He didn't respond.

"Dante."

Still nothing.

It was as if I had disappeared from the room. The Underboss of the Valente Family, a man whose attention soldiers competed for, whose silence could empty a room. And he couldn't hear me sitting three feet away.

Later, while he was in the shower, his phone lay on the bedside table.

I stared at it for a long moment before reaching out. My thumb drifted to my left ring finger, pressing against the band there without thinking.

To my surprise, the lock screen code had been changed.

It used to be my birthday.

For years, he had used my birthday as his code. He once said it was because the day I was born was the luckiest day of his life.

But now, that code no longer worked.

I tried again.

Wrong.

Again.

Still wrong.

Then, for some reason, I thought of Serafina.

My fingers stiffened.

I entered 1123.

The screen unlocked.

For a few seconds, I just stared at the phone in silence.

So that was it.

My birthday had been replaced.

And so had I.

November 23rd.

That was the day Serafina Russo came back from London after her marriage fell apart.

No wonder Dante had changed his cipher to 1123.

The moment I realized it, I couldn't help letting out a cold laugh. My fingers tightened around his phone as the screen unlocked, and the first thing that appeared was his message thread with Serafina.

I opened it.

The sweetness in her words was almost nauseating.

[Serafina: Dante, thank you so much for today. I really don't know what I would've done without you. Sometimes I think, if only you were Matteo's dad.]

And Dante had replied almost immediately.

[Dante: If you don't mind, let Matteo call me Dad. I actually quite like it. ]

A smiling emoji sat at the end of the sentence, bright and harmless-looking, but it stabbed into my eyes like a blade.

My heart sank so hard it felt as if it had fallen into a frozen lake.

For a moment, my whole body went numb. The blood in my veins seemed to turn cold, inch by inch, until even my fingertips lost feeling. Somewhere down the hall, one of the soldiers shifted his weight outside the bedroom door, the floorboard groaning beneath him. Even the guards knew not to knock when the Underboss was home.

Just then, another notification popped up.

It was from Serafina.

A voice message.

Only two seconds long.

I stared at it for a few seconds before pressing play.

A young boy's cheerful voice came through the speaker.

"Thank you, Daddy Dante."

The room fell silent.

Then I laughed.

It wasn't because I found it funny.

It was the kind of laugh that came from pain too deep to cry over.

I was carrying Dante's child inside me, risking my body, enduring the discomfort and fear of pregnancy, while he was out there happily playing father to another woman's son. A Bellandi daughter, married into the Valente bloodline to carry an heir, and the heir meant nothing to the man who put it there.

On our wedding night, he had held my hand and promised me forever.

He had said he would love only me.

He had said he would be loyal.

He had said he would cherish me for the rest of his life.

It had only been three years.

And already, those vows had rusted into something ugly and worthless.

The bathroom door opened.

Dante stepped out with damp hair, a towel in his hand. The moment he saw me holding his phone, his expression changed.

His face twisted with rage.

Before I could even speak, he strode over and shoved me hard.

I lost my balance and crashed to the floor. The cold marble of the townhouse sent a shock up through my palms. A sharp pain tore through my lower abdomen, and I instinctively curled one hand over my stomach. My teeth sank into my lower lip as I forced myself to breathe through the pain.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Dante snapped. "Have you ever heard of privacy?"

Privacy.

The word was so absurd that it almost made me laugh again. Privacy, from the man whose soldiers swept the house for listening devices every Tuesday. Privacy, in a marriage that had been negotiated between two Families over a Sunday dinner neither bride nor groom had been invited to.

I struggled to push myself up from the floor, my voice shaking with anger.

"Privacy? What about boundaries?" I shot back. "You're letting Serafina's son call you Dad. Then what is our baby supposed to be?"

Dante's face remained cold.

"Oh, come on. It's just a godfather thing. Why do you have to turn everything into a problem?"

He stood there, looking down at me.

He didn't reach out.

He didn't ask if I was hurt.

He didn't even glance at my stomach.

There was only impatience in his eyes, as if I were some unreasonable burden he had been forced to deal with.

"It's not like I'm leaving you to marry Serafina," he said. "Isn't that enough for you?"

His words hit me harder than the shove.

Enough?

So I was supposed to be grateful that he hadn't abandoned me completely. I was supposed to accept that my husband could answer another woman's every call, let her child call him Dad, change his cipher to the date she returned, and still expect me to stay quiet because he had not officially severed our alliance marriage yet.

For a second, my mind drifted back to three years ago.

Back then, when Dante proposed to me at the Bellandi estate garden with my father's ring still warm from his handshake, his eyes had been full of warmth. He had looked at me like I was the only person he could see. Every word he spoke had been tender enough to make me believe in a lifetime.

But now, he looked at me with nothing but disdain.

As if I were something troublesome.

As if I were something he wished he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe.

I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, his phone rang again.

I glanced at the screen.

Serafina.

No.

Not Serafina.

He had saved her contact under an unbearably intimate nickname.

Fina mia.

The sight of it made my chest tighten.

Dante picked up without hesitation, completely unbothered by the fact that I was still sitting on the floor.

Serafina's soft, delicate voice came through the phone.

"Hey, Dante. Sorry to bother you again, but Matteo's been fussy all night. He says he misses his Daddy Dante and wants you to come read him a bedtime story."

The anger on Dante's face disappeared instantly.

His eyes softened.

His expression lit up like a child who had just received the gift he wanted most.

"Aww, isn't he a cute boy?" he said, his voice full of affection. "How can I let him down?"

He was already turning toward the closet.

"Alright, I'll be right there. Wait for me, Matteo. Daddy's on the way."

Daddy.

The word made my stomach twist.

"Dante!"

My voice trembled as I called out to him.

He paused at the door, impatiently looking back.

I swallowed the bitterness in my throat and said, almost pleading, "Please don't go. Stay with me tonight. When you pushed me just now, I sprained my ankle."

It was true.

My ankle throbbed with every tiny movement, the pain shooting up my leg like needles. My stomach still ached faintly too, and fear sat heavy in my chest. My thumb drifted to my left ring finger, pressing the band against the bone as if the pressure could hold something together.

But Dante only glanced at me with disgust.

"Seriously?" he said coldly. "I barely pushed you, Adriana. Stop being so dramatic."

Then he grabbed a fresh jacket from the wardrobe.

Not only did he not stay, he even stood in front of the mirror and carefully fixed his hair, smoothing it into place as if he were going on a date. His thumb tapped twice against the face of his watch before he adjusted his collar. The gesture was small, automatic, the same one his soldiers had learned to read as the end of a conversation.

The sight made something inside me burn.

All the pain, humiliation, and disappointment I had swallowed finally surged up at once.

I stared at his back and said, word by word, "Dante, if you walk out that door tonight, we're getting a divorce."

"Divorce?"

Dante let out a short, dismissive laugh, as if I had just said something childish and absurd.

"Don't be ridiculous, Adriana. Do you really want our child to grow up without a father?"

He paused, finally turning to look at me.

Maybe it was the look on my face. Maybe it was the fact that, for once, I wasn't crying, begging, or backing down. His expression stiffened for a second before disbelief twisted across his features.

"Unbelievable."

He strode back toward me, bent down, and scooped me up from the floor.

But there was no tenderness in the gesture.

He held me like I was a problem he was tired of dealing with, then dropped me onto the bed as if he were doing me some grand favor.

"There. Happy now?" he said coldly. "Just stay in bed and rest. You'll be fine by morning."

Then he turned and left.

I didn't call after him.

I didn't beg him to stay.

I just lay there in silence, watching his back disappear through the doorway. The moment the door closed behind him, the last fragile thread of hope inside me snapped.

The room became unbearably quiet. The only sound was the low ticking of the clock on the mantel and, somewhere beyond the reinforced windows, the engine of his car pulling away from the guarded townhouse.

I reached for my phone with trembling fingers and booked an appointment with the off-ledger physician for the next day. A quiet termination. No questions. No records the Family would ever see.

I couldn't keep doing this.

I couldn't keep pretending that this marriage still had a future, that Dante still cared, that the child inside me would be born into a home filled with love.

If Dante refused to choose me, then I would choose myself.

My ankle throbbed so badly that every small movement sent pain shooting up my leg. Still, I forced myself out of bed and hobbled to the kitchen. I took a washcloth from the drawer, stuffed it into the freezer, and waited until it was cold enough to use as an ice pack.

When I pressed it against my swollen ankle, the sharp chill bit into my skin.

Tears rolled down my face before I could stop them.

Not because of the pain.

Because I finally understood that from now on, I could no longer expect Dante to take care of me.

If he wouldn't love me, I would learn to love myself.

If he wouldn't protect me, I would protect myself.

My thumb drifted to my left ring finger, pressing against the band of the Valente marriage signet. The metal was warm from my skin. It meant nothing anymore.

That night, I didn't sleep at all.

Not because I was waiting for him.

I already knew he wouldn't come back.

And just as I expected, Dante stayed out all night.

At dawn, when the sky outside was only beginning to pale over the rooftops beyond the compound gate, my phone buzzed.

It was a message from an unknown burner number.

I opened it.

Several photos appeared on the screen.