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They were gone.

The only family I had ever known.

My harsh but loving father.

My absent but doting brothers.

The home I’d grown up in, the city I loved, the country I’d called my own.

It was all lost to me.

More than just the death of my loved ones, it felt like the erasure of my entire life. Who was I if not Fiammetta Cavallaro, the daughter of the Sicilian capo dei capi, the sister of its heir and spare?

I had never been allowed to define myself for myself, and now the entire galaxy I’d orbited in had been swallowed by a black hole.

So I mourned for my papà, I mourned for my brothers, and I mourned for myself. The girl who died as surely on the steps of that cathedral as the others had.

“Who am I now?” I sobbed.

Carla’s hands cupped my cheeks firmly enough to tip my tear-slicked face up so I could look her in the eyes. They held a ferocity and a tenderness that made me able to draw a deep breath for the first time in long minutes.

“You are Fiammetta Ferretti now,” she said with such conviction the words seemed to vibrate through her body into mine. “A woman of power in a city owned by the Family you married into. It’s up to you to define your place in it. What kind of mafioso’s wife will you be?”

“H-he hates me,” I admitted, too broken open to care about how vulnerable that made me.

Carla’s mouth ticked into a slight smile. “My son does not hate you, but he is not a kind man or one who is easily distracted from his tasks. Don’t let that unsettle you, lovely. Think of it as an opportunity, the way I did when I was young and first married to his father. You have the space and freedom from his interest to cultivate yourself into the kind of woman you want to be. You just have to decide who that is.”

“I never want to feel like this again,” I wept, dragging my wrist under my leaking nose. “Rudderless and lost at sea.”

Carla made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat and swept her thumbs under my still-tearing eyes. “Well then. You won’t. Knowledge is power, my dear. If you want to have a place in Chicago, you have to make one for yourself.”

“But how?” I asked. “All I’ve ever been is sheltered to keep me out of harm’s way.”

“And look how that turned out,” she cooed. “May I suggest leaving the house sometime? Bonnie tells me you’ve been haunting the mansion like a ghost. Networking, I’ve found, is the surest way to gain power. Why don’t I introduce you around town this weekend, hmm? We can have a girls’ lunch with some of the other Mafia wives. There’s someone I particularly want you to meet, a woman just a few years older than you named Alessia. She has fire, just like you.”

“I don’t feel fiery,” I muttered, the hollowness in my chest so expansive I could feel the echo of my heart pinging around the empty space.

“You will,” Carla vowed. “Women in this life are always underestimated. Don’t you want to give them—even my son—a reason to fear you?”

I blinked up at her, unable to resist the natural inclination to tip my cheek into the palm of her hand like a kitten seeking comfort. “Yes,” I admitted. “I’m so sick of being the one who’s afraid all the time.”

“Well then,” Carla said with a wide, gorgeous smile that filled some of my cavernous chest cavity with warmth. “Let’s see to it that it never happens again. To start, I’ll make you an appointment with my doctor. We don’t need you barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, tethered to Dario’s needs by your apron strings. We’ll make a strong, independent woman of you yet.”

Later that night, so much later the sky was an ink-dark spill across the horizon and only the most uncivilized people were still awake, I waited in the dark of my husband’s bedroom for him to return home.

When the clock on his bedside table read 3:30 a.m., the door clicked open, and a flood of warm light from the hall spilled into the wide suite.

I watched from the shadowed corner as Dario stepped into the room in a dismantled suit, already pulling off his loosened tie so he could shuck it carelessly to the floor. I had forgotten just how large he was, his figure so imposing it sent a prey response through my blood, a little shiver that coaxed me to get out of there while I still could.

I forced my back harder into the chair and clasped my hands tightly in my lap so they wouldn’t tremble.

Knowledge was power.

And I wanted my husband to know I was done being a victim.

His victim.

“Good evening, marito mio,” I said softly.