Eight years after my husband,Don Damien Vestrani, was killed in a shootout, my best friend, Celeste Marlowe, was gone too. I coughed up blood when the news reached me, but I still forced myself to her funeral. In the visitation room, someone leaned in close to my brother, the one handling the funeral arrangements, and murmured under his breath. “When are you going to tell your sister the truth?” “Celeste has loved Damian in silence all these years. She deserves to be buried beside him—as his wife,his Donna.” My feet stopped as if they had been nailed to the floor. I watched my brother, Julian Ashford, run his fingertips gently across Celeste’s memorial portrait, his voice hoarse. “Damien never wanted anyone to know.” “I married Celeste because I gave him my word. That I’d look after her and the boy for him.” “I’ll have Celeste buried beside Damien. It’s what they both wanted.” That double plot. My husband had chosen it himself, on the highest ridge of Forest Hill Cemetery. And all along, the woman he had meant to lie beside was never me. The triple betrayal of blood, friendship, and love shattered me in a single breath. The room went dark, and I fell backward. When I opened my eyes again, I was in a wedding gown, standing at the altar of the church. Celeste stood in her bridesmaid’s dress, her eyes rimmed red, gazing at Damien. “May the two of you have a long life together.” I stayed silent for a few seconds, then tore off my veil and ran out of the church without looking back. “Sloane!” I had barely reached the doors when Julian, closest to me, caught my wrist. After our parents died in that “incident,” he was the only blood I had left in this world. And yet even he had been keeping the truth from me. Julian’s brow furrowed as he pulled me back. “Today of all days is not the time for a tantrum.” His grip was hard enough that my tears came almost at once. Damien caught up to us, his face full of concern. “Sloane, what’s wrong?” “Is there something you’re not happy with? Tell me. I’ll fix it.” He was exactly as I remembered him. Tender, attentive. The kind of man in whom you couldn’t find a single flaw. He had been the same in my last life. Every dollar that moved through the Vestrani ledgers, I knew about. Every meeting he took out of state, every trip to Europe. He told me himself, before he went. Even the secrets only a Consigliere had any right to hear, he laid at my feet without holding a single one back. And yet this near perfect man had been tangled up with my best friend the whole time. For forty years he had conspired with everyone I loved to keep me in the dark. I sniffed hard and forced it all down. “Damien. I’m not marrying you. We’re through.” Damien’s composure cracked in an instant. “Sloane, what has upset you? Just tell me.” “Whatever it is, I can change it. Please. Just tell me.” He stripped himself of every ounce of pride. so completely that even the guests grew uncomfortable, and started murmuring behind their hands. “That is Don Damien, and she still won’t have him?” “You don’t think she has someone else, do you?” Julian’s face darkened, his anger just barely leashed. “Look at what Damien’s spoiling has done to you.” “I honestly don’t know what game you’re playing. Half the great families on the East Coast would give anything to marry a daughter into the Vestranis,and not one of them has managed it.” His sentence broke off, and his eyes drifted, of their own accord, to Celeste, a few paces away. She was staring at me like everyone else was. Startled. But beneath the surprise, buried very deep, was something that looked almost like hope. I curled the corner of my mouth into a mocking half smile, met Damien’s eyes, and asked him softly. “I’ll ask you once. Have you lied to me?” Something flickered in the back of his eyes. A flash of panic. But his answer came steady. “Of course not.” “How could I ever lie to you?” The words had barely left his lips when the sky beyond the church split open into blossoms of fireworks, light spilling down in ribbons, beautiful beyond belief. By the schedule, this was the exact moment we should have finished our vows and kissed in front of every guest. But now, that whole blazing sky was nothing to me but the punchline of some enormous, cruel joke. I looked at Damien, and I laughed. Then I turned, gathered my skirts, and ran out of the church. By the time I got home, one of my Louboutins was gone, lost somewhere behind me. Like a wounded child, I hid myself in the deepest cabinet at the back of the walk in closet. Half an hour later, they came home. Maybe they had forgotten my old habit of hiding in cabinets. Maybe the things they had to say had waited long enough. They swept the upstairs in a hurried search and decided I wasn’t there. The next thing I heard was Damien’s voice, dropped low into a snarl. “I told you. I told you to find some excuse, any excuse, not to show up at that wedding. Why couldn’t you listen?” Celeste choked back a sob. “I’m her best friend, Damien. If I hadn’t been there, do you think she wouldn’t have wondered?” “Don’t you shout at me. Do you think it was easy for me, standing there watching you marry someone else?” Julian’s voice cut in, low and heavy. “Enough. Don’t blame Celeste. She’s already been through enough.” “If we’re blaming anyone, blame Sloane for being spoiled. Leave her alone. She’ll come to her senses in a few days.” He paused, and then he asked. “Damien. Are you certain you want to marry Sloane? There’s still time.” Damien cut him off without hesitation. “I’ve told you. Sloane is the one I love. What happened with Celeste was an accident.” “An accident? Damien, put your hand on your heart and say that again. If it was really an accident, why did you come to me last night?” The words had barely left Celeste’s mouth when she doubled over, clutching her belly, and cried out. “My stomach. Oh God, my stomach.” “Celeste!” “Celeste!” In a flurry of panic, Damien and Julian rushed Celeste to the hospital. Once they were gone, I pushed the cabinet door open. My face was already ice cold with tears. I pulled out my phone and called an old friend. “That asset management post you mentioned. The one in Oslo. Five year contract. I’ll take it.” “Yes. I can be on a plane in three days.” Norway. Far from this land soaked through with family blood. Far from every single person I had once believed I could give my life to.
I found myself grateful, in the end, that Damien and I had only done the church ceremony, and had never made it to City Hall. If we had, breaking away from him would have been a great deal messier than it already was. I spent the whole afternoon packing. While I was sorting through my documents, I found a photograph tucked into the lining of my wallet. It was of the three of us. I stood in the middle, my left arm through Damien’s, my right arm through Celeste’s, my eyes crinkled into two half moons. Julian had taken the picture. At the time, I had thought there wasn’t a happier person in the world than me. Looking at it now, all I could think was how spectacularly stupid I had been. I drew a long breath and forced myself out of the false comfort of the memory. Just then, Damien called. “Baby, something’s come up over here. I have to handle it.” “Have dinner without me. I’ll come home later and make you a midnight snack, okay?” I tore the photograph into pieces, dropped them into the trash, and said softly: “I told you. We’re over.” “I don’t accept that we’re over.” There was an urgency in his voice on the other end, as though he had more to say. Then, in the background, a familiar voice broke in. “Damien, the doctor said…” Celeste never got to finish. Damien cut the line dead. A text came through immediately after. 【Bad signal on my end. We’ll talk when I’m home.】 【But I’ll say it again. I don’t accept a breakup.】 Watching him keep at the lie, right down to this moment. Something inside me quietly went out. At that exact moment, Celeste posted to Instagram. The photo was of two men’s hands. One was peeling an apple for her. The other was massaging her leg. Being surrounded by the man I love and my best brother. Life is a blessing. I tapped like. A second later, the post, which she had clearly forgotten to hide from my account, vanished. From the curtains in the background and the logo on the headboard, I recognized the place. Beacon Hill Private Clinic. The Vestrani family’s own preferred hospital. Some things, I decided, needed to end. It took me a while to find Celeste’s room. But just before I pushed the door open, I heard Julian’s voice. “Damien. This baby. What are you planning to do?” My hand froze on the handle. I suddenly remembered the child who had called me Aunt Sloane in my last life. Damien and I had never had children of our own. So I had loved that “niece” as though she were my own daughter. Never once suspecting she was the child of my husband and my best friend. Through the gap in the door, Damien’s face was blurred. “The baby can’t stay. Sloane will suspect.” Celeste’s expression, which had been so hopeful, twisted into something ugly. “Damien! Are you even human? This is your child!” Julian reached out, trying to steady her. He pressed his lips together and made the same choice he had made in the life before. “We’ll say the baby is mine. Sloane will only be happy. She won’t think twice.” “And it’ll make it easier for you to be around the child later.” The room fell into silence. At length, Damien nodded. The weight in his face finally eased, and he softened his voice into something coaxing. “I’ll get a vasectomy in a while. Don’t worry. This will be the only child I ever have. Consider it my apology to you.” “We’ll tell everyone that Sloane is the one who can’t conceive. I know a private doctor in Zurich. He can prescribe something that won’t show up on any test she runs on herself. Every result will point back to her.” I gripped the handle so hard I couldn’t move. So this was how it was. In my last life I had carried that guilt like an idiot for forty years. I had flown to every top fertility clinic in North America. Even done IVF. Eight times. Every single cycle had failed. It had never crossed my mind that the whole thing was a trap, laid for me, by hand, by the three people I loved most in the world. Just then, a nurse’s voice came from behind me. “Ma’am? Are you looking for someone?” In the same instant, all three sets of eyes inside the room swung toward the door.
Meeting their stunned faces, I pushed the door open and walked in. “Sloane, listen. Let me explain.” I gave a short, brittle laugh, picked up the chart from the foot of the bed, and pointed at the words threatened miscarriage. I asked him quietly. “Explain what, exactly? Explain how, precisely, you managed to get her pregnant?” “Or explain how you ended up in bed with my best friend in the first place?” “Or perhaps explain how, going forward, my own brother is going to raise your and Celeste’s daughter right in front of my eyes?” My voice was flatter than I had expected of myself. But the slight tremor at the end gave away the thing that was almost swallowing what was left of my reason. Damien opened his mouth. Nothing came out. My gaze moved from the panic on his face to Julian’s forced composure, and finally to Celeste — to the relief of someone who no longer had to hide. And across Celeste, across the relief of someone who no longer had to hide. I pulled my mouth into a thin curve and uncurled my hand, where my nails had cut into the skin of my palm. I was turning to leave when Damien caught me from behind. “Sloane, it isn’t what it looks like. It was an accident.” “Please. Let’s not do this.” At that exact moment, a button on his shirt popped loose. A patch of skin at his collarbone was suddenly visible. I caught it out of the corner of my eye and nearly gagged. There was a bright red mark there. The kind that made it very clear how far things had gone the night before. I shoved him off me. Damien staggered back, off balance, and his elbow caught the electric kettle on the cabinet. The back of his hand went red at once from the scalding water. “What are you doing?” Celeste lifted his hand up to inspect it, her face full of pity. “You wanted to know when it started, didn’t you? Fine. I’ll tell you!” “Shut your mouth!” She ignored Damien’s roar, keeping her eyes on me. Hatred rose slowly to the surface of them. “The night of your twentieth birthday. Damien said there was an emergency with the family. I said I had a fever. Did it never once occur to you how convenient that was?” “Celeste!” Celeste’s mouth curled into a cutting little smile. “After that night, he couldn’t stay away from me.” “You know why? Because I was his first.” “Because he told me, in his own words, that what he had with me was two souls answering each other, and what he had with you was a political marriage between the Five Families. One more piece of business he owed the old man.” “Sloane, from where I’m standing, you’re the one who came in second.” From her first sentence I had been biting down on the tip of my tongue. By the time she was done, the inside of my mouth was full of blood. I raised my hand and slapped her across the face. But in the same instant, Julian’s arm shot out and shoved me hard. “Sloane, have you lost your mind?” “Do you not understand that she’s pregnant?” I lost my footing and went backward. My forehead struck the corner of the table before I could brace. The skin split, and blood ran freely down my face. Slowly, everything went dark. When I came to, before I could even open my eyes, I heard Celeste crying. “Damien. The doctor said this may be the last time I ever conceive.” “If I lose this baby, I’ll never be a mother. Not in this lifetime.” Damien was silent for a few seconds. Then he gave his answer. “Then have the baby.” “When she wakes up, I’ll talk her into adopting the child. It’s the best outcome for everyone.” Celeste stopped crying. “And if she says no?” Damien’s voice slowly turned to ice. “You think she’s in a position to say no?” “The Ashford Don and Donna are long gone. Julian may be her brother, but he stands with me.” “Apart from the three of us, who does she have in this world?” I gripped the sheet, ready on pure instinct to sit up. But then Celeste dropped her voice lower. “And what if she finds out about that?” “That’s two lives, Damien. Two.”
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