Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Man Waiting Outside
Six years after my husband looked me in the eyes and called our marriage a mistake, I walked back into Chicago holding the hands of the twins he never knew existed.
I had spent the entire flight preparing myself for the possibility that Adrian Moretti might eventually discover Noah and Lily.
I had not prepared for three men in dark suits to block my path before I even made it out of O’Hare Airport.
“Mrs.
Moretti,” one of them said quietly, “your ex-husband is waiting outside.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
My fingers tightened around Noah’s hand on my right and Lily’s on my left.
“No.”
The man standing in front of me was Marcus Reed, Adrian’s right-hand man, and six years had changed almost nothing about him except for the gray beginning to show at his temples.
His expression remained carefully neutral.
“Mr.
Moretti knows about the children.”
For one impossible second, everything around me disappeared.
The announcements overhead became distant noise.
The wheels of suitcases rolling over the polished floor sounded like they were happening in another building.
People rushed around us toward reunions, taxis, vacations, business meetings, ordinary lives.
I stared at Marcus.
“How?”
“He wants to meet them.”
“No.”
The answer came out sharper this time.
Lily pressed closer to my coat.
“Mommy?”
I immediately loosened my grip on her little hand.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
It was a lie, and I hated how naturally it came.
Nothing about this was okay.
Six years earlier, I had been Evelyn Moretti, the wife of one of the most dangerous men in Chicago.
Loving Adrian Moretti had nearly destroyed me.
I had loved him for ten years.
I had loved him enough to believe that the tenderness he showed me behind closed doors mattered more than the fear he inspired everywhere else.
I had loved him enough to walk away from a fully funded research opportunity at Harvard because he had once wrapped his arms around me in our kitchen and whispered that he wanted us to build a life together.
To the public, Adrian was a businessman.
Restaurants.
Construction companies.
Nightclubs.
Real estate.
Investments that seemed to stretch across half of Chicago.
People inside his world knew the truth.
Adrian Moretti was the head of the Moretti crime family.
Men twice his age lowered their voices when he entered a room.