“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Harding drones. “Let’s all try to stay civil today, shall we?”

Bianca’s spine stiffens beside me, and I try not to flinch. There have been a few heated sessions in the last couple of weeks, I suppose. I had to physically clap a hand over Bianca’s mouth several times when Lorenzo’s mistress was on the stand last week.

Harding peers over her glasses at her notes in front of her. “I believe Mrs. Casiraghi is set to take the stand today, correct?”

“That’s correct, Your Honor,” Ezra answers, standing.

Harding nods at Bianca. “Mrs. Casiraghi.” She tilts her head toward the stand. “If you will.”

Bianca leaves her chair with her usual fluid grace, her head high and her nose in the air as she glides to the stand and settles into the seat behind it. She never glances in Lorenzo’s direction while the bailiff swears her in, but when I look over, I find him glaring at the side of her face with open disdain. Prick.

Ezra carries a folder casually as he strolls toward where Bianca is seated, flashing her his best smile. It’s dangerous, that smile. “Good morning, Mrs. Casiraghi. It’s good to see you again.”

“Save your pleasantries,” she tuts. “Ask your questions.”

“Right,” Ezra chuckles, unruffled. “Straight to business then.”

Now that I’m allowing myself to appreciate it, it really is amazing, the way he can remain calm under almost any circumstances. I once thought his general aloofness to be an insult to the craft, but I realize now that it’s a carefully constructed persona meant to unsettle someone with a weaker composure than Bianca’s. As it is, I’m not worried for her.

“Now, Mrs. Casiraghi,” he starts, keeping his attention on the page in front of him as if he’s trying to remember what he was going to ask. I know that’s a tactic as well. I fight to roll my eyes. “We spoke briefly while you were being deposed on the events of 1994, do you remember?”

“I remember,” Bianca answers primly.

“Now, just to clarify for the rest of the court, those events included you filing for divorce from your husband, Mr. Casiraghi, correct?”

“Correct.”

“But you didn’t follow through, is that right?”

“You continue to be right, yes,” she says, a heavily veiled irritation laced into her tone that others might not catch, but I do. I have to bite back a laugh.

“Can you tell me why you withdrew your petition of divorce only a month after filing?”

Bianca laces her fingers in her lap, and I find myself nodding almost imperceptibly, waiting for her to give the carefully practiced reasoning we went over during prep.

“I was very young,” she says. “Lorenzo worked many hours in that time. I barely saw him. I grew lonely. We had a whirlwind romance in Italy before we moved here, and when that changed, I did not handle it well.”

“I see,” Ezra replies thoughtfully. He glances down at his notes again. “So you just decided to work it out?”

“Yes,” she says. “I loved my husband, and we talked. We agreed to make it work.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “Not prudent on my part, it seems.”

“Mrs. Casiraghi,” Harding sighs. “If you could keep your answers relevant to the question at hand, please.”

Bianca nods stiffly.

I know what’s coming, and we’ve prepared for that too, but still I tense in my chair, watching Ezra closely as I wait for him to deliver the inevitable blow.

“So you withdrawing your petition had nothing to do with your trust fund seeing major losses only weeks after you filed for divorce?”

My eyes flick to Bianca, silently encouraging her. You’ve got this.

“It did not,” she tells him coolly. “My trust fund is handled by lawyers like yourself, Mr. Hart. I am only privy to significant changes when it is made clear that my trust is in real danger. My advisor foresaw loss, and explained to me later that it was not of concern, that he expected it to reconcile within a few short months. And it did. I was not made aware of such losses until many months after they occurred. By then, the problem had solved itself. The two events have nothing to do with one another.”

“I see,” Ezra muses calmly. Too calmly, I think. His uncanny ability to remain unperturbed might be impressive, but it can also be frustrating as hell. “Perhaps they don’t.”

I suck in a quiet breath. There’s no way it could be that easy. I expected arguments, a full-on fight, counters—anything besides a quiet acquiescence. But Ezra is turning away from the stand, still looking at his notes with a frown as if at any moment he might pass the witness.

Wow, I think with astonishment. I am so going to tease him later about being too eager to make me dinner again.

But Ezra isn’t done, as it turns out.

“Ah, wait,” he says with a puzzled expression, as if he’d almost just forgotten whatever he is about to say. “Actually, I had another question about your divorce petition.”

“Ask as many as you like,” Bianca tells him. “My answer will stay the same.”

“Of course,” he says with a sly grin that makes my stomach flutter with both arousal and anticipation at whatever bogus thing Alexander has no doubt fed him to counter with. “I just wanted to clarify…” He takes one last look at his notes, and I realize I’m leaning in just a little. “Did you not accuse your husband of being unfaithful then as well?”

My entire body goes rigid.

I can feel my mouth slowly parting in a shocked expression without my consent, and I stare at the side of Ezra’s face as the sensation of having the wind knocked out of me nearly bowls me over. How did he…? I turn to look at Lorenzo, who looks at me with a smirk. He couldn’t have—there’s no way they would have—

“Excuse me?”

Bianca’s slightly stricken tone brings me back to the moment. Her eyes meet mine from across the room, and there is a flicker of hurt and, what’s worse, betrayal in them. Does she think that this is my doing? She has to know that I would never tell Ezra anything said to me in confidence. Even if we’re seeing each other. Something that she’s not even aware of.

So how does he know?

“Mrs. Casiraghi,” Ezra urges calmly. “Is it correct that you accused your husband of infidelity in 1994 before filing for divorce and then withdrew that same petition hardly a month later?”

“I—” Bianca’s eyes dart to me again, looking unsure for the first time since I’ve known her. Looking almost ashamed. “That is—it is because—he was unfaithful.”

“Objection,” Ezra replies softly. “Hearsay.”

“Sustained,” Judge Harding says.

“Mrs. Casiraghi,” Ezra grills. “Does it not seem strange to you that both times you have filed for divorce from your husband, you have claimed that he was unfaithful without having any kind of concrete evidence?”

Bianca’s cheeks are flushed now. “I—”

“Is it not a fair assessment to say that twice in the course of your marriage you have made bold accusations against my client that at their core are unfounded?”

I need to say something, I need to say anything. Why am I still frozen?

“No, that is not—”

“It appears to me,” Ezra says with more edge to his tone, clearly going in for the kill, “that your accusations of infidelity are nothing more than a convenient ploy to exact a public vendetta against your husband for your purposes. Does that not seem more feasible than him being unfaithful without any consequences?”

It is Bianca’s helpless expression when her eyes find mine again that finally rouses me to act. “Objection,” I grind out, my heart thumping in my ears as I shoot up from my chair. “Speculation. My client has never been on record making such claims about her petition in 1994.”

“But she just admitted it here for everyone to hear,” Ezra says calmly. “Didn’t she.”

I gape at him for a long moment that feels like hours rather than seconds, the worst possible scenario flickering through my thoughts and leaving me feeling cold and hollow. Because deep down it seems there is only one way that Ezra might have come across a defense like this.