Chapter 3
"Because he swore to me he was trying to break the contract!" Victoria snapped, her composure cracking for a split second. A flash of raw, ugly fury crossed her face. "He spent eight years hiring offshore tax attorneys and private corporate forensic accountants, trying to find enough leverage against his own father to dissolve the agreement without bankrupting our family in retaliation. Every time I asked him when he was going to end it, he told me he needed six more months. A year. Another quarter."
She leaned forward, her perfectly manicured nails pressing into the polished marble table. "And do you know what happened three weeks before our wedding, Elena? Dante’s father had a stroke. On his deathbed, he signed a codicil: either Dante married me within thirty days, or the entire estate—including our father’s outstanding debt notes—would be transferred to Dante’s cousin Marco. Do you remember Marco?"
A cold shiver ran down my spine. Marco Moretti was a violent, erratic sociopath who had spent his youth in and out of sealed courtrooms.
"If Marco had gotten control of those notes," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper, "he would have ruined us overnight. He would have ruined you. Dante came to my apartment at three in the morning. He looked like a ghost. He said, 'Elena deserves a clean life. She cannot be touched by any of this. I will marry you, keep the business intact, protect her family, and set her free.' And I agreed. Not because I loved him. I agreed because I wanted the security, the money, and the power to never be at the mercy of any man’s financial ruin ever again."
She twisted the platinum ring around her finger.
"I let you hate me, Elena," Victoria whispered, her eyes finally glistening with unshed tears. "Because if you hated me, you would leave. If you knew the truth, you would have stayed to fight a family that would have crushed you into dust. Dante was a coward for keeping you on the hook for eight years, yes. But the marriage wasn't an act of love. It was a business transaction between two prisoners who chose different ways to survive."
"Is that what you call this?" I asked, gesturing to her designer clothes, her expensive jewelry, the emptiness in her posture. "Survival?"
"He hasn't touched me, Elena. Not once," Victoria said bluntly. "We sleep in separate wings of the house. We attend galas together, smile for the Tribune photographers, and go home to absolute silence. We are business partners running a syndicate. That is all we have ever been."