I stop, the words clawing their way out of me. “I joked with you before about not being a divorcée—about being a widow.” My throat works around the words “bitter” and “sharp.” “But it doesn’t feel like a joke anymore. It feels like the only way he doesn’t take it all from me.”
Elaine doesn’t flinch. She stills, her spine straightening, shoulders squaring in that calm, deliberate way that reminds me she’s spent years dismantling men in boardrooms and cleaning up scandals without ever raising her voice. Her face gives nothing away—no shock, no fear—only sharpened focus.
“Okay,” she says at last, her tone cool, almost businesslike. “Then tell me the plan.”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes. The words stick like glass in my throat. Instead, I sink into the chair by the window, shoulders heavy, chewing at the loose skin around my thumb until it stings.
Elaine watches me, steady, unreadable, like she’s in a courtroom waiting for a witness to break. Her voice is calm, but it cuts straight through the silence.
“You’ve thought about it,” she says. “So tell me what you’re thinking.”
I look at her, her eyes meeting mine and holding me there like I can’t look away. My lungs feel tight as I pull in a breath, steady and deliberate.
“I’m calling Salvatore Ferretti,” I whisper. “My brother.”
Elaine doesn’t react at first. She doesn’t gasp, doesn’t blink—she just sits with it, processing, her lawyer’s mind already chasing every outcome. When she does speak, her voice is low, measured but laced with something softer underneath.
“Stella, baby,” she says, soft but unshakable, her gaze locking with mine. Her hand reaches across the space between us, warm and steady as it covers mine, stilling the nervous bite at my thumb. “Do you realize what you’re saying? You don’t ask a man like Salvatore for something and walk away untouched. Once you step into that circle, it doesn’t let you go. And your father… he spent his whole life trying to keep that weight off you, to make sure you’d never have to live with it.”
I turn my hand beneath hers, threading our fingers together, clinging to the peace she brings me. My throat works, the word breaking before it leaves me.
“I know,” I whisper, and it sounds like surrender, like fracture, like the truth finally weighing too much to carry alone.
The silence stretches between us, thick with everything neither of us can fix. Elaine doesn’t break it, not right away. Her thumb traces once across my knuckles, grounding me, steadying me, until finally she says, low and certain, “I’m here when you’re ready to make that call.”
My eyes lift to hers, holding steady even as something cracks inside me. “I’m going to make the call,” I murmur, my voice rough with decision. “But no one else knows. No one else gets pulled into this mess. We’ll weather the storm together.” Elaine nods in approval.
With shaking hands, I grab my father’s old phone and turn it on. The screen lights up, buzzing alive with years of missed calls and voicemails I’ll never open. I ignore them all, scrolling until I find the name I’ve been dreading and waiting for:Salvatore Enzo Faretti.
My thumb hovers over the call button, the weight of it pressing down heavier than the phone itself. If I don’t make this call, everything my father bled for—everything he built to shield me—will crumble.
I press. It rings once. Twice. I almost hang up, praying for voicemail, when a voice cuts through—low, gravelly, and lethal.
“My brother’s been dead two fucking years. I don’t believe in ghosts. So whoever you are… this better be worth waking the devil.”
Fear knocks the wind out of me. My throat closes, useless, like I forgot every word I’d planned.Hi, you’re my brother. Kill my husband?Yeah, that would go overreallywell. I pace, thefloorboards groaning under my steps, the phone hot against my ear as silence stretches.
Silence stretches. Then his voice cuts through again, sharp as a blade. “I might be a sick fuck, but even calling someone on their dead sibling’s phone? That’s beneath me.”
“Sal…” My voice breaks, thin as glass. “Salvatore… It’s Stella.” I swallow hard, the words jagged on my tongue. “Stella Carrington.”
A pause, heavier than thunder. I grip the phone tighter, knuckles white. “I’m your sister.”
The silence on the other end is deafening. Seconds drag until the phone feels heavier in my hand. Then, low and slow, it comes—a laugh. Deep, hollow, cruel. It snakes down my spine like ice water.
“I don’t have a sister.”
My breath stutters, panic clawing at my throat. “Wait, Salvatore, please.” The words tumble out fast, desperate. “My dad—Vince—he told me everything. I know you’re Vince’s son. I know about the affair. I know about the arrangement my dad made.” I bite down hard on the fear threatening to choke me. “And I need your help.”
The silence returns, but this one’s different—sharper, attentive. Like a predator lowering its head, finally interested in the prey that spoke.
“Careful, little Stellina. Keeping Vince’s sins is one thing. Living with their debt is another. And now you want to add your own debt to the pile? Be sure you can pay it—because once it’s written in, there’s no erasing it.”
The silence hangs, brittle. Then his voice shifts, almost casual, like he’s pulling options off a menu. “What is it you think I can do for you, Stellina? Money? Protection? Pest removal? Something else?”
My stomach knots. I swallow hard. “Pest removal,” I whisper. “My husband. Donovan.”
The line crackles with static, but his reply cuts through sharp as a blade. “Stop. Right there. Don’t say another goddamn word over the phone.”
