The first thing I hear when Dante opens his eyes is the beeping of the heart monitor. The second thing is my own breath catching in my throat. He's alive. Twenty-four hours after the ambush outside the warehouse on Pier 9, after I watched Marco drag him bleeding into the SUV, after the surgeons worked on him for six hours straight—he's awake. "Dante." I reach for his hand, the one without the IV. "Thank God." His dark eyes—the ones I've woken up next to for three years—move slowly across the hospital room. He looks at the monitors. The windows. The door. Then at me. His hand pulls back. "Who are you?" The words land like a fist to the stomach. I actually step backward, my hip hitting the edge of the visitor's chair. "What?" "I asked who you are." His voice is rough from the breathing tube, but the confusion in his expression is clear. Real. "Where's—" He stops. Tries again. "Where's my wife?" The room tilts. I'm Isla Russo. I've been Isla Russo for three years. Before that, I was Isla Chen, an economics major who thought she'd end up at a hedge fund, not running money through shell corporations for the Russo crime family. I met Dante at a charity gala my father's firm sponsored. He was magnetic, dangerous, everything I'd been raised to avoid. Six months later, I married him in a ceremony at the family estate, with two hundred witnesses and Marco standing as best man. I am his wife. "Dante, it's me. It's Isla." He's still looking at me like I'm a stranger who wandered into his room. A nurse appears in the doorway, takes one look at his face, and reaches for her pager. "I'm calling the doctor." "Good." Dante doesn't take his eyes off me. "Maybe someone can tell me what's going on." --- Dr. Rashid arrives within minutes. She's the neurosurgeon who operated on him, a woman I've been texting updates to our family group chat about for the past day. She shines a light in Dante's eyes, asks him questions in that calm, clinical voice doctors use when things are very wrong. "Do you know where you are?" "Hospital." "Do you know what happened?" "Someone shot at us. Outside the warehouse." His jaw tightens. "Leo got me to the car." "Good. That's good." Dr. Rashid makes a note. "Do you remember who was with you?" "Marco. Leo. Chen—" He stops. "No, Chen wasn't there. Just Marco and Leo." My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears. Dr. Rashid glances at me, then back at Dante. "Do you know this woman?" "No." "She says she's your wife." Dante looks at me again. Studies my face like he's trying to place me from somewhere. A business meeting. A party. Anywhere. "I don't have a wife," he says. --- They make me leave while they run tests. I stand in the hallway outside his room, my back against the wall, trying to breathe. This isn't happening. Retrograde amnesia, Dr. Rashid said. Memory loss from the head trauma. It might be temporary. It might not be. But he remembered Marco. He remembered Leo, his enforcer. He even remembered Chen, the family accountant who handles the clean side of the business. He just doesn't remember me. My phone buzzes. Marco. **Is he awake?** I stare at the message. Marco doesn't know yet. No one does. **Yes. There are complications.** Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. **I'm coming.** --- Marco arrives with Leo and two other family soldiers. They move through the hospital like they own it—which, given how much Russo money has gone into this building's renovation fund, isn't far from the truth. "What complications?" Marco demands. He's Dante's younger brother by two years, nearly as tall, just as dark-eyed, but where Dante is controlled fire, Marco is gasoline waiting for a spark. "He doesn't remember me." Marco stops. "What?" "The doctor says it's retrograde amnesia from the head trauma. He remembers you. He remembers Leo. He doesn't remember being married." Something flickers across Marco's face. Surprise? Or something else? "That's—" He stops. Starts again. "That's temporary, right? They can fix it?" "They don't know." Leo, standing behind Marco, is watching me with an expression I can't read. He's been Dante's enforcer for five years, loyal to a fault, and he's never liked me. Never trusted the girl from outside the family who got too close to the boss. "The doctor said we can see him," I say. "One at a time." Marco goes first. I watch through the window as he grips Dante's shoulder, says something that makes Dante nod. Brothers. Blood. The kind of bond I'll never have with Dante, apparently, because his brain has decided I don't exist. When Marco comes out, his expression is carefully neutral. "He knows me," he says. "Remembers everything up until—" He stops. "Until about four years ago, the doctor thinks." Four years ago, Dante and I hadn't met yet. I'm not in his memory at all. --- They release him three days later with instructions to rest, avoid stress, and let his memories return naturally. We drive to the family estate in silence. Dante sits in the back seat of the SUV, Marco beside him, while I sit up front next to Leo. Like I'm staff. Like I'm hired help. The estate is a sprawling stone mansion in Connecticut, surrounded by ten acres of woods and walls. I've lived here since the wedding. My clothes are in Dante's closet. My jewelry is in his safe. My whole life is in that house. We pull through the gates, and I see cars already parked in the circular drive. The family is gathering. Marco must have called them. Inside, the living room is full. Dante's mother, Sophia, elegant and cold as always. His uncle Nico, who runs the construction side of the business. Various cousins, capos, soldiers. And standing next to the fireplace, wearing a black dress I recognize because I bought it for her last month— Bianca Moretti. My assistant. The one I trained personally to handle the digital side of the money laundering operation. Twenty-six, beautiful, with dark hair and the kind of face that makes men stupid. She's crying. Dante walks into the room, and Bianca runs to him. "Dante—" He catches her. Holds her. Looks down at her face with recognition I haven't seen in three days. "Bianca." She's sobbing into his chest now, and he's stroking her hair, murmuring something I can't hear. Marco clears his throat. "Everyone, Dante has something to say." The room goes quiet. Dante looks up, his arm still around Bianca, and his eyes find mine across the room. "I know there's been some confusion," he says. "About my wife." My wife. Relief floods through me so hard I almost sit down. He remembers. "This is Bianca Russo," Dante continues. "My wife. We've been married for five years." The floor drops out from under me. Sophia steps forward, pulling a document from her purse. "I have the marriage certificate right here, dated April 2019." Two years before Dante and I got married. I look at Marco. At Leo. At the family members watching me with expressions ranging from pity to satisfaction. No one looks surprised.