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When I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare about my own abduction and padded down to the kitchen to find him already there, drinking in the dark and eating Nutella from the jar with a spoon, an extra already laid out on the table beside him as if he knew I’d need it.

Such fleeting lovelinesses that it was easy to forget them in the dark tide of our daily lives, in the whorls of neglect and cold cruelty he often showered me with.

But I remembered each one like a jewel glinting in the gloaming.

Still, a gift?

It seemed too much to believe.

So I took a moment, even though I didn’t want to miss the debrief in the living room, and walked over to the pile of mail Gertie had left on the wooden console table. The box was wrapped in red paper, a Saks Fifth Avenue sticker adhered to the side along with the delivery information.

Cerberus lifted his paws onto the counter, sniffing manically before his lips peeled back so he could growl at the unidentified item.

My fingers shook slightly as I unwrapped it, peeling back the paper and cracking open the tape on the box so I could pull out the tissue paper within. My fingers curled around cardstock. It was a postcard of a self-portrait done by van Gogh with his ear wrapped in gauze.

“Che diavolo?” I murmured as I flipped the card over to find nothing written on the other side.

Why would Dario send me such a thing?

One corner of the paper was damp with something dark and tacky. I traced my thumb over it and raised the rusty residue to my nose.

Metallic like old pennies.

Cerberus started barking, hard, sharp yelps that echoed through the kitchen.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I peered into the box again, removing more tissue paper. At first, it was dry and white, but as I delved deeper, my fingers curled around sodden, soft matter that I retrieved with dread, knowing without having to check that the moisture was blood.

My heart lodged in my throat, threatening to choke me, so I held my breath as I delved to the bottom of the grotesque gift and pulled out the real present.

Fingers shaking so badly I almost dropped it, I held up a sundered human ear, the edges perfectly smooth as if it had been cut off with a laser.

There was a notch missing from the top shell, scabbed over but obvious.

The very same wound Dario had suffered from Serena Nenci’s wayward bullet at the casino last week.

“Oh my God,” Bonnie breathed in shock from over my shoulder, and a moment later, Gertie’s scream filled the house.

Someone had sent me my husband’s ear as a sixth wedding anniversary present.

Chapter Eighteen

Fiammetta

It took a long time after that for the house to settle.

No one wanted to call the cops, but I thought some kind of forensics should be done on the box, so I surreptitiously texted Finn, who was a private investigator and retired police officer and had some serious connections. He returned immediately with the number for a private forensics lab, and I barred anyone else from touching Dario’s severed ear and the contents of the box. My prints were already all over it, so I carefully put everything back into the cardboard and handed it to Luigi, who had become, over the years, more my man than Dario’s.

“Take it to Red,” I asked him softly, referring to Finn’s nickname, given for his auburn hair, so that a scowling Lando wouldn’t know who I was talking about.

“You think you’re going to get anything from that?” my father-in-law scoffed. “These are fucking professionals, girl. They would’ve worn gloves. You’ll get no DNA and nothing from the bogus return address. This is a professional hit.”

My blood froze in my veins. I turned to him woodenly, happy he didn’t look a thing like Dario except for those pale-blue eyes. I couldn’t stand to see my husband in anything or anyone if I couldn’t know for sure he was safe.

“You think he’s dead,” I said flatly.

Lando blinked and crossed his arms over his chest, a classically defensive posture. “Usually a body part in a box means the man who’s been tortured is dead or not long for this world.”

“Who do you think it is?” Carla asked on a shaky exhale.