THE EXIT STRATEGY

Matteo Rossi did not scream.

He didn't throw his phone into the Aegean Sea.

He simply stood up, his face entirely devoid of emotion, and walked toward the bedroom of the villa.

Harper scrambled off her lounger, her designer sunglasses slipping down her nose.

"Matteo? Where are you going? We just got here."

He opened the closet and pulled out his overnight bag.

"I am going back to Boston."

"What?" Harper’s voice pitched higher. "You can't just leave! What about the dinner reservations? What about me?"

Matteo stopped packing.

He turned his head slowly.

His dark eyes pinned her to the spot, cold and completely hollow.

"My wife is gone," he said.

The word wife hung in the air between them like a blade.

For three months, Harper had enjoyed the illusion that she was replacing Norah.

In one sentence, Matteo reminded her that she was nothing but a temporary distraction.

"Your flight leaves at four," Matteo added, zipping the bag. "My security will drive you to the airport. Do not ever contact me again."

He didn't wait for her to cry.

He walked out the door.

Fourteen hours later, Matteo’s private jet touched down in Boston.

The rain was coming down in sheets, matching the icy dread forming in his chest.

When his SUV pulled up to the estate, Arthur and four other security guards were waiting on the front steps.

They looked terrified.

They had every right to be.

Matteo walked through the front doors.

The house was eerily silent.

"Report," Matteo ordered, shrugging off his wet coat.

"Sir, she bypassed the perimeter alarms," Arthur said, his voice tight. "The cameras were put on a loop. It’s professional work. She didn't just walk out the front door. She vanished."

Matteo walked into his study.

He went straight to the massive mahogany desk.

He opened the bottom drawer.

The gun was still there.

Norah’s wedding ring sat precisely beside it.

A three-carat flawless diamond.

Abandoned as if it were a cheap piece of glass.

Matteo stared at it, a strange, suffocating tightness gripping his throat.

She hadn't taken her jewelry.

She hadn't taken her designer clothes.

She had only taken his contingency funds.

"She had help," Matteo said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

"Boss?"

"My wife is seven months pregnant. She didn't write the code to loop my security cameras, and she didn't encrypt the financial transfers on her own."

Matteo turned to face Arthur.

"Who was in this house?"

"Nobody, sir. The staff was given the weekend off by Mrs. Rossi. She said you both wanted privacy before the trip."

Matteo’s eyes narrowed.

He walked over to the fireplace.

Inside the grate, hidden beneath a pile of cold ash, was a small, half-burned piece of thick paper.

Matteo knelt and pulled it out.

It was the corner of a boarding pass.

Not a commercial airline.

A private charter.

And the destination printed on the charred edge wasn't a tropical island or a hidden safehouse.

It read: CHICAGO - MIDWAY.

Matteo stopped breathing.

Chicago.

The territory controlled by the Moretti family.

The men who had murdered his father.

The men Matteo had spent five years systematically destroying.

"She went to Chicago," Matteo said, the realization hitting him like a physical blow.

"Why would she go there?" Arthur asked, paling. "If the Morettis find out your pregnant wife is in their city without protection..."

"They won't just kill her," Matteo finished, his blood running cold. "They will use her to break me."

He looked back at the wedding ring on the desk.

Norah didn't know the rules of his world.

She thought she was escaping a bad marriage.

She didn't realize she had just walked into a war zone.

"Fuel the jet," Matteo ordered, his voice echoing through the empty study. "Get the tactical team. We are going to Chicago."

Five hundred miles away, I sat in a dimly lit diner booth on the outskirts of Chicago.

My hands rested on my swollen stomach.

The baby was quiet.

I was exhausted, my back aching from the travel, but my mind was sharper than it had been in years.

I wasn't hiding from Matteo.

I was hunting for the truth.

The bell above the diner door chimed.

A man walked in, shaking the rain from his dark coat.

He was in his late sixties, with silver hair and eyes that had seen too much violence.

Marcus.

My father’s oldest friend.

And the only man left alive who knew how my father actually died.

Marcus slid into the booth across from me.

He looked at my pregnant belly, his expression softening briefly before hardening into worry.

"You shouldn't be here, Norah."

"You said you had proof," I replied, my voice steady.

"I do."

Marcus reached into his coat pocket.

He pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch.

I recognized it instantly.

It belonged to my father.

He had worn it every day of his life until he died in what the police called a "tragic car accident" three years ago.

"Open it," Marcus said softly.

My fingers trembled as I pressed the latch.

The watch clicked open.

The glass face was shattered.

But tucked behind the broken glass was a tiny, perfectly folded piece of microfilm.

"Your father didn't die in an accident, Norah," Marcus said, leaning closer. "He was murdered because he found out where the Rossi family was hiding their shadow accounts."

I stared at the microfilm.

"Matteo's father?" I whispered.

Marcus shook his head slowly.

"No."

A cold spike of adrenaline pierced my chest.

"Your husband, Norah."

Marcus looked directly into my eyes.

"Matteo ordered the hit on your father."

I froze.

The air left my lungs.

For three years, Matteo had held me while I cried over my father's death.

He had paid for the funeral.

He had promised to take care of me.

He had married me three months later.

"That's impossible," I breathed, touching my stomach.

"The proof is right there," Marcus said, pointing to the watch. "He married you to keep you close. To make sure you never went looking into your father's files."

I stared at the watch, the entire foundation of my life crumbling into dust.

Matteo didn't just break my heart.

He destroyed my family.

Suddenly, the diner windows shattered.

Gunfire erupted from the street.

Marcus grabbed my arm, yanking me down into the booth as bullets tore through the leather seats.

"They found us!" Marcus yelled over the deafening noise.

But as I looked out the broken window at the black SUVs swarming the parking lot, I saw the emblem on the doors.

It wasn't Matteo's men.