The terror he ruled his family with for thirty-two years bought him, in the end, nothing but a small apartment and a long, lonely accounting of everything he lost.

Luca’s fall was quieter and just as complete.

Without his father’s money and influence to prop him up, the career he had never really earned dissolved; his firm let him go to avoid the scandal, and his glittering social standing evaporated once the whispers spread.

He works now as a mid-level analyst at a property-management company in Ohio, on a modest salary, still paying off the medical and legal bills of the choices he made on our wedding night.

His fingers healed.