After I buried my mother the way the Falcone dead were always buried, quiet, guarded, no names spoken aloud, I went back to the Family’s clinic like it was any other day. Grief clung to me like a second skin, but I kept moving, kept stitching soldiers back together, because, really, what else was there to do?

It didn’t take long before Rosaria Marchetti, the elder who’d taught me everything about mending men who could never be brought to a real hospital, came by the back room where I worked. She didn’t waste time getting to the point.

“Adriana,” she said, her brow furrowing. “I heard you put your name in for the medical mission across the water. Are you sure about this? The territory they’re sending people to is still contested ground, held under a ceasefire that could break any hour. You’ll be facing gunfire, danger, every single day.”

I met her gaze, steady and unwavering. “I’ve thought this through, Rosaria. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Just… never found the right moment.”

In the past, I couldn’t leave. I had my mother to care for. And I had Salvatore.

But now?

My mother was gone. And the Salvatore I once loved, the one who once loved me, was long gone too. I had no real reason to stay bound to this house anymore.

It didn’t matter where I was. If I could go somewhere untouchable by the families back home and make a difference, even a small one, that was enough for me.

Rosaria studied me for a long moment. Then she reached up, drew her reading glasses from her nose, and folded them slowly in her hand before she spoke. She knew there was no talking me out of it.

“All right,” she said finally. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

I gave her a small smile. “I will.”

She left soon after, and I turned back to the desk, sorting through supply lists when the door swung open.

And there he was. Salvatore.

His timing was impeccable.

He looked at me with those familiar furrowed brows. “Where did you say you were going just now?”

I froze for half a second, then slowly looked up, keeping my face neutral. No need to give the Don the satisfaction of seeing how much his presence still moved the air in the room.

“I was talking about taking a trip,” I said, my voice smooth and calm as I went on organizing the desk. “Since I started this work, I’ve barely had time to see anything beyond these walls.”

Before all of it, back when the Falcone name still meant something, I used to plan trips. I loved seeing new places, walking streets no one in the Family controlled. Salvatore knew that about me.

And just like that, any suspicion in his expression faded.

“That’s good,” he said, nodding, his thumb rolling the heavy signet ring at his finger once before it stilled. “It’s good for you to get away for a while.”

Then, without missing a beat, he added, “By the way, Gemma’s coming in for a check-up. Can you see that she’s taken care of?”

So that was why he’d come.

No pretenses anymore. No hollow concern.

My fingers tightened around the file in my hands, a dull ache settling deep in my chest.

He was so pleased about their child. The heir he’d wanted so badly he’d let it rot everything between us.

Did he ever stop to think about the one we lost?

For a split second, I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to ask if he ever remembered. If he ever thought about the child we never got to hold, the one I’d lost the night he made me drink to prove my loyalty at a sit-down.

But I swallowed it down.

The past was buried. No point digging up what was already in the ground.

Or maybe… he had forgotten a long time ago.

I forced my voice to stay calm and steady. “The house doctors here are more than capable. She can wait her turn like anyone else under this roof.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, the door opened again.

Gemma Ricci.

Her belly was unmistakable as she walked in and threaded her arm through Salvatore’s. She looked up at him, her voice soft, almost pitiful.

“Salvatore, does Adriana not want to help us?” she murmured. Her free hand drifted to her belly, a half-second too late. “It’s my fault for not sending word ahead. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

Salvatore didn’t pull away from her touch. Instead he reached out and pinched her cheek.

“I have time,” he said, his voice gentle, too gentle for a man whose gentleness I’d watched die years ago. “If she doesn’t want to help, it’s fine. I’ll wait with you.”

Then, as if that weren’t enough, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered something meant only for her.

The warmth between them was suffocating.

I didn’t know what hurt more, the fact that he had never been this gentle with me, or the fact that I once believed he could be.

There was a time when he would go out of his way to make me smile. When he was still nothing, still climbing out of the gutter, he’d spend his last dollar on a thin chain I’d admired, promising me that whatever any woman in any family had, I’d have it too.

He used to come home worn from the work of building his name from nothing, his body spent. But no matter how tired he was, he’d always make time for me. He’d still talk to me, still listen.

He used to tell me those late-night hours with me were the only thing that made him feel alive.

And now?

Now we barely exchanged words.

I tore my gaze away from them, forcing myself not to linger on something that had already crumbled.

Just as I turned back to the desk, Salvatore spoke again, casual as ever.

“That business the last time… it was Gemma’s fault,” he said like he was talking about the weather. “I had someone send over something fine. I’ll have it brought to your mother, to make peace.”

I froze. Make peace? With my mother?

My jaw tightened, my nails digging into my palm. Beneath the desk, out of sight, I turned my mother’s thin gold ring twice around my finger.

She was gone.

What was the point of making peace now?

“There’s no need,” I said flatly. “She doesn’t need it anymore.”

The night my mother passed, I had called Salvatore countless times. Not once did he pick up.

With each ring, the same cold, automated voice repeated itself, hollow and distant. At first, I was furious. But as the hours bled into days, the anger faded, replaced by a numbness I couldn’t shake.

For a moment, I considered dragging it into the open, demanding the Vitale name answer for what it had done. For the stress. For the pain that had worsened my mother’s dying. My mother, the last thin thread of the Falcone bloodline, gone while the Don who’d married into nothing looked away.

But every time I closed my eyes, I heard her last words: Don’t hold onto hate, Adriana. Let it go. Live your life freely… gracefully… happily.

So, I did. Or at least, I tried. Beneath the table, I turned her thin gold ring twice around my finger, slow, without looking down.

Salvatore, however, still thought I was upset about Gemma’s little stunt. His brow furrowed, his voice edged with impatience.

“Adriana, you don’t need to keep holding on to these little things. The past is the past.”

To him, it was over. A closed chapter.

To me? It never would be.

I lifted my gaze, locking eyes with him, my expression stone cold.

“My mother is gone,” I said, flat and final. “You won’t find her.”

Salvatore’s face darkened. His voice turned sharp, cutting through the still air of the clinic corridor. “Adriana! Don’t go too far! No matter what, she’s still your mother. How can you even say something like that? She’s sick. Where else would she be if not in a bed?”

My fingers curled into fists, nails digging into my palms, the anger bubbling up from deep inside.

My mother had treated him like a son. She had given him everything, her warmth, her kindness, even the last of the Falcone money when he hit rock bottom and had nothing but his name. She had helped him rise when the streets had put him down.

And in return?

She never knew peace. Not even in her last moments.

That’s when Gemma spoke up, her voice dripping with false sincerity.

“Dr. Falcone, I know I was thoughtless before, and I’m really sorry. Can you forgive me? Salvatore really cares about Auntie. Please don’t be mad at him.” Her hand drifted to her belly, a half-second too late to mean anything.

The sound of my mother spoken from those lips sent a searing rage through me.

“You don’t deserve to say her name!”

The control I’d been holding on to snapped. I shot up from my chair, fury flooding my veins.

“Get out. I don’t want to see you.”

Salvatore stepped in front of Gemma instinctively, as if shielding her from me. His eyes went cold.

“Adriana, are you really going to act like this?” His voice was harsh, edged with disappointment. “Is this how you carry the name they trust you with? A house doctor who loses her head?”

Before I could respond, he pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and turned his back to me. Right in front of me.

His voice was ice.

“I want it known that the Family’s doctor forgot herself tonight. Adriana Falcone. See that word gets where it needs to go…”

A bitter laugh threatened to rise in my throat, but I swallowed it back down.

So this was who he was now.

Not the man who’d promised to keep me safe when he had nothing. Not the man who once called me his home.

The man standing in front of me now didn’t even care enough to hear my side.

He finished the call and turned, walking out without another word. Gemma trailed after him, but just before she reached the door, she looked back at me.

And smiled.

It was smug. Triumphant.

Like she was saying, See? Salvatore is on my side. You? You’re nothing but a joke.

They didn’t cast me out of the Family’s medical apparatus, but the word came down all the same. A warning. A blackened name whispered through the right ears.

Rosaria Marchetti heard what happened and didn’t waste a second stepping in.

“I’ve arranged your early passage,” she told me the next day, her voice firm. She removed her reading glasses and folded them slowly. “You’re going to the neutral mission. The ceasefire territory, where none of these families can touch you.”

I didn’t argue.

I packed up my things, signed what needed signing, and went home to the estate that had never felt like mine.

Salvatore still hadn’t come back. But his name moved through the Family’s circles all the same.

Word reached me the way everything reaches a wife who has stopped mattering. An image passed hand to hand. The grey shape of Gemma’s unborn child, and beneath it, in Salvatore’s own hand: Can’t wait to meet you, little one.

Then another. A freshly painted nursery in a wing of the house I would never enter. Hurry up and get here. Mama and Papa can’t wait to hold you.

He made no effort to keep it from me.

Maybe he thought I wouldn’t care.

Maybe he wanted me to see.

I stared at it for a long time before I let it be known, coldly and deliberately, that I had seen. That I approved. A small, dead thing offered up like a blessing.

An hour later, the door closed. Word came that the Don wanted no further contact from me. Cut off. Severed.

I wasn’t angry.

Instead, I severed him first. Quietly, completely, with one final decision of my own.

From that moment on, Salvatore Vitale no longer existed in my world.

Across the city, Salvatore sat in the back room behind his legitimate front, staring at his phone. A strange unease settled in his chest, a feeling he couldn’t quite name. He rolled the heavy signet ring against his thumb, once, twice, and could not find the shape of the thing that bothered him.

His phone buzzed with an incoming call.

Gemma.

He hesitated.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t answer at once.

Salvatore Vitale had been carrying a heavy weight of guilt for days now.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t gone to see Adriana’s mother. Or maybe it was the way Adriana had been so distant, a million miles away even when she stood close enough to touch. Either way, something was gnawing at him, refusing to let go.

That evening, he closed out the night’s business early, sending a soldier to fetch the finest tonics money could buy before he went to the clinic himself. He barely got through the door when he caught two of the house doctors speaking low nearby.

“Dr. Falcone’s mother passed a few nights ago. We were the ones who took her to be buried, quietly, the way the Family does. You’re her son-in-law, aren’t you? You didn’t know?”