I ran into my ex-husband while choosing a piano for my daughter. Our blood-bound union had been severed for seven years.

The associate recognized him and hurried over, all bright teeth and deference. "Don Marchetti. Back again to choose a new piano for your wife? A woman blessed to belong to a man like you."

Salvatore Marchetti looked past the associate, his gaze landing squarely on me. After a beat, he said, "Choose one for her as well. Put it on my account."

I smiled and shook my head, letting him know I'd already made my choice.

But he went ahead and pressed a black card into my palm. "Your dream was always to own a Steinway. But on what you make now, you could scrub the floors of this whole territory for the rest of your life and still only get close enough to touch one. How would you ever afford it?"

"Adriana, it's been seven years. Stop being stubborn with me."

My mind went blank for a moment.

A world-class Steinway? I already owned one.

And him? I'd let go of him a long time ago.

——

"You're overthinking this. I'm not being stubborn."

I stepped past Salvatore and said quietly to the associate, "I'll take the one we discussed. Please have it delivered to this address."

He clearly didn't believe me. His gaze was dark and heavy as he watched. His thumb moved once against his wedding band, a small circling motion I doubted he even knew he made.

A moment later, he snatched the slip of paper from my hand. "Harmony Academy?"

His brow furrowed. "Adriana, I know the man who runs that place. I'll put in a word. Have them give that kind of work to someone else."

"You're already scrubbing floors, and that's already—"

His voice faltered. The rims of his eyes had gone red. "Adriana, if things have been this hard for you, why didn't you come to me?"

I blinked.

Janitorial work?

I glanced down instinctively and caught my reflection in the polished lacquer of a piano. The shirt I'd thrown on today was a little faded.

It did look a bit like a cleaning uniform, now that I noticed.

Of course.

In Salvatore Marchetti's eyes, I had always been someone barely scraping by, someone the world had used up and set aside.

But I had no interest in explaining myself. I offered a faint smile. "I'm buying the piano myself. There's no need to trouble him."

Then I walked to the counter and paid.

Tonight was the night my daughter had taken first place on the prestige circuit, the National Youth competition the Families all watched.

I needed to get home and celebrate with her.

Autumn had come early to Riverton that year, sharp and sudden.

I hadn't even reached the lot before I was hugging my arms against the chill.

When I looked up, a dark figure stood in my path.

Salvatore shoved a purchase order into my bag.

He was breathing hard, and there was a stubbornness on his face I'd never seen before. "Adriana, I returned the piano you just bought. I exchanged it for the Steinway. The one you always wanted."

His fingers trembled, and his thumb dragged once more across the gold band, as if it burned him.

"I still remember. Your dream was to play your own concert on one."

"Consider this piano a gift from me. Please. Stop resenting me. Can you do that?"

When I heard those words, I slowly pulled off my gloves.

I hadn't said a single word. But the moment his eyes fell on my hands, scarred, every finger ruined, he went silent.

After all, he knew better than anyone that I could never perform in a concert again.

Eight years ago, I had been the most talked-about name on the circuit, the crown the Rizzo bloodline meant to raise before all the Families.

But the night before the finals, he stole my original compositions and handed them to his protégée, Bianca Conti, to make her a star of the underworld's cultural circuit. And when she deliberately poured boiling water over my hands, he did nothing to stop her.

My fingers were scalded beyond recognition, flesh raw and ruined. And still, he shielded Bianca behind him. "Adriana Rizzo! It's one competition. Did you really have to fight Bianca for it?"

He dragged me to the hospital. "You want the win? I'll arrange another next year."

"But this time, you step aside for Bianca."

I cried the entire night. Stubbornly, I peeled the blood-soaked bandages from my hands.

But even with blood staining the ivory, I couldn't carry the simplest piece through to its end.

I lost my place on the prestige circuit. Then every wire between the Families lit up, branding me a thief who had stolen another bloodline's name.

I went to Bianca Conti's rooms like a woman possessed, desperate to make her admit that she was the one who had taken what was mine.

But the moment I threw open the door, I saw two naked bodies tangled together.

All I remember is Salvatore pressing Bianca into his arms, shielding her, his eyes bloodshot as he roared at me: "Adriana! If you still want to be the Signora of this Family, get the hell out!"

But I had been someone he once held in the palm of his hand. Someone he'd loved. How could I just let it go?

So I lost all composure. I screamed. I raged through those rooms like a hurricane.

I even opened the wire, shrieking until my voice gave out before every listening Family that the compositions were mine, that I had written them.

I thought that would be enough. That she'd back down and return my music and my husband.

But what came instead was her trembling, pitiful little sob. "Salvatore! I'm not afraid of her!"

"Don't you remember? I'm your brave little lamb! I love you! I want to be with you!"

"If Adriana is willing to give you up, I'll kneel before the whole Cosa Nostra right now and swear the compositions are hers!"

Those words sent Salvatore's protective instincts into overdrive.

That very night, he called a public reckoning before the assembled Families, and he stood as Don of the Marchetti bloodline.

"My wife, consumed by jealousy of Bianca's gift for the circuit, stole her compositions before the season. I caught the theft in time and had every one of them returned."

"The truth is, my wife knows nothing of this art. I indulged her too long. I bought her honors she never earned, until she came to believe she was gifted."

"As for the talk between Bianca and myself, my wife invented all of it to ruin an innocent girl's name."

"Do not misjudge Bianca. She is a devoted young woman who has earned every ounce of her standing."

With a handful of measured sentences and a forged physician's evaluation, he laid the mark of madness across my name.

And just like that, the name Bianca Conti detonated across every Family in a single night.

She became the brightest young prodigy the circuit had ever crowned.

And I fell into the dark.

On the worst day, my body moved without my mind's permission, and I fell from the third-floor terrace.

When I came to, the first thing I saw was Salvatore standing over me, holding the papers to sever our blood-bound union. "Adriana, do you have any idea how terrifying you are?"

In that moment, it was like waking from a long, suffocating dream. I picked up the pen and signed without a second's hesitation.

So he was the one who broke my hands and buried my name with his own doing.

And now he wanted to buy it all back.

How laughable.

My thoughts snapped back to the present. I pulled out the order slip and pressed it back into his hand, then called the associate right there in front of his face. "Deliver the instrument I first arranged for."

"And if you ever let a stranger touch my order again, I will take it up with the man you answer to."

I ended the call and moved to walk past him.

He reached for my arm. I stepped clear, then lifted my gaze to the space behind him. "Don Marchetti. Spending tribute on other women like this. Doesn't your wife grow jealous?"

He turned to follow my line of sight. A woman was crossing toward us, a cup of milk tea in hand.

Bianca Conti.

The same wide-eyed little protégée from all those years ago, now polished into the pampered, imperious Signora of the Marchetti Family, courtesy of Salvatore's money and his indulgence.

But after all these years, that cloying perfume of hers hadn't changed one bit.

She wasn't even close yet, and already I was sneezing.

Salvatore moved instantly, stripping off his jacket and settling it over my shoulders, his thumb catching against his wedding band as he did. "You always take ill when the seasons turn. Let me take you to the doctor."

I didn't even get the chance to refuse.

Bianca had already stepped between us, blocking his path.

She looped her arm through mine with practiced familiarity, gasping in delight. "Adriana! It really is you! I almost didn't recognize you!"

Her smile was radiant, the kind polished for the assembled Families at a charity gala.

But her eyes were burning with jealousy.

"I don't mean anything by it. I just never expected to run into you in a place like this." Her gaze swept the showroom, the lacquered instruments arranged like tribute under low light.

"Oh, and my husband is the sentimental type. If you're ever in trouble, just reach out to him. He'd definitely help."

She drew out that last word, letting it hang in the air like smoke.

Salvatore's gaze turned cold. "We just happened to run into each other. Drop it."

But Bianca stamped her foot, pouting in mock indignation. "Honey! How can you say that?"

"Adriana was practically my mentor back in the day. If she's struggling now, what's wrong with lending a hand?" Her fingers found the seam of her sleeve and picked at it, the smile holding a beat too long.

She leaned in and pressed a kiss to Salvatore's cheek. "Didn't you say you'd stand behind me, no matter what the cost?"

I understood perfectly. This little performance was staged for my benefit, every gesture rehearsed.

I calmly slipped off Salvatore's jacket and handed it back to her. "You've got the wrong idea. I'm doing just fine."

Her gaze, just like Salvatore's, drifted to my clothes.

I understood immediately. "This coat was a birthday gift from my mother. I just can't bring myself to throw it away."

At that, Salvatore's brow darkened.

It seemed he still remembered.

The day I fell from the balcony. That was my birthday.

That day, he'd left me at home alone, unsteady in my own mind, so he could stand beside Bianca at a taping for the prestige circuit. He'd even taken every last one of the household staff with him, because Bianca's blood sugar ran low and she wanted them positioned on standby, ready to attend to her the moment she lifted a finger.

It was my mother who'd been worried enough to come check on me. She was the one who found me after the fall.

All I remembered was her wrapping me in this coat through the haze of fading consciousness. "My sweet girl! How could you do something so foolish!"

"Open your eyes! Look at what Mama bought you for your birthday!"

"You still have your mother!"

"Silly girl, I told you so many times not to bind your blood to Salvatore Marchetti..."

"Wake up, baby. You're all Mama has left..."

Later, after the union was severed, my mother was so furious she went to confront him and demand answers.

She stepped out onto the street and was hit by a car. She never came back.

Salvatore seemed to surface from wherever the memory had taken him. He exhaled slowly, his thumb turning the wedding band on his finger, around and around.

He looked almost guilty as he changed the subject. "Adriana, Bianca meant well."

"So. Where are you working now?"

"If you don't mind, the Family could arrange something for you..."

"I teach." I lifted my chin and cut him off. "A student of mine at Harmony Academy took first place in the youth division of the prestige circuit this year. I trained her."

My hands could never grace a concert stage again. But I could still teach.

What they didn't know was that I'd become one of the most sought-after instructors in the whole circuit. Men and women with names that carried weight across territories lined up at my door, and most of them still couldn't secure a single hour of my time.

And my daughter was my finest student.

That piano I'd been studying was simply for her to use during private sessions at the academy.

When I said this, Salvatore visibly relaxed, as though he finally understood why the slip of paper had carried Harmony Academy's address.

But Bianca's smile froze, just for an instant. Her fingers went to her sleeve again. "Well. Congratulations, Adriana."

"Though... the youth circuit. The prestige isn't quite the same, is it?"

"Not like the reckonings before all the Families, back in the day..."

She didn't finish.

Because I smiled. Beneath the counter, I felt my scarred right hand curl slowly, then press flat against my thigh. "Oh, you're right. Those reckonings before the Families. You must remember them vividly."

"After all, you won yours playing another woman's work as your own."

Bianca went rigid. She turned to Salvatore, her eyes brimming with wounded innocence. "Honey, after all these years, Adriana still thinks I stole her—"