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As long as there are no other skeletons coming back to life from his closet, I’ll get over the shock.

When we round the corner toward the surgical waiting area, Gio’s already there. He looks exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes, his suit jacket wrinkled, the same bloodstains on his sleeve from earlier that he hasn’t had time to change out of.

He stands beside a woman I’ve never seen before, and the sight of her stops me cold.

Shirley is beautiful.

Not pretty. Not attractive. Beautiful in a way that makes the word itself feel inadequate. She’s tall, willowy, with almost white hair pulled back in a messy knot and eyes the same startling shade as her son’s.

She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, clothes thrown on in a hurry, and even exhausted from the flight, terrified for her son, with no makeup and circles under her eyes that match Gio’s, she is stunning.

I stare at her because I can’t not stare. This is the woman Domenico was married to and started a family with.

Her eyes find Domenico first. Something complicated moves across her face—not anger, not warmth, something in between that I don’t have a name for. A history compressed into a single glance.

Then her gaze shifts to me, and I feel myself being assessed in a way that’s entirely female and entirely unavoidable. She takes in the cut above my temple, the butterfly strips, the way I’m standing beside Domenico.

“Kira,” she says. My name in her mouth sounds strange—familiar and foreign at once. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I have absolutely nothing to say to that. What do you tell the dead ex-wife who isn’t dead? Instead of coming up with words, I just nod. And then immediately regret it when my head pounds harder.

Shirley’s attention is already moving, pulled toward the doors leading to the surgical wing as if there’s a physical force dragging her. “Where is he? Can I see him?”

As if summoned, a man in blue scrubs appears from a side corridor, tablet in hand, eyes scanning the small group until they land on Shirley.

“Mrs. Larsson?” When she nods, he waves her over and murmurs something to her.

“Do the doctors know who she is?” I whisper to Domenico.

“No.” He shakes his head. “Only three, well, now four, people know she’s alive. To everyone else, she’s just a relative.”

“And no one asks any questions?”

“They like donations more than answers,” he says with an unapologetic shrug. “No one digs too deep when it threatens their finances. It’s also the reason no one bothered to ask too many questions when I reported Shirley’s death—”

“Oh,” I gasp, only now realizing that with her still being alive, Domenico should be a divorcee and not a widower. “But…”

“But?” he prompts when I trail off.

“So you are a widower, at least on paper?”

He smiles. “If what you’re really asking is if our marriage is over legally, the answer is yes, baby. I’m not married to anyone but you.”

Even though I want to pretend that it doesn’t matter, it does. I’m not sure how I’d have handled it if I found out our marriage wasn’t legal. It would feel like… doesn’t matter. Not when I’m his one and only wife.

When I look back to where Shirley and the doctor stand, she waves. Then she follows the doctor without looking back, without saying goodbye to Domenico, while Gio falls into step with her.

I watch her walk away. The straight line of her spine, the determined set of her shoulders both make it clear that her focus is absolute, single-minded. The focus of a mother whose child is hurting and nothing else matters.

Then she’s gone, through a set of swinging doors, and Domenico and I are alone in the hallway.

The silence between us is thick with everything unsaid. I stare at the spot where Shirley stood seconds ago, trying to reconcile the woman I just met with the story I’ve believed since the day I married Domenico DeLuca.

He killed his wife.

That’s what everyone said. That’s what I believed. A man capable of that kind of violence, that kind of coldness. The man I fell in love with despite the rumors, because the rumors made sense of the hardness in him, the distance, the way he sometimes looks at the world like he’s expecting it to disappoint him.

Except he didn’t kill her.