

Late one night, a thread blew up and hit the front page of a famous forum deep in New York’s underworld. The original poster had dug up an old prompt: “Name three words that sum up your youth.” Then an account that’d been dormant for years popped up in the replies. Its avatar was a backlit silhouette of a girl in a white dress, username: Seraphina. That was Seraphina Rossi. The Rossi family heiress, the undisputed it girl of New York’s underworld. She typed: Vibrant. Passionate. And Rico Valentino. All hell broke loose in the thread. The wild Valentino’s heir and the breathtaking Rossi heiress had once loved each other hard, only for it all to end in bitter regret. Nearly everyone in New York’s underworld had watched that heartbreak play out. Including me. I turned my head, staring at the man sleeping beside me. This was the man next to me: the once reckless kid who’d ruled the streets of Queens with his bare fists, now the Don of the Valention family. Poised. Unshakable. And he didn’t love me. I’d always known Rico still kept in touch with Seraphina. That he’d met her in secret, more than once. That’s why he’d refused to make our marriage public. His excuse was always the same: “Keeping your identity off the grid keeps our enemies from targeting you.” But I knew I was the one standing between Rico and the woman he’d never stopped loving. If all three of us were just going to keep hurting like this? I’d rather walk away. Let them have each other. I’d made up my mind. I was divorcing Rico.

Every April Fools’ Day, Wilson Hale and Chloe Mercer turned our anniversary into a joke. A fake proposal. A trick ring. A room full of laughter. And every year, Wilson was sure I loved him too much to leave. This year, cake cream slid down my face, my ring hit the marble floor, and he still smiled like I would forgive him by morning. He forgot one thing. I was not Vivian Gray, the lonely girl with nowhere to go. I was Vivian Vescari, daughter of the most feared mafia family on the East Coast. I had left that world because I wanted to be loved before anyone knew my name. For six years, I thought Wilson was that man. Then I learned even his first confession had been an April Fools’ bet. So I stopped being the joke. I went home.