I looked up at the man in front of me, his gentle features softening under the dim light of my apartment. My vision blurred as tears welled up in my eyes, threatening to spill over. I didn't understand why, but my chest felt tight, as though the air had been sucked out of the room. The ache was unbearable.
When Adrian saw my tears fall, he panicked. He fumbled to wipe them away, his movements clumsy and unpracticed, those same hands that could command a room full of his father's soldiers rendered useless by the sight of me crying. "Why are you crying? Did someone mess with you? Tell me the name and I'll take care of them!" he said with a mix of urgency and concern. His jaw shifted once to the side, the way it always did when he was already constructing a version of events that placed him at the center as protector, as though the very thing hurting me could never be him.
Since childhood, Adrian had been the neighborhood terror. Not just any neighborhood—we'd grown up on the same stretch of old Sicilian-blood territory in South Brooklyn, where the Falcone and Moretti families shared a block and an uneasy peace. He was undisciplined and reckless, always picking fights with older boys, running numbers he was too young to understand, and his mother often chased after him through the narrow brownstone corridors, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. In contrast, I had always been the frail one. Born prematurely, I grew up under the constant watchful eyes of my parents. My father, Rowan Moretti, a capo-level elder whose word carried weight in three boroughs, would not let me play outside with the other children. I could only sit by the window of our second-floor parlor, watching them run and laugh through the gated courtyard below, longing to join.
Every time Adrian saw me sitting by that window while he played chase with the other kids on the block, he'd sneak over, slipping me a handful of treats stolen from the corner deli his family owned as a front. He'd pinch my soft cheeks with a mischievous smile and whisper, "When can you come out and play with me?"
As I grew older, my health improved, and by middle school my parents finally relented and let me venture outside. Adrian was overjoyed—he treated me as though I were made of glass, something precious that belonged to him by proximity and persistence. "Bianca," he'd tell me solemnly, squaring his narrow shoulders as if rehearsing for the man he intended to become, "if anyone dares to mess with you, just tell them my name. They won't dare touch you." Even then, the Falcone name carried enough weight on those streets to make grown men step aside.
From then on, I was never alone. Adrian was always by my side, taking me wherever I wanted to go. If anyone so much as looked at me the wrong way, he'd show up like a storm, ready to shield me. He was my safe haven, my unshakable protector. Or so I believed. In the world we came from, protection and possession wore the same face, and I had been too young to know the difference.
When we entered college, it felt natural for us to take the next step and become a couple. He grew even more attentive, showering me with a love so sweet and devoted it made me believe in forever. He sent soldiers' sons to walk me between classes when he couldn't be there himself, brought me to every Family Sunday dinner as though my seat beside him had already been carved in stone.
Then Serafina entered the picture.
She was everything I wasn't—brilliant, beautiful, and confident. She had a way of carrying herself that drew people in, a brightness that glittered like the champagne she always seemed to be holding. She and Adrian were in the same major, sharing a connection I couldn't understand—late study sessions that bled into bar tabs at clubs under Falcone protection, a language of ambition and calculation that excluded me by design. At first, Adrian tried to include me, translating their technical jargon so I wouldn't feel left out. But eventually, he grew impatient.
"You won't get it anyway," he said one day, brushing me off without looking up from his phone. "Just go do your own thing."
From that moment, their conversations deepened, ranging from class discussions to late-night chats online. They became inseparable, their connection undeniable. Meanwhile, the bond between Adrian and me began to strain. We grew more distant and our conversations became increasingly rare, reduced to nothing more than goodnight and casual greetings—texts that read like obligations rather than love.
Friends tried to warn me, urging me to keep an eye on their growing closeness, but I waved them off. I told myself that even in a relationship, people deserved privacy. I trusted him—I trusted us.
But trust, I learned, could be a cruel teacher.
That night, Adrian insisted on staying, claiming he couldn't leave me alone in such a state. His words were smooth, his tone carefully measured, but they rang hollow—like lines recited from a poorly rehearsed play. I stood there in the dim hallway of my apartment, studying him. The overhead light caught the edge of his jaw as it shifted, just slightly, to the side—that tell I had seen a thousand times and only now was learning to read for what it was. After a long silence, I finally muttered, "Do whatever suits you."
Without waiting for his response, I turned and walked toward my bedroom. His footsteps followed closely behind, but as he tried to step inside, I shut the door firmly in his face and turned the lock. The bolt slid home with a sound that felt louder than it should have, final in a way that settled into my bones.
"Bianca," his voice came through the door, soft yet insistent. "I'll be right outside. When you're ready to talk, just come and find me, okay?"
There was no anger in his words, no trace of the frustration I expected. That only made it worse. Kindness from someone who was breaking you in half was its own kind of cruelty.
I ignored him and hot tears rolled down my cheeks, dripping onto the backs of my cold hands. The sharp contrast burned, like an unrelenting reminder of the turmoil inside me. Through the bedroom wall, I could hear the muffled sound of him settling onto the sofa, the creak of leather, then nothing. Just the two of us breathing in separate rooms of the same small apartment, a silence thick enough to choke on.
I sank onto the edge of the bed, wrapping my arms tightly around myself as if to hold the pieces of me together. My thumb found the edge of my wedding band—no, not yet. There was no ring. There was nothing binding me to anyone, and still I felt trapped. Adrian, I don't want to love you anymore. The thought whispered through my mind like a quiet plea, both freeing and suffocating at the same time.
The next morning, I woke up groggy and disoriented, the weight of the previous night still pressing down on me like a hand against my chest. Pale light filtered through the curtains, indifferent to everything that had changed. I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the dull ache spreading across my skull, before dragging myself out of bed.
As I stepped into the living room, I caught sight of Adrian hurriedly pulling on his jacket. The same jacket he'd worn the night before—charcoal wool, tailored, the kind of coat a Falcone heir wore to look legitimate. He was already moving toward the door with the restless energy of a man being summoned.
"Bianca, I have something urgent to deal with," he said, his tone brisk. "I'll come back tonight to pick you up. Let's go out for dinner, okay?"
Before I could respond, he was already halfway out the door. By the time I blinked, he was gone, and the apartment held only the fading trace of his cologne and the quiet tick of the hallway clock.
I let out a slow breath, my eyes drifting to the sofa where he had spent the night. The cushion was still creased with the shape of him. Something glinted on the leather—his phone. He must have left in such a rush that he forgot it.
Picking it up, I hesitated. The weight of it felt wrong in my hand, too heavy for plastic and glass, as if it carried something I wasn't meant to see. I thought about calling him later to return it, but before I could decide, the screen lit up with a notification.
Adrian hadn't set a password on his phone and the message popped up clearly on the screen. What I saw made my stomach churn. My hands tightened around the phone as I stared at the message, my heart pounding in my chest—each beat a dull, sick thud that I felt all the way to the base of my throat.
The message had come from a contact saved in Adrian's phone as "Little Fool Pig." The photograph showed Serafina sitting in a hospital emergency room, hair falling loose from its pins, mascara faintly smudged beneath one eye, yet still smiling wide at the camera and flashing a peace sign. Her caption read: Take your time on the way here, drive safely. I'll be waiting for you.
That was when I realized. I let out a self-deprecating smile. So, that was the reason Adrian had left in such a haste. The urgency in his movements, the way he hadn't even bothered to check his pockets before the door slammed behind him. All of it had been for her. I called a local courier service to have his phone sent to his office at the Falcone family's shipping front on the waterfront. Afterward, I went straight to work.
Since graduating, I had been working at the Moretti family's legitimate side of operations. My father, Rowan Moretti, wanted to toughen me up, so he made me start at the very bottom as an entry-level employee at one of the family's restaurant fronts, learning the books, the suppliers, the quiet choreography of a business that had to withstand scrutiny from both accountants and federal auditors. Years of hard work and proving myself paid off. I was now the trusted keeper of the family's flagship front, a position I had earned through my own abilities, not my surname. Every capo who walked through the door knew the distinction. As soon as I arrived at the office that morning, my assistant walked up to me and handed me a file. "Good morning, ma'am. Here's a document that needs your approval. All the processes are complete; we just need your signature to finalize it."
I took the file and scanned its contents. It was a joint operation with the Falcone Group, a supply-chain arrangement routed through one of their import companies. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't recall ever hearing about this particular deal.
"Is everything all right, ma'am? Should we go ahead?" my assistant asked, noticing my hesitation.
"No!" My response was sharp and immediate, causing her to look startled. But she quickly recovered her composure and hesitated before adding, "Didn't you say that unless it's a very important arrangement, the first choice should always be the Falcone Group?"
I had indeed given such instructions, back when I was still naively optimistic about my future with Adrian. At the time, I thought our families would eventually unite, and whether his operation earned more or mine did hardly seemed to matter. I trusted him so completely that I didn't bother scrutinizing projects that involved the Falcone name. My thumb found the edge of my wedding band, pressing once against the cool metal before I stilled my hand and set it flat against the desk. "Let's pass on this one. But from now on, we'll make sure to choose the best option. The family's interests come first," I said, and signed the document with a line so clean it could have been drawn with a blade.
The workday flew by, and when I finally finished, I was starving. I had planned to try the new restaurant that had just opened across town, a place with no family ties, no territorial strings, just good food in neutral territory. But when I arrived, I found it packed with people, the line spilling past the entrance and onto the sidewalk. Just as I was about to leave, I heard a familiar voice calling me.
"Ms. Moretti, over here!"
