“Relax. I just fucked your friend so Wolfe would get mad at you. He’s too young for me anyway.”

And too good for you, I thought to myself.

Pregnancy obviously messed with my logic because I felt the urge to rub her arm or buy her a cup of coffee. I knew damn well that she tried to ruin my life to save hers, and that she wanted my husband for herself (at least before he got her fired). But the thing about compassion was that it wasn’t given to people who necessarily deserved it, but needed it nonetheless.

“Obviously, my plan failed miserably.” She dragged her chipped fingernails over her cheeks, scanning my pristine white cardigan over my knee-length black dress.

“You look like a fucking church girl.”

“I am a church girl.”

She snorted out a laugh.

“He’s a kinky bastard.”

“Or maybe he just likes me.” I dug in an imaginary knife into her chest. She did, after all, try to make my husband believe that I cheated on him. No matter how dire her situation was, there was no need to be mean to me. I hadn’t done anything to her.

“Good one. Wolfe just likes fucking something that belongs to Arthur Rossi. You know, because Arthur fucked with his family. Poetic justice, and all that.”

“Excuse me?” I took a step back, assessing her fully now. I’d had my fill of surprises today. Between the pregnancy test, Angelo’s confession, and now this, I realized that the universe was trying to tell me something. Hopefully not that my fairy tale, which hadn’t begun just yet, was ending abruptly.

One of my bodyguards took a step forward, and I spun on him.

“Stay away. Let her talk.”

“He didn’t tell you?” Kristen threw her head back and laughed, pointing at me. Ridiculing me. “Did you ever wonder why he took you from your father? What he had on him?”

I did. All the time. Hell, I asked Wolfe about it on a daily basis.

But of course, admitting this to her was giving her more power than she deserved.

Kristen leaned her elbow over a huge oak tree, whistling. “Where do I begin? This is all confirmed, by the way, so you can cross-examine your husband the minute you get back home. Wolfe Keaton wasn’t really born Wolfe Keaton. He was born Fabio Nucci, a poor, bastard Italian kid who lived not too far from your block. Same zip code but trust me—very different houses. His momma was a drunk, neglectful excuse for a human being, and his father was out of the picture before he was even born. His older—much older brother, Romeo—raised him. Romeo became a cop. He was doing a fine job until he was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Namely—Mama’s Pizza, the little parlor three blocks down from you. Romeo went to get Wolfe some pizza. They walked into a gun fight. Romeo, still clad in his uniform, burst through the back of the parlor to break things off. They had to kill him, or he’d have outed all of them. You father killed Romeo in front of your husband despite his desperate pleas.”

I never beg.

I never kneel.

I have my pride.

Wolfe’s words came back to haunt me, making my skin dampen and chill. That was why he was so adamant on not negotiating or showing remorse or mercy. My father didn’t spare him any of those things when he needed them the most. I stared at Kristen, knowing there was more. Knowing that was the tip of a very thick, very lethal iceberg.

She continued.

“After that happened, he was adopted by the Keatons, a rich family from the right side of the tracks. The same house you live in right now, in fact. The Keatons were Chicago’s finest. A high-profiled couple who never had any children and had the world to give to him. They changed his name to separate him from the mess that was his early life. Things were looking up for little Wolfey for a minute there. He even managed to overcome the severe trauma of seeing your father putting a bullet between his brother’s eyes.”

“Why didn’t my father deal with Wolfe? Since he watched, too?” I hated that I was asking her questions. But unlike my husband, my pride was not as vital for my survival.

Kristen huffed. “Wolfe was just a kid back then. He didn’t know the key players and didn’t have an open beef with The Outfit like his brother. Not to mention, no one was going to believe him. Plus, I guess even your father has some morals,” she scanned me with disgust. My jaw tensed, but I said nothing, too afraid she’d stop talking.

“Anyway,” she singsonged, “can you guess what happened next?”

“No,” I gritted out. “But I bet you’ll be happy to tell me.”

I knew that she was telling the truth. Not because Kristen wasn’t capable of lying, but because she was having too much fun delivering the news for it not to be accurate.

“Wolfe goes off to college. Makes friends. Lives his best life, so to speak. Second year at Harvard, he’s about to come back for summer vacation when the ballroom where his parents are attending a charity gala explodes with a ton of politicians and high-end diplomats inside. Any guesses who’s responsible for it?”

My father, of course.

I remembered that incident. One summer when I was eight, we didn’t go to Italy. My father was arrested for the ballroom incident and released shortly after for lack of evidence. My mother was crying all the time, and her friends were always around. When Dad got out, they started fighting. A lot. Maybe that was the moment my mother realized she didn’t marry a good man.

In the end, they decided that the best course of action would be to send me to boarding school. I knew they were protecting me from my father’s reputation here in Chicago and giving me my best shot.

Kristen whistled again, shaking her head. “Suffice it to say, your husband did not return from that trauma. The problem was, officially, and on paper, the blowout was the result of a gas leak. The entire hotel chain shut down soon after. Your father’s arrest was a farce. They couldn’t even send him to trial even though everyone knew he got back at Wolfe’s mother, a Supreme Court judge, for ruling against one of his best friends.”

Lorenzo Florence. He was still in prison. He smuggled over five-hundred kilograms of heroin into the US, working for my father.

I stumbled back, collapsing to the grass. My bodyguards had had enough. They both started in my direction. Kristen pushed off the tree, squatting to my eye level, and smiling brightly. “So now Wolfe really wants to get back at your father and gather ammo against him. He’s been doing that ever since he graduated, actually. Through private investigators and endless resources, he managed to find something on your father. Whatever it is, he is hanging it over his head. You know the end game was always to kill your father, right?”

I couldn’t answer. They dragged me toward the car while I kicked and screamed. I wanted to stay and listen. I wanted to run away.

“He’ll be the heir to The Outfit…” Kristen yelled, running after us. One of the bodyguards pushed her, but she was having too much fun.

“He doesn’t want The Outfit,” I screamed back to her.

“He’ll discard you just as he’s always planned. Have you ever wondered why he never bothered to have you sign a pre-nup? Don’t be so sure you’ll get out of this in one piece. It’s not like anyone from Wolfe’s family did…”

“No, you’re wrong.” I felt my lower lip trembling. They ducked me into the back seat of the vehicle and slammed the door behind me. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I was too physically weak and emotionally shocked to cope with these revelations.

Kristen appeared at the window and signaled for me to roll it down. One of the EPAs nearly beat her off from inside the car, but I rolled the window down, anyway. She pushed her head into the car.

“He’ll throw you out by the end of the year, sweetheart. Once he’s had enough of fucking you. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times before. Wolfe Keaton doesn’t do love, sweetie.”

“Maybe not with you,” I bit back. She frowned, looking wounded.

“You’re delusional,” she said.

“And you’re desperate. How did you find out this information?”

She shrugged, a bitter smile spreading on her face like margarine. Easy but toxic.

I didn’t have to ask again. I knew.

My father.

That night, when Wolfe arrived at my bed to bring me the dinner I’d missed, I turned him away. I wasn’t ready to face him, and I definitely wasn’t ready to tell him about the pregnancy. I knew deep down that Kristen was at least partly right. This was Wolfe’s plan all along. To ruin my family and discard me somewhere along the way. Whether the plan was still in motion or not was beside the point. Not that I had the greenest clue what his plan was nowadays.

All I knew was that the odds were against us.

“Everything okay?” he asked, brushing my hair away from my face.

I couldn’t look him in the eye. I flipped through pages in a book I didn’t really read. I was pretty sure I was holding it upside down, too, but couldn’t tell, since my eyes could barely register the shape of the book, let alone its contents.

“Sure. I just got my period,” I lied.

“I could still stay,” he suggested, his hand sliding from my cheek, his thumb tilting my chin up to face him. “I’m not coming here just for the sex.”

“Well, I’m not in the mood to give you a blow job, either.”

“Francesca,” he growled, and my eyes darted up to meet his. I hated the fact that I loved him so much. He was right. Love, by definition, was unrequited. One party always loved more.

“Should I be worried?” he demanded.

“What about?” I flipped another page.

“Your ability to read, for one thing. You’re holding it upside down,” he snapped. I closed the book. “You. Us. This.” He motioned between us with his hand.

“No.”

Silence fell between us, but he still wouldn’t leave. I became agitated. It was weird how we started the morning unassumingly, with a strawberry milkshake and a quickie, and how fast we could turn into enemies again.