The Countdown Above My Fiancé

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me.

The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a fiancé out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset.

That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean.

Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me.

Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes.

[702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.]

Less than two years.

My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong?

Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant.

Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent.

Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture.

But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped.

[327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.]

More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.

“Mr. Bellandi, Miss Vale, I’m so sorry. South Dock is blocked off, and I couldn’t get a car anywhere” Mia Crane climbed into the back seat, soaked from the rain. Her satin blouse was wet at the shoulders, and strands of hair stuck to her face, but she still gave Marco a bright smile.

Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his suit pocket and passed it over my shoulder. “Wipe your eyes. Don’t let the ice burn your skin.”

Mia took the handkerchief. Her fingers brushed the back of his hand, light as a whisper. She smiled up at him through damp lashes. “Thank you, Mr. Bellandi. I knew you wouldn’t leave one of your people out in the snow.”

Lucian withdrew his hand and rubbed his thumb over the steering wheel. “A girl running errands for the foundation down at the docks has it rough enough.”

The second those words left his mouth, the red numbers above his head twisted.

[327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.]

A pulse of red light flickered, and then it changed.

[289 days, 10 hours, 12 minutes.]

One careless sentence of pity had shaved more than a month off the time he would stay with me. I closed my eyes. A thin cramp curled in my stomach.

“Is it too cold in here?” Lucian asked. I thought he was talking to me and almost said I was fine, but Mia inhaled sharply in the back seat.

“A little. My clothes are soaked. It feels like ice against my skin.”

Lucian turned up the heat, then his eyes landed on the silver-gray mink wrap across my knees. He had bid on it for me at an auction in Milan the year before. Tonight was the seventh anniversary of the night we started dating. And I’d worn it for the private underground opera dinner he had reserved months ago.

“Elena, let Mia borrow the wrap. She’ll freeze like this.”

I turned to look at him. Streetlights slid over his handsome face in broken strips. He looked calm, open, almost righteous.

I said nothing and took the wrap from my shoulders and passed it back.

“Thank you, Miss Vale.” Mia tucked herself into it, her smile growing sweeter. “Mr. Bellandi is lucky to have you.”

My eyes lifted to Lucian’s countdown.

[260 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes.]

Another twenty-nine days gone. Silence settled over the car. Only the snow hit the bulletproof glass in dull, steady bursts.

The intersection ahead split the road in two. A right turn led to the underground opera house where our seats were being held. Straight ahead led toward Mia’s old apartment building by South Dock.

Lucian put on the signal to go straight.

“We’re not going to dinner?” I asked softly. The snow almost swallowed my voice.

He braked and glanced at me, apology in his eyes. “South Dock is messy tonight. I don’t feel right dropping her off alone. We’ll take her home first. Being a little late won’t kill us.”

“They’re holding the seats until eight,” I reminded him. “It’s already seven thirty.”

Lucian frowned, the apology in his eyes cooling into impatience. “Elena, Mia works for my foundation. She’s Bellandi now. I don’t leave my own people stranded. It’s one dinner. If we miss it, I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

“Mr. Bellandi, I can get out near that bar up ahead. Please don’t ruin your dinner because of me.” Her tone was sincere. But this stretch of road sat on the gray line between Bellandi territory and our rivals’. No sane woman walked it alone after dark.

Sure enough, Lucian’s frown deepened. “Don’t be ridiculous. This street isn’t safe tonight.”

When the light turned green, he took his foot off the brake and drove straight through the intersection, putting more distance between us and the opera house with every second.

Above him, the numbers changed again.

[201 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes.]

From the back seat, Mia whispered, “Thank you, Mr. Bellandi.”