Prologue At our third-anniversary party, my husband’s childhood sweetheart, Livia, pushed me into the pool. I had been terrified of water all my life, and the life ring was drifting just in front of my hand. And then Livia reached out and pulled it away, hugging it to her chest, while my husband Dante lifted his phone and started recording. Dante did not even look down. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “The water’s barely two meters deep, and you took that diving course last year.” And so I was left alone in that black, freezing water, punishment for being “disobedient” in his eyes. What he did not know was that I was already carrying his child. He did not know yet what he had done. I, long since peeled free of my flesh, was floating quietly above his head, watching him. This time, all that was left in me was a dead, flat silence. To stand aside and watch him drown, step by step, in the hell he had built with his own hands — that was the only thing I wanted. Chapter 1 My legs cramped violently and I went straight down, sinking to the bottom of the two-and-a-half-meter pool. My lungs were screaming for oxygen, and all I could do was watch my own husband take out his phone and unhurriedly film me drowning. If I did not get air in the next few minutes, the child I had carried for barely six weeks, still a secret, the heir to the most brutal mafia family in the country, would suffocate along with me. You have to understand: Dante was the Godfather of the Famiglia. To hold his throne, he had once wiped out the heads of three rival families in a single night. He was power and violence incarnate, an apex predator before whom everyone bowed without question. And now that terrible authority was being put to use standing by and watching me die. The water was freezing. The instant Livia pushed me in, the cold sank into every limb. A moment earlier I had only reached for a glass of juice at the edge of the terrace, and she had pretended to turn clumsily, driving her elbow hard into my ribs with enough force to knock me over the edge. My aquaphobia struck at once. Panic numbed my nerves and muscles; my throat clamped shut as if in an iron vise. I thrashed with everything I had and finally broke the surface at the last possible second, gasping half a breath in despair. My eyes locked on the rim of the pool — the only orange life ring hung from the metal railing, barely an arm’s length away. I reached out; my fingertips brushed the wet plastic — And Livia got there first. She snatched the ring away, hugged it to her chest, and began posing for the guests scattered across the lawn. She giggled, pretending it was all for a prettier photo, an offhand, mocking smile on her lips, and cruelly took away my only way out. I went under again. Water forced its way into my mouth and nose, burning my throat like acid. Through the warped, shifting layers of water I saw Dante standing at the edge. He did not jump in to save me, did not even hold out a hand. He simply held up his phone, the screen glowing faintly in the dark, recording my dying convulsions. In his eyes, this was an act, a bid for attention, a deliberate provocation against his authority. He meant to apply some twisted form of exposure therapy and crush the last of my pride. Around him, the guests pointed and laughed, watching the boss’s wife drown as if it were a clever, lurid entertainment laid on for the anniversary. My legs went completely numb. The cramps twisted my calves like wire, wringing out my last strength. The black silence of the deep end swallowed me, the weight of the water nearly crushing my chest. The burning in my lungs climbed to the point of breaking, and then a sudden, bone-deep chill swept through me. The struggle stopped. A strange weightlessness took its place; I felt light, and the pain of drowning simply evaporated. I opened my eyes and found that I was no longer in the water. I was floating above the pool, looking down at everything below. My body lay motionless on the bottom. The gray gown spread and drifted around my legs like a shroud; my hair floated weakly in the artificial current. I was dead. I stared at my own corpse and did not cry, did not scream. The despair and terror that had drowned me moments before were gone, wiped away; an absolute numbness settled slowly into my soul. Dante. The Famiglia. Three years of a suffocating marriage, a cage. I was finally, completely free. Below me, Dante turned his back on the pool and walked toward the middle of the lawn, the same flat, arrogant mask on his face. He stopped at the dessert table, picked up a silver knife, and cut cleanly through the center of the swan fondant cake, the cake I had baked and decorated myself over two sleepless nights for our third anniversary, destroyed in one careless stroke. Livia came toward him with the life ring in her arms, unhurried, one hand pressed to her chest, her voice full of counterfeit concern as she asked whether I might be in trouble down there. Dante laughed, loud enough for the guests who smelled blood to hear every word. He told them I could dive, that holding my breath for five minutes was nothing to me. Then he fell into easy conversation with the capos and the men around him, certain that I was only sulking and would come up on my own the way I always did, and so he would not, under any circumstances, jump in. Livia played her part seamlessly, raising her voice to explain to the crowd that I had stumbled into her myself, that I was simply clumsy. And just like that, black turned to white, and the murder she had committed moments ago was washed completely clean. Dante turned back to the pool and shouted down into the black water, his voice carrying the Godfather’s unquestionable command: “Get out of the water this instant. Don’t you embarrass me again.” “She can swim,” Livia said, one hand resting on his arm, the life ring still hugged to her chest. “She’s doing it to spite me,” Dante said, loud enough for the lawn to hear. “Let her tire herself out.”

Livia clapped her hands, and the crisp sound cut through the low murmur of the party, drawing every eye. “Everyone, let’s take a big group photo!” she proposed, her voice thick with artificial sweetness. “Right here on the lawn, by the pool, let’s properly commemorate the Syndicate Group’s anniversary.” The guests responded eagerly. The rustle of expensive silk and the clink of champagne glasses mingled as they gathered around Dante like stars around the moon, adjusting their positions. The Syndicate’s photographer stepped back, raised the heavy camera, and squinted through the lens to adjust the focus, then froze. He lowered the camera slowly. Utter terror flooded his eyes, and he pointed a trembling hand at the deep end of the pool. “Boss!” He sucked in a breath and stumbled back a step. “There’s someone at the bottom! We have to get them out, now!” Livia gasped, horror painted across her face, and darted behind Dante’s broad back, clutching his jacket, her carefully manicured nails digging into the expensive fabric. She was the last blood of the Ferrara family, whose territory Dante had swallowed whole, and she had never once let anyone forget that to lay a hand on her was to break the accord. Then she spoke up at once, slandering the dark shape beneath the water. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she said to the photographer, a nasty, strained little laugh threaded through her voice. “That’s just a dummy Xianna put down there as a prank. She wanted to ruin our special night. She did the same thing in the fountain last month. Ask anyone.” Below, in the pool, Dante did not even glance at the bottom, did not look at that shadow that was my body. He only turned his head and fixed his flat gaze on Enzo, a Family man who managed the estate. And then, as boss, he gave his order. “Turn off the decorative lights at the bottom of the pool.” There was not a trace of warmth in his voice. Enzo stood motionless by the control panel, his face chalk-white. Out of some last remnant of conscience and caution, he hesitated, took a step forward, and tried to counsel him: “But Don Dante, if there really is someone in the water —” Rage erupted, quiet and frightful. Dante took a step closer, radiating the pressure of something lethal. “Are you questioning your Godfather?” The quiet challenge carried a killing threat that settled over the night. Enzo began to shake violently. Before that absolute authority he broke completely: he lowered his head, reached out, and threw the switch on the panel. The decorative lights went out. The water dropped at once into a dead, black murk. The dark took me out of their sight, and he thought that was the end of it. The last of me had gone out long before, while the lights were still on. With that irritating shadow gone from the background, the photographer raised his camera again. The flash tore through the night like a sudden, bloodless bolt of lightning, and the shutter fired on every member of the Syndicate Group, smiling into the lens. The guests applauded, laughter echoing in the dark, and then they drifted back across the lawn in twos and threes, glasses in hand. The photographer’s assistant wiped every frame off her card before she left the lawn; she was out of the city by morning. On the other side of the lawn, Dante turned to Livia, reached into the pocket of his coat, and produced a long velvet box. He opened it in front of everyone. A custom teardrop-diamond necklace lay on the dark cloth, throwing back a lavish, leaden glitter under the terrace lights. It was the necklace he had commissioned months ago. It was supposed to have been my third-anniversary gift. He lifted it from the box and fastened it around Livia’s neck. “This is your compensation for the fright she gave you tonight,” he said softly, his fingertips brushing her skin. Livia touched the diamond, the triumph of a victor in her eyes, and arranged her face into a frail, false apology: “Taking something that was hers… I really do feel terrible about it…” But the small smile at the corner of her mouth had already given everything away. Dante’s face set like stone. He turned, his voice cutting over the music, and announced to the entire party: “If she doesn’t crawl out of that black water right now and apologize to Livia, she’s out of this Family for good.” He stood there, proud and upright, like a king on a high throne, passing judgment on the wife who had already drowned. And then a shrill, piercing ringtone shattered the noise of the party. It came from the untraceable burner phone lying in the shadow at the corner of a lounger. My phone. The screen lit up in the dark like a lonely lighthouse, illuminating a truth no one knew: the caller ID showed an urgent encrypted number from the Family hospital.

Floating in the night air, I looked down at the phone glowing on the lounger and thought of yesterday’s prenatal checkup — Dr. Rossi studying my bloodwork with a grave face: hCG abnormally high, progesterone dangerously low. She had warned me it was a sign of a threatened miscarriage, and promised to call today with the confirmed diagnosis and a treatment plan. I had meant to tell Dante about the baby once everything settled. In the end, I never got the chance to say it. The ringing echoed over the empty lawn and would not stop. Dante strode to the lounger, his jaw tight, picked up the phone, and stared at the encrypted hospital number blinking on the screen. Livia followed at his heels, leaned in close, and in a voice soft as a snake’s hiss insinuated that the call was nothing but a performance, that I had surely paid off the doctor and faked an emergency to force him into the water after me. Dante stared at the screen, his thumb hovering over the glass, deciding with perfect confidence that Livia was right, that I was up to my old tricks again, playing pitiful to win his sympathy. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pressed the red button and hung up. Above him I remembered last year’s gang war. We had been racing down a highway in a downpour while a rival’s hitmen closed in, step by step, on Livia’s hiding place. Dante slammed on the brakes, ordered me out into the freezing rain, and drove off to go and get his old lover out. I walked more than six miles through the storm before I reached the city. The terror and the cold brought on acute stomach spasms; by the time I made it home I was vomiting blood on the floor of the foyer. And looking at that blood on the tiles, Dante turned it back on me: I had paid a doctor to fake an illness, all for his attention. He punished me then. He was still punishing me now. And he did not stop at hanging up. He flicked the mute switch on the side of the phone, snuffing out that desperate ringing for good. The faint glow went on flickering uselessly in the dark; he slammed the phone face-down into the corner of the lounger and left it there to drain its last bar in the night air. My last road to survival, cut off by his own hand; the only chance to save his unborn child, strangled along with it. Matteo, the head of security, came up onto the terrace, glanced at his watch, and reminded Dante that it was nearly time to take Livia to the private underground art exhibition. Dante nodded, turned to Enzo, and gave a flat, pitiless order: the glass door at the back of the house was to be bolted from the inside. And he warned everyone on the estate, in a hard voice, that no one was to bring me a towel or a single warm thing. He meant to leave me out there all night, wet and locked out, as punishment for my disobedience. Livia walked unhurried toward the gate, then paused and pointed at the orange life ring with the little white swan and the initials I had painted on it myself. “Can I take this home?” she asked Dante, offhandedly, as though it were a souvenir. Dante barely glanced at it, the way a man glances at a piece of cheap plastic not worth a cent, and answered with contempt: “Take whatever you like.” The cars carried the two of them away with a roar, engines thundering, and vanished over the crest of the hill. Enzo went in, drove the bolt home with a heavy, final thud, and came back out through the side door. He did not go with them. He came back to the edge of the pool with the long aluminum skimmer, stood there in the dark, and looked down, and saw nothing at all. She would have climbed out by now, he told himself; she always climbed out. He set the skimmer against the railing, did not dare go into the water, and went to the gatehouse without looking back. The guests dispersed, the lights went out, and the whole estate closed in on itself. On Dante’s orders, Matteo had pulled the rear gate detail and stood the pool patrol down. No family business was to be seen by hired men, and the back lawn lay unwatched for the first night in three years. And below me, in the black water, my corpse was drifting slowly and mechanically with the current of the filtration system, soundlessly, toward the shallow end. Upstairs, in the safe behind the bundles of cash, an envelope was waiting for him. I had put it there myself two nights before, and I had not been able to make myself take it out again.