Chapter Two (Vivian)

Dante came home at nine the next morning, just as I was heading for the door with my coat.

He grabbed my wrist so hard it made my bones ache.

"Vivian, why didn't you kill last night's story?" His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was thick with barely contained anger. "Bella got torn apart all night. Reporters have her building completely surrounded. She can't even leave her apartment!"

I pulled my hand free and rubbed my reddened wrist.

"I warned you yesterday not to go too far. You didn't listen."

He stared at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. "Since when are you this petty? You didn't used to be like this."

He was right. The old me had always followed behind him and cleaned everything up.

So thoroughly that he'd come to think every concession I made was simply his due.

I checked my watch. "The board meeting is at ten. You have an hour. Don't be late."

With that, I turned to go.

I hadn't taken two steps before he yanked me back, and my back hit the wall hard.

Dante braced his hands on the wall, caging me in. His breathing was heavy and fast, and something I couldn't read churned in his eyes.

"Viv."

I went completely still.

Ever since the car accident, he had only ever called me by my full name, Vivian.

The only time in all these years he'd called me Viv was one night when he was drunk. He kissed me and told me, over and over, that he hated me.

"Viv, you can't be that greedy." He spoke right against my ear, every word deliberate. "You chose the Moretti family. Don't think you get my heart too."

He let go and stepped back, and his eyes went cold. "Leave Bella alone. You have no right to tell me what to do."

He went upstairs without looking back.

He didn't see me behind him, braced against the wall, bent over and dry-heaving so hard I couldn't speak.

I watched his tall, straight back, and for a moment I couldn't tell whether this was a dream or real.

The first time I saw Dante, it was raining.

Three days after Lucian Moretti's memorial service, the Moretti uncles, fighting over who would take his place as head of the family, threw nineteen-year-old Dante out of the old house.

I found him outside the gates of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

The boy was clutching a black urn, standing by the iron gate and letting the rain soak him from head to foot. He had no umbrella and made no effort to get out of the rain. He looked like a dog someone had dumped by the side of the road.

I sat in my car and watched him through the curtain of rain for a full ten minutes.

Then I opened the car door.

He turned his head, and I looked up.

It was as if time stopped. I looked at that face, and my heart began to pound wildly.

He looked so much like him.

So much like Lucian at twenty, as if he had stepped across ten years to stand in front of me.

"Dante Moretti?" I reached my hand out of the car window. "Get in."

He held the urn tighter and took a step back.

"Who are you?"

"A friend of your brother's."

He looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, his voice hoarse and broken. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because I can help you take back what belongs to you." I leaned forward and took his ice-cold hand. "On one condition. You have to marry me."

I needed to be Mrs. Moretti.

Only then could I protect that man's family for him.

I brought Dante home to the Ware family and, in front of a room full of my elders, announced that I was going to marry him.

My father smashed the bone china teacup in his hand.

"If you dare marry into the Moretti family, you will never set foot in this house again!"

I didn't hesitate. I took Dante's hand and walked out the door.

At the time, the Moretti family was in pieces. The other families in New York were circling, waiting to carve it up.

The heir to the Ware family had chosen to marry beneath her, and she used her own connections and skill to hold the Moretti family together.

I had only one condition: Dante's share would stay whole, down to the last cent.

Two months later, we were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Not a single member of the Ware family came.

All of New York laughed at me for throwing myself away on a broke kid who was still wet behind the ears.

The day after the wedding, I walked Dante into the Moretti Group's building.

That first year, we treated each other with polite respect.

I thought of him as a younger brother. I taught him to read the books, taught him to negotiate, taught him how to sit at a table and make a room full of old foxes shut up. He always called me "boss" with a perfectly straight face, and if I leaned in a little too close, his ears turned red.

His personality was nothing like Lucian's.

But that face was eighty percent the same. I often caught myself staring at him, lost somewhere else.

In my hands, the Moretti family, which had been on the verge of collapse, came back to life. So did its enemies.

Every time something happened, I stood in front of Dante.

The worst time, he was kidnapped, bound hand and foot, and thrown into the East River.

I went in after him without a second thought.

When I dragged him back to shore, I had hit my forehead on a bridge pier. Blood ran down my face until I couldn't even open my eyes.

To protect him, I truly would have given my life.

At the hospital, Dante held my hand and cried until his eyes were red.

I just smiled, reached up, and wiped away his tears.

On my birthday that year, Dante chartered a yacht, anchored it in front of the Statue of Liberty, and filled the sky with fireworks.

"Viv." He held a huge bouquet of red roses and looked at me carefully, his eyes as bright as stars. "I like you. Can we be a real husband and wife?"

I closed my eyes and kissed him.

And kissed, too, the boy who was never coming back.

Once we were together, Dante was impossibly clingy.

At the office, he stole kisses in the elevator whenever no one was around. At home, he wouldn't let me go. If I pushed him away even a little, he would lower his voice and call me "Viv" and nuzzle into the curve of my neck until I gave in.

But I didn't like it when he called me Viv.

At night, when we were tangled together, I always made him call me "Vivi."

He didn't know that was what someone else used to call me.

To please me, he wore only black and white shirts and suits. He had perfect eyesight, but he started wearing a pair of thin-framed glasses with clear lenses.

The way I looked at him grew more fevered by the day.

As if that man had really come back to me.

It didn't last.

On the way to inspect the port in New Jersey, a truck slammed into the side of Dante's car. He was rushed into surgery, and no one knew whether he would live.

And that day of all days was the day of the family meeting. The meeting that was supposed to confirm him as head of the Moretti family.

When the news reached the conference room, several of the old capos immediately started talking about replacing him.

I stood outside the operating room for a long time.

In the end, I turned and left the hospital and took my people straight to the meeting.

The fight that day was ugly. In the end, using the connections and standing I'd built up in the family over the years, I took the head seat.

That same day, all the dirty dealings of those Moretti uncles came to light, one after another, and federal agents took them away on the spot.

I had a reason I couldn't avoid. But I didn't tell Dante a word of it.

As soon as Dante woke up, I rushed to his room.

His face was still pale, but his eyes were as cold as ice.

"Vivian, the family's seat matters more than my life, doesn't it?"

I knew he would blame me. But that day, I hadn't had a choice.

I was about to explain when he laughed. He kept laughing until the tears started falling.

"I could never figure out why you helped me for no reason." He looked at me. "So what you wanted all along was the Moretti family."

"Dante, it isn't like that..."

"You win." He cut me off, his voice hoarse and cold. "The family is yours. Don't bother me until I'm discharged."

After Dante got out of the hospital, he took the head seat as everyone expected, and then he threw every bit of the work onto me.

He started staying out all night, walking in and out of clubs and hotels with one woman after another on his arm. Sometimes he even brought them home, into our bedroom, into our bed.

Again and again, I went to drag him home. Again and again, I buried the stories.

At first it still hurt. Later, there was only numbness.

Dante hated me. This was how he punished me.

But I felt guilty toward him, so all I could do was indulge him, again and again.

We went from the loving couple everyone envied to a bitter pair, tormenting each other under the same roof for all these years.

But only today did I finally see it clearly: he was nothing like Lucian.

I had been dreaming this dream for five years. It was time to wake up.

On the way to the office, I had Margot book me a one-way ticket to Boston.