Elias POV
I stood on the sprawling balcony of the Falcone penthouse, the biting river wind clawing past me.
Inside, the ruined anniversary dinner sat untouched, a pathetic monument to the evening's ruin; the candles were long extinguished and cold.
A Capo approached my side, his head bowed respectfully.
He reported that Julian Vance had been injured in an explosion at the syndicate-funded university lab earlier this evening.
I gave a curt nod, my face an unreadable mask.
I ordered the cancellation of the private yacht deployment I had arranged for tonight.
I dismissed my men, telling them to clear out of the estate for the night.
I returned inside, stripped off my suit, and stood under the scalding water of the shower, letting the heat sluice the rage from my skin.
Stepping out, I picked up my secure phone and scrolled through the intelligence feeds.
My eyes darkened as the screen played surveillance footage of Siena bending over a hospital bed, gently comforting a wounded Julian.
I tossed the phone onto the mattress and walked out of the bedroom.
Hours later, a floorboard groaned on the lower level, the sound alien in the stillness of the house.
Opening my door wider, I looked down from the second-floor landing.
Siena was carefully supporting a limping Julian into the grand foyer of my fortress.
Julian looked around the opulent space and asked in a weak voice, "Is it inappropriate for me to stay here?"
Siena softly reassured him that he was safe to recover here.
She crouched down on the marble floor to inspect the chemical burns wrapped in gauze on his leg.
I descended the grand staircase, my bare feet silent against the stone.
Meeting Julian's hidden smirk as he looked up at me, I reached into my pocket.
I pulled out a limitless black card and threw it directly at his face.
"Are you too poor to afford a syndicate safehouse or a decent hotel?" I mocked him, my voice a low, corrosive thing.
The sharp edge of the plastic card left a thin red scratch across Julian's cheek before clattering to the floor.
Siena's face hardened instantly as she stood up.
She glared at me, reprimanding my cruelty.
"He is only staying for a day or two," she explained, "because the local hospitals are heavily monitored and currently full."
I turned my head, looking at her with sheer disbelief.
"You are a Mafia Princess and a high-ranking executive of the Rossi operations," I mocked. "And you cannot even secure a private medical wing?"
I pulled out my phone and made a single call to my Underboss.
Within sixty seconds, a VIP suite at a Famiglia-controlled hospital was secured and heavily guarded.
I ended the call and coldly asked Siena, "Are the hospitals still too full for your stray?"
Julian bit his lip, fake tears welling up in his eyes.
"Please let me stay," he begged Siena. "I feel safer with you."
I cast a dark, unreadable glance at my wife, waiting to see how far she would push my boundaries.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, her emotions cooling under my stare, which pinned her to the marble floor.
She finally agreed that Julian should go to the hospital where he could get professional care.
Julian's tears fell pathetically as he played the ultimate martyr.
"I will just leave. I won't cause any more trouble," he said, limping out the front door alone.
Siena did not chase after him, nor did she argue with me.
Once the door clicked shut, she pinched the bridge of her nose.
Nearly an hour crawled by, the space between us on the sprawling leather sofa a desolate, unbridgeable chasm.
She looked at me with exhausted, hollow eyes.
"Julian is merely a subordinate the elders asked me to protect," she tried to explain. "We need to sit down and talk."
We sat on opposite ends of the sprawling leather sofa, miles of space between us.
I picked up my phone from the coffee table and dialed her number.
The childish, cheerful pop tune violently shattered the silence of the massive room.
I tilted my chin up, my gaze distant and cold.
"Explain this disrespect," I demanded.
She froze for a moment, her eyes widening slightly.
"Julian changed the ringtone," she openly explained, "to make me seem less intimidating to children during a charity front operation we run together."
Siena stood up, walked over, and sat right beside me.
Her warm hands tightly enveloped my cold ones.
"What could possibly happen between a Don's wife and a mere university student?" she helplessly tried to coax me.
My throat felt dry and rough, as if I had swallowed glass.
I smoothly withdrew my hands from her desperate grasp.
"In seven years of marriage, I have never once breached your privacy to touch your phone," I stated. "Yet Julian is allowed to do so freely. Why?"
Siena's breath hitched, her expression faltering as if she could not parse the words I had spoken.
"As my husband and Don, everything I own is yours to inspect," she immediately declared.
Before she could finish her desperate sentence, the cheerful pop tune rang out again.
I could hear Julian's panicked, screaming voice bleeding through the speaker.
I watched the instant tension flood Siena's face, wiping away all her previous apologies.
Siena abruptly stood up, speaking rapidly into the phone.
"Do not panic, I am on my way," she told Julian, immediately rushing for the front door.
I called out to her, my voice laced with ice.
"Walk out that door, and we are finished."
Siena turned back, her hand resting on the heavy brass doorknob.
Her voice was hoarse and heavy, her brow deeply furrowed with stress.
"A car just struck Julian, three blocks from the estate boundaries," she explained, claiming it was a staged hit. "It is my fault for not providing him an armed escort when he left my house."
She paused, fiercely reiterating, "You are my only husband."
"Please," she begged, "do not speak of divorce out of anger."
With that, she pulled the door open and vanished like a ghost into the freezing night.
The door clicked shut, severing the last thread of our seven-year Omerta, and leaving me in the cold realization that my wife had just chosen a dead man walking over the Don of New York.
And she had no idea that by morning, I would make that choice permanent.
