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.

Dante didn't return to the clinic until the next morning. He didn't explain, and I didn't ask.

Later, I learned from the guards that Tess had been hospitalized for three days following a minor skirmish. The guard said the Don visited her in the medical wing every day.

Later that week, while Dante was showering, his encrypted phone on the marble counter lit up.

I stared at the screen, reading the notifications—countless messages from her, thanking him for staying by her bedside every day, the words dripping with sickening intimacy.

Five months of agony blurred by in a haze of resentment. I was six months pregnant, my belly showing, but the distance between us was wider than the table that separated us.

One night, we sat at the dining table eating in silence.

"As Godfather, it would have been inappropriate not to check on her when she was hurt," he finally said.

I raised my fork to my mouth and then set it down. "I understand." I wiped my mouth with a napkin. "You don’t have to worry. I won’t cause her any trouble."

I stood up from the table and asked if he needed anything before I went upstairs.

Dante gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white. "Sienna, enough. How much longer are you going to treat me like this?" He stood up, his chair crashing to the floor. "You’ve changed."

"Tell me, am I not supposed to hold you accountable?"

Dante went silent, standing there staring at me as if I’d punched him.

I turned and walked up the stairs. With every step, I relived the day I lost everything.

I was six months pregnant. I had tripped at the very top step, tumbling down to the hard marble floor below.

I lay in a growing pool of blood, frantically calling Dante’s name.

He picked up the phone and told me coldly that he was busy. He hung up on me because Tess needed a ride home after a meeting.

By the time the family doctor arrived, the heir to the Syndicate was gone.

The doctor sat by my bed and told me quietly: I would never be able to get pregnant again.