on my knees in front of the other guy's family, begging them to drop the charges. When someone called him a kept man and I saw the look on his face, I handed him every dollar I'd saved so he could open a business. He lost it all. I didn't say a word.

And now they're telling me I didn't care enough.

"I want a divorce."

Uncle Mark's face twists. "You'd really do this? After everything he just did for your sister?"

"Divorce," I say again. "I'm done."