Chapter 1

My fiancé, Dante De Rossi, was the heir to one of New York's most powerful Mafia families. He loved me—deeply, he said—yet a month before our wedding, he decided, by order of the Family, that he was going to have a child with his childhood sweetheart.

I said no. He brought it up every day, pressing harder each time.

Then, two weeks before the wedding, a manila envelope arrived at my door. Inside was a prenatal report from a private clinic on the Upper East Side.

She was already almost a month along.

He'd never intended to get my consent.

In that single moment, I finally understood that two decades of love weren't worth the paper that report was printed on.

So I canceled the wedding. I burned every gift he'd ever given me. And on the morning of what was supposed to be our wedding day, I boarded a flight to Milan, accepted a fellowship at the International Medical Center, and cut every last thread that tied me to the De Rossi Family.

From that day on, Dante De Rossi was dead to me.