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When Vivian threw her drink at me, every power player in the Philadelphia port district waited to see if I’d lunge at her and claw her eyes out. For the past four years, every time Nico Bellini brought a woman home, I lost control. But this time, I only took a napkin, dabbed the wine from my shoulder, and said quietly, “The streets are iced over. In those stilettos, you won’t make it out of this building alive.” Nico wrapped an arm around her, his eyes holding the cool assessment of a stranger. He thought he’d won again. The party was in a private restaurant owned by the Bellinis, with guards posted outside the back room. Members of several port crews were there with their families. Who Nico chose, and how I reacted, would become tomorrow’s gossip—the currency they used to measure his standing as the Bellini heir. This humiliation was never just a private matter. In five years of marriage, he had chosen a new woman every year, one who better fit the Bellini mold, and taken her to the family’s Christmas dinner in Cape May. It wasn’t just a meal. When an heir personally introduced a woman and seated her in the inner room, it was a signal to every crew in the port district that she was to be recognized as his official partner. I was his legal wife, and I had never once been granted that privilege. Nico claimed he was grinding the South Florida wildness out of me, teaching me to obey Bellini rules. So I played the part. I became the jealous, crude, possessive madwoman he wanted me to be. But the five-year pact I’d made with my brother, Marco, was up. If Nico handed my place to someone else one more time, I was going home—and the Caruso family’s trucks, cold storage, and goodwill would pull out of Philadelphia with me. In front of everyone, Nico fastened a black onyx watch charm around Vivian’s wrist. It was the token Bellini heirs used to grant a partner access to the inner room. It had been locked in our safe until now. Then he tossed me a cheap brooch he’d l
