Chapter4

The next morning, Nico and Serafina walked into the Cavalieri Shipping building together.

On paper, it was a forty-year-old shipping company. Docks, warehouses, ocean freight, clean books.

I had been a client director there for three years, and I'd always believed it was just a family business.

Whatever lay beneath those books was something I had never been allowed to know.

But in the year I spent working the docks, I saw things. The warehouse supervisors and crane operators would stop what they were doing when Nico walked by, lower their heads, and say, "Sir." That wasn't how employees greeted a boss.

Congratulations echoed across the open-plan floor. I sat at my desk, sorting through handover files one by one.

In three years, I had closed eleven long-term shipping route contracts for the company.

If I was leaving, every client file had to be archived properly.

Diane from HR came to my desk holding a folder. She looked uncomfortable.

"Nora, do you have a few minutes this afternoon? It's about your department's promotion list."

I looked up. "Promotion?"

"The list came in last night. Mr. Cavalieri says the credit for the port expansion project belongs to Serafina Conti, and he wants her fast-tracked to client director." She lowered her voice. "But I remember you ran that project from start to finish. I wanted to check with you first."

Client director. My job.

He was handing her my position, along with three years of my work.

The port expansion had taken me a full year. That was the year I saw a certain cargo manifest.

There was a container number on it that didn't exist in any of the company's systems, yet it had been unloaded at Pier 3.

I took it to Nico. He folded the page in half and slipped it into his pocket.

"Stop asking."

He wasn't angry. It was a warning.

I was quiet for a moment. "Diane, I'll give the company the complete record for that project. Every email, every sign-off, every client exchange. I've kept all of it."

My phone buzzed. Nico.

"Serafina just took over that project. If her promotion gets shot down publicly, she'll be humiliated, and it'll look bad for the Contis. Let her have this one. I've already planned your next move. I'll make you vice president next month. Trust me, I haven't forgotten you. At the end of the day, the company does what I say."

I didn't answer.

I logged into the internal system and filed a formal dispute over the project credit, attaching every record from launch to signing.

In less than half a day, the dispute was approved. Serafina's promotion was rejected.

When the notification popped up, I leaned back in my chair and let out a long breath.

My phone buzzed again.

"If you're done throwing a fit, come home. I booked a table at your favorite restaurant."

That afternoon, when I came out of a meeting, the air on the floor had changed.

People passing my desk looked away. From the break room came low voices. "Is that her?" "She doesn't look like the type."

I went back to my desk and checked my phone. The company group chat was flooded with messages from Serafina.

"A certain Ms. Bennett has been harassing my fiancé for a long time. When he turned her down, she maliciously reported my promotion. When is the company going to do something about this?"

Beneath it was a string of screenshots of my messages with Nico.

Cropped, pieced together, stripped of context, they made me look like I had been begging him.

Our relationship had never been public, not once in three years.

That message had been up for almost an hour, and he hadn't said a word to correct it.

And those screenshots could only have come from his phone.

There was a stir at the entrance. Serafina walked in carrying a steaming cup of coffee and stopped right in front of my desk.

She flicked her wrist.

Scalding coffee splashed across my keyboard, my files, and the back of my hand. I shot to my feet.

Coffee ran off the edge of the desk and soaked into my skirt. The entire floor went silent. Everyone was watching.

"You stole my promotion, and you won't leave my fiancé alone," Serafina said, loud enough for every desk to hear. "Is there anything you won't do?"

I looked down at the red, burned skin on the back of my hand.

When I looked up again, Nico was standing two steps behind her.

"Aren't you going to explain?" I asked him.

He paused. Then he said, "Everything Serafina said is true. Please don't contact us again."

The whispers around us grew louder.

Serafina stood beside him and gave me a smile only I could see. She leaned in, her voice as soft as a secret.

"That manifest from Pier 3, you've seen it, haven't you? I'd be smart if I were you. In families like ours, outsiders who know too much and won't keep quiet don't usually end well."

Nico leaned down too, voice low. "You killed her promotion. She's upset. Let her blow off some steam. I'll make it up to you later. The VP job is yours. Isn't that enough?"

I'll make it up to you later.

The words pressed over my mouth like a soaking wet cloth.

I opened my phone to find our real messages. The thread was empty. My photos had been wiped.

He was the only one who knew my passcode.

To keep Serafina happy, he had erased every trace of our three years.

I thought about that manifest. Serafina wasn't fighting with me. She was putting a label on me.

In their world, that label could get you killed.

I copied the entire archive for the port project to my personal email.

I sat back down in my coffee-soaked chair, clicked open the resignation form, changed the effective date to today, and submitted it.

Then I opened the airline app and moved my flight from tomorrow morning to tonight.

Departure, 9:40 p.m.

Boarding in five hours.

I stood up and shut down my computer.