To please his precious moonlight, Selene Blanc, my fiancé Grayson Delgado publicly exposed the core jewelry design patents my mother had poured half her life into — right in the middle of our wedding.

Overnight, the jewelry brand my mother had built from nothing collapsed into bankruptcy. She couldn't withstand the devastating blow. A sudden heart attack took her from me forever.

I was drowning in despair, consumed by nothing but the need to destroy Grayson, when Samuel Rowe — the boy I'd grown up with, now the godfather of Sicily's jewelry empire — flew back from overseas with an army of men.

He mobilized his entire family's power to help me salvage what was left of the brand. He made me a solemn promise: he would find whoever was truly behind the patent leak and make them pay for what they'd done to my mother.

I believed him. After the only light in my world had been snuffed out, he became the last thing keeping me afloat.

After my mother's funeral, I tore up my engagement to Grayson with my own hands and married the man who had held me steady through my darkest hour.

Five years. More than eighteen hundred days and nights. He sheltered me under his wing, gave me the deepest tenderness and the safest harbor. I thought I had finally walked out of the darkness and into a new life. But one evening, five years later, at the end of a corridor in a private club, I overheard a conversation between Grayson and Samuel.

"Every time Lois Simmons sees me, she looks like she wants to tear me apart. She's so convinced I'm the one who destroyed her mother, destroyed everything she had."

"But tell me — if that stupid woman ever found out the person who actually leaked her mother's patents was the husband holding her in his arms every night, do you think she'd lose her mind on the spot?"

——

My hand froze an inch from the door handle. The blood in my veins turned to ice.

Grayson's mocking voice kept going, each word a poisoned blade driving straight into my skull:

"You're a real piece of work, Samuel. Lois treated you like her own brother when she was a kid. She trusted you with everything she had. She grew up and married you, gave you her whole heart. But she could never have imagined — not in her wildest nightmares — that the person who destroyed her mother's life's work, the person who drove her mother to her death, was you all along."

I clenched my fists so hard my nails cut into my palms. The pain was blinding, but it was nothing — not even a fraction — compared to the agony ripping through my chest. Inside the room, Grayson's voice rose again, dripping with insinuation:

"Think about it. This poor, clueless woman runs your household every day, helps you manage the jewelry business, gives you everything she's got. She'd hand you the whole world if she could. If she ever found out that you were the one who sold her mother's core patents to a competitor — that you personally drove her mother to her grave — do you think she'd skin you alive?"

"Shut your mouth."

Samuel's voice cut through like a blade of ice, low and tightly controlled, laced with barely restrained agitation.

"Oh, would you look at that. The great godfather of Sicily's jewelry world, playing the devoted saint." Grayson let out a scornful laugh. "Her mother treated you like her own son. And you repaid her by selling her out to keep Selene happy, to hand Selene the keys to the jewelry world's inner circle. You pushed that woman straight into her grave. How do you sleep at night?"

A bottle slammed against the table, the sharp crack of shattering glass cutting through the air. Samuel's voice came through the door, his teeth grinding around every syllable, raw with an obsessive edge:

"What I owe Lois and her mother — I'll never be able to repay it, not in this lifetime. Everything I did back then was to keep Selene safe, to help her gain a foothold in the industry. If you so much as touch a hair on her head, I will make you wish you were dead."

"Such devotion. Truly moving." Grayson's cold laughter was thick with contempt. "You'd rip your own heart out for Selene Blanc, but I doubt she'd spare a second glance at a businessman with blood on his hands. Why don't you just go home to your precious Lois? She thinks you're her salvation. She has no idea that you're the worst thing that ever happened to her."

The sound of a glass exploding against the wall was deafening, and it hammered straight into my heart.

I fought to control the violent trembling in my body and half-stumbled toward the rooftop bar. I grabbed a bottle of liquor, tilted my head back, and poured it down my throat. The burn seared through me, and tears streamed down my face as I choked. I never drank. Not a drop, not ever. But in that moment, all I wanted was to drown myself in alcohol until those words stopped echoing in my skull.

So the person who leaked my mother's patents was never Grayson.

It was Samuel. The man who had sworn to avenge my mother. The man who had promised to protect me for the rest of my life.

My mother's sudden death. The brand's catastrophic collapse. All the pain, all the despair — it had all been engineered by the man who slept beside me every night.

No wonder he could always pinpoint the exact solution to every crisis the brand faced. No wonder he knew my mother's patents inside and out. I had been naive enough to believe it was just his brilliance, his dedication.

It never occurred to me that the man who had shared my bed for five years, the man who had given me all my warmth and all my hope, was the very person who murdered my mother.

Five years of tenderness and care. Five years of safety and companionship. All of it was nothing but an elaborate lie he'd woven around me — a guilt-ridden act of atonement to quiet his own conscience.

How pathetic. How utterly absurd.

A tidal wave of hatred and despair surged through my chest, threatening to rip me apart from the inside.

With bloodshot eyes, I pulled out my phone and called his greatest rival — Joshua Cox. The one opponent Samuel could never beat. And as it happened, Joshua owed me a favor.

The moment I hung up, my fingers had barely grazed the glass again when a familiar figure wrapped around me from behind. Samuel, reeking of alcohol, buried his face in the curve of my neck. His warm breath spilled across my skin, and his voice was the same gentle murmur it always was:

"Lois... who were you calling? I've been looking everywhere for you. I missed you so much. Let's go home, okay?"

Every time he got drunk over the years, he would hold me just like this from behind, saying over and over that he missed me, that he loved me.

But now, his tenderness made my skin crawl. It cut straight to the bone.

Everyone said the same thing: the revered Godfather of Sicily's jewelry empire never lied, that he loved me with every fiber of his being, heart and soul laid bare.

But now, those words made my stomach turn. Every syllable drove into me like a needle through flesh.

I thought of the plan I'd just agreed to with that man. I steadied myself, forcing the hatred and trembling back down into the pit of my chest.

Expressionless, I helped a dead-drunk Samuel into the armored sedan.

He collapsed against my lap, the permanent furrow between his brows finally smoothing out. Stripped of his cold calculation, he looked almost harmless. Like a child.

"Selene... why... why can't it be me..."

The slurred murmur drifted up, and my entire body went rigid. I finally made out the name he'd been whispering through countless midnight dreams.

Selene Blanc. The woman who destroyed my mother. Who destroyed everything I had. The same woman who'd bullied me relentlessly, who dragged me into the dark. She was the moonlight he'd carved into his bones, the one he kept hidden in the deepest chamber of his heart.

Samuel had never forgotten her. Five years of tenderness and devotion had been nothing but a performance, a farce staged for Selene's benefit.

My mother's death. The collapse of my family's empire. The lie of my marriage. All of it was a show, orchestrated by my ex-fiancé and my husband to please Selene Blanc. My entire family had been nothing more than stepping stones.

I'd been too naive. Too stupid. I'd underestimated the depth of his obsession with her and foolishly mistaken this con for salvation.

A custom cufflink studded with tiny diamonds slipped from the lapel of his perfectly pressed suit and rolled onto the floor mat.

As I bent to pick it up, my gaze caught the tablet he'd tossed aside. The screen lit up on its own, and an encrypted message flashed across it. Every word burned:

"Godfather Rowe, thank you so much for pulling strings and securing the exclusive premier booth at the International Jewelry Expo for me! But the raw gemstone vein in Sicily that you've promised is far too precious. I feel terribly guilty accepting it and truly don't know how to repay you!"

The tablet jumped to a private feed. Selene's post glared back at me: "Only a true queen of jewelry deserves the world's most precious raw gemstone vein."

The photo showed her diamond-laden hand caressing a pigeon blood ruby of extraordinary color. It was Sicily's rarest mineral treasure, the kind every jeweler alive would kill to possess.

I knew exactly what Selene was doing. She'd meant for me to see all of this.

Last week, Samuel had pulled three consecutive all-nighters to close what he called a "jewelry partnership." The red veins in his eyes were impossible to hide, and a rival's hired man had slashed a deep gash across his wrist. When the wound bled through his bandage, he hadn't even flinched.

I'd been heartbroken and furious, scolding him for not taking care of himself. I thought he was fighting for the family's jewelry legacy. I thought he was doing it to keep me safe.

It had all been for Selene. To win her that expo booth. To lay that precious gemstone vein at her feet. Even if it ground him down to nothing, he'd done it gladly.

As if possessed, my fingers drifted to the tablet's lock screen. A string of numbers punched themselves in, almost by instinct.

The last digit landed. The screen unlocked.

The passcode was Selene Blanc's birthday.

Samuel never let me touch his personal tablet. He said it was a rule for the Godfather of Sicily, that it contained core family secrets. Now I understood. There were no secrets. He was just afraid I'd glimpse the devotion to another woman hidden inside.

The home screen was a photo of Selene in profile. She stood in a jewelry showroom, beaming, her features bright with playful elegance.

No wonder his eyes always softened when he unlocked the tablet. That tenderness had never been for me.

My hands trembled as I opened the file folders. Every single one was named after Selene Blanc. Rows and rows of albums, so many they made my vision swim.

[Selene — Jewelry Expo]

[Selene — Gala Outfits]

[Selene — Raw Gemstone Tastings]

Photo after photo. Selene in couture gowns. Selene draped in dazzling jewels. Selene glowing at one grand jewelry event after another.

Over a thousand photos. Not a single one of me. Not even one of himself. From first to last, only Selene.

Just like his heart. From beginning to end, it had only ever belonged to her. I was nothing but a passing stranger, a tool for easing his guilt.

The car rolled through the gates of the Castle. I stared at the familiar grounds through the window and felt cold seep into every bone.

My gaze drifted toward the estate's private gallery. That room had once held my mother's life's work: countless jewelry design manuscripts, along with the brand's irreplaceable collection of vintage raw gemstone samples. They were the testament to everything she'd built, year after year, from a young woman to an old one, pouring her soul into a jewelry empire.

Every time I looked at those manuscripts and stones, I felt she'd never really left. She was still beside me, helping me guard her dream.

Then one morning two years ago, all of it vanished. The manuscripts. The gemstones. Gone without a trace. The police investigated and concluded that everything had been anonymously destroyed. No leads.

I'd broken down completely. Samuel held me for three days and three nights without closing his eyes, murmuring comfort, promising he'd recover everything. He swore he'd protect my mother's legacy.

Now I finally understood. The one who destroyed it all had always been him. He was the one who'd obliterated the last thing my mother left me, who'd severed the final thread connecting me to her.

The tablet screen lit up again. A new encrypted message appeared, driving through my last shred of hope like an ice-tipped blade:

"Godfather, per your instructions, the asset transfer agreement has been drafted. All Sicily jewelry holdings under your name—including the raw gemstone veins, the jewelry ateliers, and the international distribution rights—will be transferred in full to Miss Blanc."

"Awaiting your final signature."

Through the blur of tears, I saw it again: my mother's funeral. Samuel in a somber, immaculate black suit, standing before her casket, making his solemn vow to me.

"Lois, I swear on my honor as the Godfather of Sicily's jewelry empire. I will protect you for the rest of my life. I will give you a safe and stable home. Everything under my name is yours."

How laughable. How bitterly ironic.

Those earnest promises had been nothing but another carefully woven lie.

Samuel, did you forget? Those assets once belonged to me. Without my signature, I'd love to see how Selene Blanc plans to get her hands on any of it.

I laid Samuel gently on the bed. This time, I didn't carefully remove his shoes and socks the way I always had. I didn't spare him another glance. I turned and walked straight into the guest room, locking the door behind me, sealing out that nauseating tenderness and the lingering scent of him.

Before I closed my eyes, memories flickered unbidden through my mind. All those years of him supposedly "doting on me." Sweet soup delivered late at night. New clothes every time the season changed. Front-row seats at jewelry exhibitions.

Scenes that had once moved me to tears now pieced themselves together into something grotesque. Something mocking. Like a dull blade sawing across my heart, stroke after agonizing stroke.

Morning light filtered through the Castle's stained-glass windows, scattering fragments of color across my face. My eyes snapped open, and I found myself staring directly into Samuel's gaze, still soft, still tender.

He leaned in close, pressing a warm kiss to my forehead.

I turned my head away on instinct.

He paused, a flicker of surprise crossing his features. He assumed I was upset about his drinking and softened his voice even further, coaxing and intimate.

"Lois, were you unhappy last night? I'm sorry. I had too much at the family meeting. I promise it won't happen again. Don't be mad at me, okay?"

"Selene's coming over soon. Leave me a little dignity, will you? Don't let anyone see that the Godfather of Sicily can't even keep his own wife happy."

Gentle as always. Considerate as ever. But every word landed like ice against my skin.

I kept my expression blank, gave a flat murmur of acknowledgment, then turned and pulled out the divorce agreement I'd drafted the night before. I'd slipped it between the pages of a jewelry auction document.

"Sign this and buy it for me. Then I won't be angry."

Samuel was about to open the file when his phone lit up. I caught the name on the screen: Selene.

His expression shifted. Softened. Not the perfunctory warmth he usually gave me. This was real. A smile that came from somewhere deep inside him.

He flipped to the last page of the document, signed his name without reading a single word, and stood up to take the call.

I stared at the freshly signed divorce agreement. A sharp sting pierced my chest.

I thought of my mother's death. The ruin of my family. The plan I'd made with Joshua.

I steadied myself.

I retreated into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and let scalding water pour over me. I tried to wash away every trace of Samuel's scent, tried to scour away the truths that had carved themselves, word by word, into my skull.

When I stepped out, the long dining table was laden with an elaborate spread of brunch pastries. Shrimp dumplings, siu mai, custard tarts. Every single one had been my favorite, once upon a time. Every time I'd seen them laid out like this, I'd been touched for hours afterward. Now, looking at the delicate spread, my stomach lurched violently. I couldn't summon even the ghost of a smile.

Because I understood now, with brutal clarity. These weren't my favorites.

They were Selene's.

The woman who had destroyed my mother. The woman who had destroyed everything I had. These were her favorites.

The doorbell rang. Through the glass of the foyer, I saw Selene standing outside in the latest couture jewelry gown, her makeup immaculate, a servant trailing behind her. She pushed the door open and walked straight to the dining table as if she owned the place. She sat down without so much as a glance in my direction, her tone dripping with casual familiarity.

"Lois, sorry to intrude. The Godfather and I have the Sicily gemstone mine transfer meeting this morning. He told me to come to the Castle for breakfast first so we could leave together."

My gaze locked onto the silver badge in her hand. It bore the Castle's exclusive crest. An all-access pass, identical to the one I held. The highest-level credential in the entire estate, issued only to the Godfather's most trusted inner circle.

My fingers tightened around my teacup until my knuckles went white. I said nothing.

Samuel noticed something was off. He stood quickly, moved to my side, and leaned in close, his voice low and tinged with a barely perceptible edge of panic.

"Lois, don't misunderstand. Selene is our family's most important jewelry partner and the person I trust most. It's perfectly normal for her to have an all-access badge for the Castle."

Before he'd even finished speaking, something seemed to occur to him. He tensed, rose abruptly, and strode to Selene's side. In one swift motion, he snatched the cup of espresso she'd just poured.

"Your blood pressure runs low. I've told you a hundred times, you can't drink espresso. It's terrible for you. After all these years, you still don't take care of yourself?"

He turned to the sideboard, retrieved a cup of warm almond milk, and placed it carefully in her hands. The anxiety in his eyes, the tenderness, was something I had never once seen in five years of marriage.

Selene accepted the almond milk, pressed her lips together in a coy smile, and gazed up at him with her eyes curved into crescents, her voice playful and sweet.

"That's right. All these years, I've been so lucky to have the Godfather remembering every little thing about my health, looking out for me at every turn."

In that single moment their eyes met, the air between them seemed to shimmer with something pink and intimate. The atmosphere solidified around them, and I became a stranger. An intruder. Completely shut out of whatever world the two of them shared.

A chill shot from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. I couldn't take it anymore. I shoved my chair back and stood, ready to leave the dining room, but Selene's voice stopped me.

"Lois, wait."