Chapter 1 - The Thirteenth Day
My husband abandoned me when I was nine months pregnant and only days from giving birth.
For thirteen days, he stayed in Paris with the woman he had never stopped loving, never knowing I had already delivered our daughter, emptied my life from his mansion, and left one thing behind on his nightstand.
Divorce papers.
With my signature already waiting beneath them.
My name is Emily Carter Moretti, and my husband, Vincent Moretti, was one of the most powerful Mafia bosses in Chicago.
He controlled casinos, shipping companies, luxury hotels, construction firms, and an underground empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Men twice his age lowered their heads when he entered a room.
Judges answered his phone calls.
Businessmen who would not return a senator's messages called Vincent back before the second ring.
He was thirty-eight years old, six feet three, broad-shouldered, cold-eyed, and disciplined enough that nobody ever saw him lose control.
Except perhaps me.
I had been his wife for four years.
And for four years, I had lived in one of the most beautiful prisons in Illinois.
The Moretti mansion stood north of Chicago behind stone walls, iron gates, security cameras, armed guards, and enough land that the city seemed to disappear once you drove through the entrance.
When I first moved in, I thought it was magnificent.
Marble floors.
Crystal chandeliers.
A library with two floors.
A wine cellar larger than my childhood apartment.
A bedroom that looked like it belonged inside a European palace.
Vincent told me everything in the house was mine.
I believed him.
What I did not understand then was that being given access to everything was not the same thing as being given someone's heart.
Vincent was generous.
Painfully generous.
If I mentioned liking a necklace in passing, it appeared in a velvet box the next morning.
When I once admired a handbag in a magazine, he bought the entire collection.
After I casually told him I liked the Amalfi Coast, he purchased a villa overlooking the Mediterranean and handed me the keys during breakfast.
I used to tell myself that this was how a man like Vincent Moretti expressed affection.
He had grown up in a brutal world.
His father had been murdered when Vincent was twenty-two.
His older brother had died two years later.
By thirty, Vincent had taken control of the Moretti organization and transformed it from a violent street empire into something far wealthier and more sophisticated.
He did not talk about feelings.
He solved problems.
He bought things.
He protected people.
And because he rarely said the word love, I convinced myself expensive gestures meant the same thing.
Then there was Sophia Bennett.
Vincent's first love.
Her name existed in our marriage long before she physically returned to Chicago.
I had seen photographs of her buried inside old family albums.
Sophia and Vincent at seventeen.
Sophia sitting on the hood of his first car.
Sophia at twenty wearing Vincent's leather jacket.
Sophia beside him at his mother's birthday dinner.
They had grown up together.
Everyone knew the story.
Vincent had loved Sophia before he had power, money, enemies, or blood on his hands.
They were supposed to marry.
Then Sophia left Chicago.
Depending on whom you asked, she had either been afraid of the Moretti family or unwilling to spend her life beside a man destined to become part of it.
She moved to Paris.
Vincent never followed.
Years later, he met me.
I was twenty-six and working as an interior designer when we crossed paths at a charity dinner.
Vincent asked me to have coffee.
Three months later, he proposed.
A year after that, I became Mrs. Vincent Moretti.
I did not understand until much later that a person could marry someone new while still leaving an entire room in his heart untouched.
Sophia returned to our lives during the second year of our marriage.
At first, it was occasional.
A birthday message.
A phone call.
A visit when she came to Chicago.
Vincent said they were old friends.
I tried to behave like a secure wife.
Then the phone calls became longer.
The dinners became more frequent.
He never openly humiliated me.
Vincent was too controlled for that.
But little things started happening.
Once, I prepared dinner because Vincent had promised to be home by eight.
At ten-thirty, he texted that Sophia had experienced a family emergency.
He came home after midnight.
Another time, we were supposed to spend our anniversary in New York.
Sophia called the evening before our flight because her mother was undergoing surgery.
Vincent canceled our trip.
He sent me a diamond bracelet worth more than my childhood home.
I wore it once.
Then I put it inside the safe.
The worst part was how easily I learned to make excuses for him.
Until I became pregnant.
Vincent wanted children.
At least, I believed he did.
The first time he saw the ultrasound, something changed in his face.
For perhaps three seconds, the terrifying Vincent Moretti looked almost frightened.
"That's ours?" he asked.
I laughed.
"Unless the doctor is showing us somebody else's baby."
He stared at the screen.
Then he reached for my hand.
That night, he ordered the east wing of the mansion renovated into a nursery.
For several months, I believed our daughter would finally close the distance between us.
Vincent attended appointments.
He hired Chicago's most respected obstetrician.
He installed additional security.
He bought so many baby clothes that I teased him our daughter would require three childhoods to wear everything.
Then Sophia called.
It happened thirteen days before Vincent returned home to an empty mansion.
I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant.
My ankles were swollen.
My back hurt.
Sleeping had become almost impossible.
Vincent and I were eating breakfast when his phone rang.
I saw Sophia's name.
Something inside me tightened.
Vincent answered.
He listened for perhaps thirty seconds.
Then he stood.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Sophia's father died."
I knew her father had been ill.
"I'm sorry."
"She's in Paris alone."
The words that followed ended something inside me.
"I'm going."
I looked at him.
"What?"
"To Paris."
I honestly thought I had misunderstood.
"My due date is in eleven days."
"I know."
"You could become a father at any moment."
Vincent's jaw tightened.
"Emily—"
"No."
I pushed my chair back.
"No. Don't say my name like I'm being unreasonable."
"Sophia has nobody."
I stared at him.
"You have a wife."
Silence.
"Who is nine months pregnant with your child."
"I'll be back before the baby comes."
"You don't know that."
"I'll make it quick."
That sentence stayed with me.
He would make abandoning me quick.
As though speed somehow changed what he was doing.
"Vincent, if you walk out that door right now, something between us is going to change."
He looked at me for several seconds.
I waited.
Some childish part of me still expected him to come around the table, touch my stomach, and say he had been wrong.
Instead, he picked up his phone.
"I'll call when I land."
Three hours later, his private jet left Chicago.
Labor began the following night.
At 2:14 a.m., I woke with sharp pain low in my abdomen.
At 3:06, my water broke.
I called Vincent first.
No answer.
I called again.
No answer.
The third call went directly to voicemail.
Margaret, our housekeeper, found me standing in the upstairs hallway gripping the railing.
"Oh, dear God."
She drove me to the hospital while one of Vincent's security men followed behind us.
I remember lying beneath white hospital lights, sweating, terrified, and staring at my phone between contractions.
No message.
No missed call.
At one point, a nurse asked whether the baby's father was coming.
I turned my face toward the window.
"No."
Our daughter arrived at 6:42 that evening.
Six pounds, eleven ounces.
Dark hair.
Ten fingers.
Ten toes.
Strong lungs.
She screamed so loudly that the doctor laughed.
"She certainly has opinions."
When they placed her against my chest, I cried harder than I had during labor.
"Hello, Lily."
That was the name Vincent and I had chosen together.
Lily Grace Moretti.
For several minutes, nothing else mattered.
Not Sophia.
Not Paris.
Not the empty chair beside my hospital bed.
Then the nurse offered to take a photograph.
"Would you like me to send it to your husband?"
I looked at my daughter.
"No."
Vincent finally called nine hours after Lily was born.
I watched his name appear on my screen.
I did not answer.
He sent a message.
Sorry. Long day. How are you feeling?
I stared at those words.
Then I turned my phone facedown.
He did not know he had a daughter.
And suddenly I no longer wanted to tell him.
He had chosen where he wanted to be.
I would not beg him to participate in the consequences of my body breaking open to bring our child into the world.
The next twelve days became strangely clear.
I fed Lily.
Changed diapers.
Signed discharge forms.
Learned how little sleep a human being could survive on.
And during those quiet hours, something inside me hardened.
Vincent sent messages.
Not many.
He said Sophia was struggling.
He said funeral arrangements were complicated.
He said he would return soon.
He never asked whether I had gone into labor.
Not directly.
Perhaps he assumed somebody would tell him.
I told everybody not to.
His mother, Isabella, called me from Florida.
When she discovered Vincent was in Paris, she swore in Italian for nearly thirty seconds.
"Emily, tell me he did not leave you alone."
"He did."
"When does that idiot return?"
"I don't know."
She wanted to fly home immediately.
I stopped her.
Because by then I had made a decision.
I was leaving.
After being discharged from the hospital, I called a moving company.
"How much are you moving, ma'am?" the woman asked.
"Just my things and my daughter's."
I packed my clothes, toiletries, personal belongings, books, photographs, and every tiny thing Lily needed.
Her blankets.
Formula.
Diapers.
Clothes.
Bottles.
The rocking chair my mother had given me.
Even her crib.
But I left everything Vincent had ever bought me.
The designer handbags stayed in the closet.
The jewelry remained in the safe.
The expensive dresses still hung exactly where he had placed them.
Those things once made me feel cherished.
Now they only made me feel purchased.
Margaret watched quietly as movers carried box after box outside.
"Mrs. Moretti," she whispered, looking toward my sleeping daughter. "Are you really leaving?"
"Yes."
"What happens when Mr. Moretti comes home?"
I folded one last baby blanket.
"He'll be angry."
Then I gave a tired smile.
"Or maybe he'll be relieved. He can spend as much time with Sophia as he wants."
Before I left, I handed Margaret an envelope containing more than a year's salary.
She had been there through the hardest weeks of my pregnancy.
When her eyes filled with tears, I squeezed her hand.
"You don't have to go," she whispered.
"Yes, I do."
"Where will you stay?"
"My grandmother left me a house in Evanston. It's small, but it's mine."
Margaret glanced toward Lily.
"Does Mr. Moretti know about it?"
"No."
That was important.
The house belonged to me before the marriage.
Vincent had never visited.
Within two hours, almost every trace of Lily and me was gone.
I stood in the mansion's enormous living room with my newborn daughter against my chest.
Chandeliers glittered overhead.
Expensive furniture sat untouched.
Everything looked perfect.
It had never felt like home.
Before leaving, I went upstairs one final time.
I opened the bedside drawer and removed the divorce agreement I had already prepared with an attorney.
For several seconds, I stared at the blank line.
Then I signed.
Emily Carter Moretti.
My hand did not shake.
I placed the papers on Vincent's nightstand and set a pen beside them.
No letter.
No explanation.
No questions about why Sophia mattered more than his wife and newborn daughter.
If Vincent wanted freedom, I was giving it to him.
Hours later, I sat inside my grandmother's much smaller house with Lily sleeping against my chest.
The floors creaked.
The kitchen was outdated.
Rain tapped softly against old windows.
Nothing matched.
Nothing glittered.
Nothing required armed guards.
I had never felt safer.
Vincent's flight would be landing soon.
Maybe he was carrying roses.
Maybe he expected to walk inside and call, "Emily."
Instead, he would find an empty nursery, an empty closet, and divorce papers waiting beside his bed.
I kissed Lily's forehead.
"We're home, sweetheart."
Across Chicago, a black SUV passed through the Moretti estate gates at 8:17 p.m.
Vincent stepped out wearing the same black coat he had worn when he left for Paris.
His driver removed two suitcases.
Vincent walked toward the mansion.
He noticed the silence first.
No lights from the nursery.
No music from the kitchen.
No Emily.
Margaret appeared at the end of the hallway.
Her expression made him stop.
"Where's my wife?"
Margaret did not answer immediately.
Vincent's eyes sharpened.
"Margaret."
"She's gone, sir."
He stared at her.
"What do you mean gone?"
Margaret's voice trembled.
"Mrs. Moretti moved out three days ago."
Vincent did not move.
Then something seemed to occur to him.
His gaze shifted toward the staircase.
"The baby?"
Margaret's expression changed.
A strange mixture of sadness and anger.
"Your daughter went with her."
For the first time in many years, Vincent Moretti looked completely confused.
"My what?"
"Your daughter."
His face drained of color.
Margaret swallowed.
"She was born twelve days ago."
The mansion became absolutely silent.
Vincent stared at the woman in front of him as if she had spoken a language he did not understand.
Then he whispered one word.
"No."
Margaret did not look away.
May you like
"Yes."
And upstairs, on the nightstand beside the bed he had once shared with me, twelve pages of divorce papers waited beneath a silver pen.
