Chapter 2

The next morning, I woke on the bedroom rug with no memory of how I’d gotten there.

Three alarms were waiting on my phone.

[Take levetiracetam.]

[Meet Elias.]

[Do not tell Roman.]

I had written the last one myself, but I stared at it for almost a minute before the meaning clicked into place.

By ten, a landscaping crew was dismantling the white gardenia greenhouse outside the east wing. Roman had walked out of a family summit on my eighteenth birthday and ordered it built before sunrise. Now workers carried the last potted tree onto a truck while crates of Sienna’s burgundy ranunculus went into the ballroom.

I wasn’t destroying anything. I was clearing space that no longer belonged to me.

That afternoon, I met Elias at a quiet restaurant in SoHo. He came from an old Boston political family and was, in Roman’s eyes, the perfect choice: clean, safe, and far enough from the DeLuca world that I wouldn’t be dragged into it.

Elias put down his menu the moment he saw me. “You look worse than you did last week. What did the doctors say?”

I slid the latest scans across the table. On the black-and-white image, the shadow spreading through my left temporal lobe looked like ink bleeding through paper. “It’s growing fast. Dr. Weiss says the surgery could damage my speech and long-term memory. I might also…not wake up.”

“Does Roman know?”

“No.”

“Mara, he has a right—”

“He doesn’t. The guardianship ended when I turned eighteen. He has no right to decide my treatment, and I won’t drop a life he may not be able to save at his feet on his wedding day.”

I took a dark green folder from my bag. It held the deeds to three bonded warehouses at Pier Seven, Bennett Maritime’s permanent voting proxy, and the brass key to my father’s private vault.

The pier was the last piece of my parents’ company and the real reason the DeLucas had been ambushed seven years ago. My parents had rammed an armored truck through the blockade, put a badly wounded Roman on a rescue boat, and died inside the burning warehouse before they could follow him.

Roman had spent seven years keeping me alive. Giving the pier back was the only way I knew to end the debt with me.

“Give him this after the ceremony. If I don’t come out of surgery, tell him I never regretted living at the DeLuca estate.”

Elias left the folder untouched. “You love the man, and you want me to deliver your effects like I’m your lawyer.”

“I used to love him.”

The words didn’t hurt as much as I had expected. Maybe the tumor was stealing more than memories. The shame, longing, and need that had once kept me awake were fading with them. Roman had pushed me away with a knife, and my own brain was finishing the cut.

Elias finally took the folder. He promised he wouldn’t say a word before the wedding ended.

When I returned to the estate, Nora, the housekeeper, handed me a silver-gray medical case from Switzerland. Inside were the frame for surgical navigation, my hospital wristband, and a basic phone loaded with emergency contacts.

I deleted the names from my old phone one by one until only Elias and Dr. Anja Weiss remained.

Roman’s name stayed on the screen for a long time.

In the end, I couldn’t delete him. I only changed the contact from Home to Roman DeLuca.