After performing in Viviana Caruso's place for the ninety-ninth time and bringing the house down, I was thrown from a high balcony.

Both my hands were ruined, and I lost the child I'd been carrying. Mine and Matteo Rinaldi's first.

It all started because Lorenzo Moretti, the heir apparent, had launched a search across every Family-controlled territory for skilled harp players, declaring that whoever won the private gala audition at the Feast of San Gennaro would be welcomed into the Moretti inner circle.

Viviana had only heard me play once, by accident, before she begged Matteo to let me compete in her place.

I owed Matteo my life. I agreed without hesitation.

But every time I defeated an opponent, it fed Viviana's jealousy.

She severed the tendons in both my feet. She clawed my face until it scarred. She even forced a silencing draught down my throat so I could no longer speak.

I begged Matteo to stand up for me. All I got was that weightless voice of his.

"Viviana grew up out in the sticks, away from all of this. She's a little rough around the edges, but she doesn't mean any real harm. She's just worried someone will find out you've been performing in her place, and there'll be trouble..."

"Bear with it a little longer. Once she gets what she wants and earns her seat with the Morettis, you and I will marry. I'll find the best doctor money can buy to treat you, and you'll be exactly as you were before."

What he didn't know was that my memories were almost back.

And he would never live to see our wedding day.

——

Consciousness returned slowly, and the pain racking my body pinned me where I lay.

I dimly remembered: my harp had made Lorenzo turn and look.

As if drawn by something he couldn't name, he'd walked toward me, reaching for the curtain. Viviana, terrified she'd be exposed, had shoved me from the upper floor without a second thought.

A strange, unfamiliar pain pulsed low in my abdomen.

I was still trying to understand it when Matteo's and Viviana's voices drifted closer.

Viviana was crying, that delicate, pitiful whimper she did so well: "Matteo... I really didn't mean to. I was trying to pull her back, but she lost her footing and fell from the window on her own. I didn't even know she was pregnant... I'm so scared..."

Pregnant.

My hand moved to my belly without thinking.

So there had been a child here. Just now, I'd lost it.

"Don't cry, Viviana. It's not your fault. She's the one in the wrong, keeping a pregnancy hidden like that..."

"Besides, she's always been frail. Even without what happened yesterday, she probably couldn't have carried a child to term."

Matteo's voice was gentle, patient, soothing the red-eyed woman in his arms. His thumb was already smoothing the leather band of his watch, the way it always did when he had already decided to fail someone.

And every word drove through my chest like a needle, one after another, until I couldn't breathe.

I clenched the bedsheets beneath me so hard my knuckles ached, and I forced every tear back down.

Five years ago, Matteo had pulled me from a pile of the dead. I had no memory, no more sense than a frightened child, terrified of everything.

He was gentle and patient. He taught me, piece by piece, how to live in the world, until I could pass for someone whole.

In the year our feelings ran deepest, he'd whispered a vow against my ear: he would help me recover my past, find my family, and stay by my side until our hair turned white.

Then Viviana's mother died, and Viviana came to Matteo for shelter under his protection, and everything changed.

There was a time when I'd prick my finger sewing a sachet for him and he'd fuss over it for half the day.

Now we had lost our child, and I couldn't find a trace of grief on him.

He'd stood by and watched as Viviana whittled me down into something with broken hands, severed feet, a ruined face, and no voice left to cry out with.

Footsteps stopped in front of me. Matteo sat on the edge of my bed.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner you were pregnant?"

I moved my hand, tried to gesture something, but in the end I let it fall.

These past weeks Viviana had driven me to practice day and night, not even leaving time for sleep. How was I supposed to notice a child growing inside me?

And a month ago she'd poured an entire pot of that silencing draught into me. I couldn't speak a single word. How exactly was I supposed to tell him?

When he saw me close my eyes and refuse to look at him, he took my hand gently, his thumb stroking the back of it, slow and steady.

"Josie."

"What happened to the child... that was my fault. Once you've recovered, I'll give you anything you want. That villa out on the Southreach waterfront you love so much, I'll buy it for you, make it our home after we marry. How does that sound?"

"And the ruby brooch you had your eye on last time, I'll send someone down to the old jewelers on Mulberry to have it set right away..."

He paused, drew a slow breath.

"As for Viviana... she really didn't mean it. She lost her parents young, and I spoiled her, but she's not cruel at heart. Don't hate her. Do it for me, please?"

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Once Viviana is married off, we'll have our wedding. I'll give you the grandest ceremony anyone's ever seen. And then we'll have children, so many children..."

I wrenched my face away, dodging his lips.

I hadn't told him that the last few times Viviana had driven me to the edge of death, I'd seen fragments of my past in the darkness. Each time, just as I was about to learn who I really was, the vision shattered.

But I was starting to understand the pattern. Every time they broke me, another piece of my memory came back.

All I had to do was wait. Once I remembered everything, once I found my family, I wouldn't need him anymore.

Matteo must have felt me go cold, because a crease formed between his brows.

"Josie, I've already lowered myself to beg you. What more do you want?"

"Viviana was right. I've spoiled you rotten. Let you think that being useful with a harp entitles you to act above your place!"

"Take a good look at yourself. Drive me away, and tell me, what man would have you? Or do you want to go back to being a nameless ghost with nowhere to belong?"

My eyes flew open. I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing.

The impatience on his face, the casual cruelty in his voice, told me everything. The man who had once been so careful to soothe my fears and chase away my nightmares was gone.

How many times had he let Viviana humiliate me, hurt me, break me down? I'd lost count.

The day Viviana first arrived at the house, she said my room had the best view of the courtyard and wanted to swap. Matteo took my side without hesitation, told her I was settled and it would be inconvenient to move, told her to pick a different room.

But I couldn't bear to put him in that position, so I offered to move out on my own.

Touched by my thoughtfulness, he gave me his study instead, the small paneled room behind the office where he ran the books for the family's gambling front, and from then on we were together day and night.

I thought he would always protect me like that.

Not long after, Viviana invited me to see the garden behind the hill at the edge of the property.

When we reached the stone pond, she pushed me into the freezing water.

Ice-cold water flooded my nose and mouth. I couldn't swim. I thrashed, screaming his name over and over.

Matteo took his time calming a hysterical Viviana before he finally ordered someone to pull me out. Even then, he pushed Viviana aside first before reaching for me.

And his first words when I was dragged to the flagstones weren't concern. They were blame.

"How could you be so careless? The stones were that slick, and you were still playing around?"

"Cousin, I don't know what happened. I just felt someone push me, and I nearly fell into the pond, so I grabbed at whatever I could, and I accidentally... I didn't mean to hurt Josie..."

Viviana's account was vague on purpose.

But the way Matteo looked at me changed instantly.

"There was no one else around. Josie, did you resent Viviana for taking your room? Did you try to push her into the water and end up falling in yourself?"

My mouth opened and closed. The injustice burned so hot I couldn't form a single word in my own defense.

His mind was already made up. Anything I said would have been wasted breath.

Later, during a weekend shooting trip the associates organized upstate, Viviana's horse spooked and threw her. She scraped her skin.

My horse had been tampered with. I was flung from the saddle and three of my ribs snapped clean.

Matteo scooped her up without a second's hesitation and ran for the doctor the Family kept on retainer two blocks over. I screamed after his retreating back until my throat gave out, but he never once turned around.

The house staff carried me back. I had barely been bandaged when he stormed in, face dark with fury.

He accused me of drugging Viviana's horse, said it was my fault she'd been thrown.

He didn't ask a single question. He ordered the beating on the spot.

The men carrying out the punishment had their own instructions. Two or three strikes in, they broke both my legs.

From then on, every grievance Viviana suffered, Matteo laid at my door.

I was heartbroken, furious, but I told myself he only treated me this way because Viviana had deceived him, twisted his mind.

Now I saw the truth.

He had never cared about me. He never would.

I shook my head with a hollow, dazed smile. Something in it seemed to reach him; he started to lift his hand toward the top of my head.

Then Viviana's voice cut in.

"Cousin, you don't understand how a woman thinks. She's only angry that you're good to me, so she's putting on this pitiful act to make you feel sorry for her..."

"We're both women. Leave her with me. Let me talk some sense into her. Maybe she'll come around?"

"But..."

Matteo's gaze swept between the two of us, uncertain. His thumb drifted to the leather band of his watch, smoothing it once, twice.

"Cousin! I'll be entering the Moretti heir's household in a few days. After that, it'll just be the two of you here. If I don't straighten things out with Josie now, and my being here drives a wedge between you, I'll never have a moment's peace..."

Matteo could never stand to see Viviana upset. He nodded, got up, and left.

A sly little smile curled at the corner of Viviana's mouth.

"Now it's just the two of us. I can finally drop the act..."

"I haven't even thanked you properly. Without you, Lorenzo Moretti would never have noticed me. It's not the position of his wife, but for someone of my background, serving at his side is already more than I could have hoped for..."

"The problem is, keeping you alive is a threat. If the Moretti heir ever found out..." She stopped herself short, voice going hard. "No. I will never give him the chance to find out."

"Until I leave for the alliance ceremony, you're not going anywhere. Not until I've secured my footing inside the Moretti compound. And if you ever get another chance like that day to catch Lorenzo's eye, I'll have Cousin kill you."

She dropped that threat like a blade, turned, and walked out. The locks clicked shut, every one of them, inside and out. The sound of each deadbolt was deliberate, the way a man counts rounds into a magazine.

I lay on the bed and let the tears soak into the pillow.

Three full days. No one came except the servant who brought meals. The silence was suffocating. I drifted in and out of consciousness, fever rising and falling, images flashing through my dreams that I couldn't tell from memory.

Warhorses and iron blades, bodies collapsing before me one after another.

Then someone gripping my hand, calling me sister.

I was about to make out the face when the dream shattered. My eyes snapped open to the empty room. Through the high window, the distant hum of the city felt like another country. A single thought rose through the fog.

If brushing against death triggered visions like these, then maybe if I tried enough times, I could find out who I really was.

I dragged myself upright and pulled a length of white silk from the cabinet.

I flung it over the crossbeam and tied a dead knot.

The moment I pushed my neck through, the fabric bit into my throat.

Agony and suffocation hit at the same instant. Everything went black.

Consciousness began peeling away, and the face in my vision sharpened inch by inch.

I was so close to seeing it clearly.

BANG.

The door was kicked open.

Viviana stood in the doorway, two older house women behind her, one of them holding a bowl of broth.

"Oh, still alive?"

She strolled in with a smile, crouched down in front of me. Her fingers rose to touch the pearl at her throat, a quick, satisfied brush. "Trying to die? Did you ask my permission first?"

I lifted my head. My throat hurt too much to make a sound.