I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the man in the doorway. Tonight, Dante looked like a stranger to me.

I smiled slightly. "What do you want to talk about? Tess?"

Dante fell silent, his shoulders tense.

I let out a soft sigh. "There’s nothing to say. I understand you need to comfort your subordinates for the sake of the family, right? There’s nothing to explain because I understand everything."

Those were the exact words he used to say to me whenever I cried for his comfort.

Dante’s face went pale instantly. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sharp ring of his encrypted backup phone cut through the silence.

He pulled the device out, hesitated for a second, and hit speakerphone.

"Boss!" Tess’s voice came through, thick with hysterical sobbing. "Someone shot at my car! I think I’m being followed! Please, save me!"

Dante frowned, his lethal instincts taking over. "Call the family doctor and go to the nearest safe house. I’ll send a Capo with armed men to protect you."

He hung up and immediately began mobilizing his men. I sat quietly, watching him issue cold, calculated orders.

When he finally hung up, he rubbed his face with his hand.

"If you knew this would happen," I broke the silence, "you should have driven her home yourself."

Dante froze, staring at me for a long time. "I shouldn't have taken her away," he murmured to himself, as if trying to convince his own conscience.

I pulled back the covers and lay down, turning my back to him. "Turn off the light when you leave."

Just like our marriage, it was time to turn out the lights.

The bedroom door clicked shut. I lay in the dark, listening to the silence of the mansion.

Half an hour later, the front door opened and closed. The roar of Dante’s armored SUV pierced the night, gradually fading away.

He went to find her.

I closed my eyes, remembering the first day I met him.

It was during an underworld negotiation where my father had brought me along. Back then, Dante was just a ruthless enforcer.

I followed him, even when my family threatened to disown me. Three years later, we were married.

The first two years were beautiful. But then, he consolidated his position as Godfather through violence.

The Syndicate swallowed the man I loved. I accepted his constant absence, spent birthdays alone in this vast house, and smiled when he came home covered in blood. I understood the weight of his crown.

For a whole year, I cooked his favorite meals every day and brought them to his office. I wanted him to have one normal thing amidst the chaos.

Then he told me to stop coming. He said my presence was a distraction.

I only found out the real reason weeks later: he had hired a private secretary.

Dante claimed a dying Capo had recommended Tess as his ward, and he couldn't refuse. I tried to understand.

But then I realized Tess was always around him.

Dante loathed noise and intrusions into his private space, yet he let Tess sit in his office for hours. He started texting her late at night, sharing the trivia of his day—things he no longer shared with me.

The memories flooded back, and my chest tightened.

I realized I was just a ghost haunting a house he no longer wanted to come home to.

The arguments over Tess escalated. When I found the lipstick in his car, Dante dismissed it. "She swore an oath to the family. Stop being paranoid."

He kept me trapped in this house while flaunting her in public.

Loneliness turned me neurotic. I started checking his backup phone while he showered, questioning his whereabouts every hour.

The breaking point came when Dante was away handling a territorial dispute. I hadn't heard from him in two days. Panicked, I texted him, pleading for him to tell me he was alive.

An hour later, the phone vibrated. It was a voice message from Dante’s phone—but it wasn't him.

I pressed play with trembling fingers and heard Tess’s voice:

"You’re too controlling. Stop throwing tantrums and stay out of family business. The Boss is fine."

My vision blurred with heat, and the air in my lungs seemed to vanish. Before I could stop myself, I fired off a string of vitriolic insults and sent them.

When Dante came home, he didn't greet me. He looked at me with chilling disappointment, accusing me of damaging Tess’s reputation among the Capos. He ignored her insubordination in answering his private phone.

At that moment, months of torture finally broke me. My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the hardwood floor in front of him.

I woke up hours later surrounded by the cold white walls of a basement clinic. The family doctor told me: I was pregnant.

I slowly laid a trembling hand on my belly. A heartbreaking truth dawned on me: I was bringing a child into a marriage that existed only in name.