CAUGHT MY EX-HUSBAND IN A NURSERY BOUTIQUE WHILE EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT—UNTIL HIS MISTRESS ACCIDENTALLY EXPOSED THE LIES THAT DESTROYED OUR MARRIAGE!

Two weeks later, the world had moved on from the Moretti scandal, but one final chapter remained unclosed.

I sat in the sterile, fluorescent-lit visitation room of the Rose M. Singer Center at Rikers Island. The room smelled of industrial bleach, cold iron, and misery. On the other side of the scratched acrylic glass sat Vanessa Sinclair.

The former high-powered executive assistant was unrecognizable.

Her expensive designer suits had been replaced by a drab orange correctional jumpsuit. Her manicured nails were clipped down to the quick, her hair pulled back into a limp, messy ponytail, and her face was gaunt, hollowed out by the reality of a mandatory prison sentence.

When the correctional officer led her into the booth, her eyes caught mine. She froze, a mixture of shame, hatred, and pathetic desperation warring across her features. She slowly picked up the plastic telephone receiver on her side of the partition.

I picked up mine.

"Did you come here to gloat, Isabella?" Vanessa’s voice crackled through the earpiece, raspy and thin. "To see what you did to me?"

"You did this to yourself, Vanessa," I replied calmly. "You and your sister thought human beings were pieces on a chessboard you could rearrange at will."

Vanessa let out a harsh, bitter laugh, but her hands were shaking. "You got lucky. If you hadn't walked into that boutique... if I hadn't slipped up about the hotel... you would still be rotting in Brooklyn, raising Luca’s bastard alone while I had everything."

"He’s not a bastard, Vanessa," I said, my voice steady as an anchor. "He is Luca’s legitimate heir, and the light of our lives. His name is Leo. And he will grow up knowing that evil, no matter how clever, always cannibalizes itself in the end."

Vanessa’s eyes welled with furious, impotent tears. "Luca never loved you the way I could have. He was obsessed with an illusion!"

"Luca never loved you at all," I stated, the brutal truth landing like a hammer. "To him, you were a calendar, an inbox, and a cup of coffee. You tore our family apart for a man who didn't even remember your birthday without an automated reminder. And now, you’ll spend the best years of your youth behind concrete walls while Helena sits in a federal penitentiary in upstate New York."

Vanessa pressed her forehead against the scratched glass, a broken sob tearing from her throat. The reality of her ruined life, her destroyed career, and her utter irrelevance crashed over her like a tidal wave.

"Why are you here, Isabella?" she wept, wiping snot from her nose with her orange sleeve. "Why did you come?"

"To close the door," I said softly.

I took off my glove, revealing the platinum band that had recently returned to my left ring finger—not the old one, but a new ring, forged anew.

"I wanted you to look at me, Vanessa," I said, holding her gaze with unwavering peace. "I wanted you to see that you didn't break me. You tried to drown me in the dark, but all you did was teach me how to swim. I don't hate you anymore. In fact, I pity you. Because while I get to go home to my husband and my son, you will wake up every morning in this cell, knowing that your greatest masterpiece was reuniting the two people you tried to destroy."

I gently set the plastic receiver back onto its cradle.

Vanessa slammed her fists against the acrylic glass, screaming inaudibly as the correctional guards stepped in, grabbing her arms and dragging her backward through the steel security door.

I stood up, smoothed down the front of my wool coat, and walked out of the prison without looking back once.

When I stepped through the heavy metal gates of the facility into the crisp autumn morning, a black car was waiting by the curb. Luca stood leaning against the passenger door, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, while my mother sat in the back with Leo.

When Luca saw me, his face broke into that brilliant, breathtaking smile that had captured my heart years ago.