“Is this one of those times you tell me not to do something just to see me do it and prove to me that I care?” I barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes.

She shrugged.

“Yes.”

“Then prepare to be underwhelmed, Sterling. If Francesca is carrying my child, I will be there for both of them, but I will not beg for forgiveness.”

“Good.” Sterling patted my arm. “Because frankly, I’m not sure she’ll give it to you.”

Three days had passed since I packed my bags and left.

I didn’t leave my room at my parents’ house, not even to go to school, dreading the moment I’d come face to face with Angelo, not to mention my father.

When Angelo and I went to a hotel together, it was mainly to do what we needed to do all those months ago and never had the chance—talked about what we were and weren’t.

He tried to persuade me to take off and leave.

“We could raise the baby together. I’ve got savings.”

“Angelo, I’m not going to mess up your life so you can save mine.”

“You’re not messing up anything. We will have children of our own. We’ll create a life for ourselves.”

“If I run away with you, both Wolfe and The Outfit will look for us. They will find us. And while Wolfe might be happy to divorce and discard me, my father would never let us live it down.”

“I can get us fake passports.”

“Angelo, I want to stay.”

And it was true. I needed to stay here, despite everything, and perhaps even because of everything. My marriage was a sham, my father had disowned me, and my mother didn’t even have a say about what china we’d dine with, let alone the ability to help me.

Angelo had called several times and even showed up at my door once to see how I was doing, but Clara shooed him away. My father took two business trips and stayed at Mama’s Pizza for the majority of my visit so far, which surprised no one at all.

Mama and Clara were my near-constant companions. They fed and bathed me and told me that my husband would come to his senses and seek me out.

They said that the minute he learned I was pregnant, he would drop everything and beg for my forgiveness. But I knew Wolfe did not want to become a father. And coming forward and telling him about the pregnancy would mean crawling back to him. I had allowed him to stomp on my pride one too many times.

This time, he would have to come to me.

Not to get a kick out of it—but because I genuinely needed to know that he cared.

Three days after I left Wolfe’s mansion, Clara opened the door to my room and announced, “You have a visitor, little one.”

I jumped out of bed, feeling woozy, hopeful, and excited all at the same time. So he was here, after all. And he wanted to talk. That was a good sign, right? Unless he wanted to serve me with divorce papers. But, knowing Wolfe, he was the type to send someone else over to hand them to me. Once he truly cut you out of his life, he wouldn’t bother making the trip. Clara saw the light flicking on behind my eyes as I rushed toward the vanity mirror, slapping my cheeks to make myself look livelier and flushed, then applying a generous layer of lip gloss. She lowered her head, fiddling with her thumbs.

“It’s Ms. Sterling.”

“Oh.” I blinked, tossing the lip gloss aside and wiping my hands over my thighs. “How nice of her to stop by. Thank you, Clara.”

In the salon, Clara served us tea and pandoro. Ms. Sterling sat with her back straight, her pinky lifted in the air over her tea cup, and her lips pursed with barely restrained fury. I stared into my cup of tea, wishing she’d both talk and never open her mouth at the same time. What if she came to tell me Wolfe and I were over? She certainly didn’t look pleased.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I finally asked her when it became apparent that we could sit like this for long, soundless minutes.

“Because you’re a fool, and he is a complete idiot. Together, you make the perfect couple. Which begs the question—why are you here and he is there?” She slammed her tea cup on the table, causing the hot liquid to swoosh from side to side.

“Well, the obvious answer is because he hates me.” I picked invisible lint from my pajama pants. “And the secondary one is because he married me so he could ruin my father and everything he cares about.”

“I can’t sit and listen to this nonsense any longer. How could you be so dense?” She threw her arms in the air.

“How do you mean?”

“Wolfe never entertained himself with the idea of marriage and a wife. Not until he saw you for the first time. You were never in his plan. He never spoke of you. Barely even knew about your existence until he saw you. Which leads me to believe that his spontaneous decision had less to do about your father and more to do with the fact that he simply wanted you for himself and knew that courting you was out of the question. Since he had leverage on your father, he thought it would be a win-win scenario. But it wasn’t.” She shook her head. “You made things harder for him. Messier. He could have had your father locked in prison for life if it wasn’t for you. The minute you stepped into the picture—he wanted something of your father’s, and they both had things to bargain. You didn’t help Wolfe’s plan. You sabotaged it.”

“Wolfe is doing the best he can to ruin my father’s business.”

“But he is still out and about, is he not? Your father tried to assassinate him, and Wolfe still held his wedding in this house. The boy has had it bad for you from the moment he saw your face.”

I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry. I’d seen Ms. Sterling going to extreme measures to try and patch things up between Wolfe and me, but this was stretching it, even by her standards.

“What kind of leverage does he have on my father?” I changed the subject before my eyes decided to spontaneously leak again.

Ms. Sterling raised her tea cup to her mouth, glancing at me from behind the rim.

I didn’t think she’d actually answer, much less that she would know what was going on, but she surprised me on both matters.

“Your father is paying off the governor, Preston Bishop, and Felix White, the man in charge of Chicago’s Police Department, a handsome monthly fee in exchange for their silence and full cooperation. Wolfe’s investigators found out about this not too many months ago. Since Senator Keaton was always in the habit of playing with his food, he decided to torture your father a little before airing his dirty laundry. Have you ever wondered why he never hit a home run?”

I munched on my lower lip. My father had murdered Wolfe’s brother and then his adoptive parents. He then tried to assassinate him right after burning down an entire pub just to get rid of Wolfe’s briefcase.

Yet Wolfe never striked back.

And it wasn’t as if he was incapable of ruining my father.

“I’m guessing the answer is me,” I said. She was relentless.

Ms. Sterling smiled, leaning forward. I thought she was going to pat my thigh as she often did, but no. She clutched onto my cheek, forcing me to look into her eyes.

“You took a hammer and broke down his walls, brick by brick. I watched as they collapsed, how he scrambled to try and rebuild them every time he left your room. Your love story was no fairy tale. More like a witch tale. Wicked and real and painful. I swooned when he began to seek you out in the house. When I noticed he was spending less time in his office and more time in the garden. I was thrilled when he gave you gifts, took you places, and showed you off, barely able to contain his joy every time you entered his vicinity. And I must admit, I was relieved to see him breaking down in your room, devastated and guilt-stricken, when he found your pregnancy test in your pillowcase.”

My head reared back, and I shot her a helpless glance.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Her eyes crinkled with naked joy.

He knew. They both knew. Yet Wolfe still hadn’t come for me. Contradicting, fierce emotions of excitement, dread, and fear stunned me into silence.

“Francesca?” Ms. Sterling probed, nudging my hand. I ducked my head down, not daring to see what was on her face.

“It doesn’t matter. Too many things have happened. I cheated on him, and he cheated on me.”

“Love is stronger than hate.”

“How can he love me after all the bad blood between our families?” My head shot up, tears clinging to my lower lashes. “He can’t.”

“He can,” Ms. Sterling insisted. “Forgiving is one of his more beautiful virtues.”

“Right.” I snorted out a laugh. “Tell that to my father.”

“Your father never asked for forgiveness. But I did. And Wolfe? He forgave me.”

She put her tea down and straightened her spine, delivering the information with a schooled chin and a steady voice.

“I’m Wolfe Keaton’s biological mother. A recovering alcoholic who was too busy drinking herself to death to fix my son dinner on the night he watched his brother, Romeo, get shot to death by your father. After that happened, the Keatons took him. I couldn’t fight the system, and Romeo’s death shook me out of my addiction. I went to rehab, and after I completed my time in the facility, I trickled back into Wolfe’s life—his real name is Fabio, by the way. Fabio Nucci.” She smiled, looking down. “At first, he wanted nothing to do with me. He was blind with anger about my alcoholism, getting thrown into the system, and about how I couldn’t bring myself to fix him dinner so he dragged his brother to Mama’s Pizza. But as time passed, he allowed me back into his life. His adoptive parents hired me as his live-in nanny even though he was a pre-teen. They just wanted us to be together. After they were killed in that explosion…” She sucked in a breath. Tears glittered in her eyes when she spoke of her late employers. “It was two years after I completed my work at the Keatons. When Wolfe turned eighteen. I was working at Sam’s Club when he rehired me to run his mansion. He is taking care of me more than I’m taking care of him after I betrayed him in the worst possible way. I wasn’t able to protect him and his brother from the cruel neighborhood they grew up in.”