My father was quiet for a long moment. The clock on the mantel ticked. Outside, a car passed on the street, its headlights sweeping briefly across the drawn curtains.

"Good riddance," he said finally.

I held it together for as long as I could. Then the wall cracked, and I let the tears come, sobbing against my mother's shoulder the way I hadn't since I was a girl. They'd never thought highly of Simone. They were a minor family, the Ferrantes, respected but small, and they'd seen the marriage for what it was from the beginning: a transaction dressed up in white lace and Sunday blessings. They were convinced he didn't truly love me.

And they were right.

I had chased Simone Valente for seven years. Seven years of showing up at the social club functions, of being the girl from the old neighborhood who wouldn't stop looking at the Valente heir like he'd hung the moon over the waterfront. When he finally agreed to be with me, I ignored everyone's warnings, thinking I could eventually make him love me. That if I was patient enough, loyal enough, quiet enough, the warmth would come.

It didn't. And here we were, facing the dissolution of an alliance that had been built on nothing but my stubbornness and his indifference.

I learned the hard way that you can't force a bond. A decade of my youth taught me that lesson. I waited and waited, but Simone still hadn't signed the papers. Just after I threatened to take the matter before a judge, to drag the Valente name into a public courtroom where the Feds would be watching and the other Families would be whispering, he finally texted me.

I'll come by tomorrow to pick you up and let Rocco and the others apologize. Stop making a fuss. I'm exhausted. Don't make me pick between you and Silvana.

Then, a second message:

I'm sorry, but can't you see my perspective? I said I'd distance myself from her, but she's carrying a child and needs support. You see, her husband's never around.

He acted like he was torn between Silvana and me just because she was with child, but time and again, he proved he always chose her.

On our wedding day, what did he do? He left the reception. Left me standing in the hall of the Valente estate in my white dress while the guests whispered behind their hands, because Silvana had called, upset after a fight with Enzo. On our anniversary, he walked out of the restaurant because she was "panicking" during a thunderstorm, and she needed him, and apparently the Marchetti soldiers who guarded her home weren't enough. On my birthday, she let him know the Ricci family's last remaining business had turned a profit, and he went to celebrate with her instead of sitting across from his own wife.

Every holiday, he tried to keep things balanced by getting gifts for me and for his former love. As if fairness in gift-giving could paper over the fact that his heart had never left the old neighborhood.

I'd brought this up to him more times than I could count, but he always said it wouldn't happen again. Yet here we were, and every time it did, he'd call me petty. He'd say I was being difficult. He'd say the Family needed peace and I was the one disturbing it.

Honestly, the best moment we ever had was when he proposed.

That night was something else. He'd taken me up to the ridge above the city, the old lookout point where the Valente men used to keep watch during the wars of the seventies. The stars felt so close I could almost reach them. The city sprawled below us, all those territories and borders reduced to a carpet of distant light. Under that sky, he slipped a ring on my finger, looking more serious than I'd ever seen him. His vows were heartfelt. His voice didn't waver. He went all out for that moment, and I believed every word.

That was the cruelest part. He'd meant it. He just hadn't meant it enough.

When Simone noticed I hadn't replied to his messages, he called. His voice was controlled, the way it always was when he needed something from me. "Darling, I've booked a private room for everyone to apologize to you. Please don't make a scene."

I asked casually, "Is Silvana coming?"

"Of course," he said.

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my wedding ring and turned it slowly. One full rotation. "Fine then. I'll come with you tomorrow."

If they wanted to apologize, it had better not be just to me.

The next day, when Simone pulled up in the black sedan, Silvana Ricci was in the passenger seat.

She turned to look at me as I opened the rear door, and she gave me a smile that was all surface, all practiced warmth. Her fingers drifted to the hollow of her throat, resting there for just a moment. "Sorry, Grazia. I get carsick. Must be the pregnancy, you know, so I had to sit up front."

I smiled back faintly. "Sure."

When I hadn't been considering divorce, I might have felt something about my husband's first love sitting beside him, her hand resting near his on the center console, her perfume filling the car. But now, whatever they did just stopped bothering me. The sting was gone. In its place was something flat and clear, like the surface of water after the wind dies.

It was funny, though. If it was Simone's car, she had to sit next to him. But in anyone else's car, at any other gathering, she never mentioned carsickness. She'd take whatever seat was offered and never say a word about it.

The restaurant was one of those places the Families used for sit-downs when they wanted neutral ground that still felt expensive. White tablecloths. Heavy silverware. A private room in the back where the staff knew not to enter without knocking twice. By the time we arrived, all of Simone's men were already there, seated around the long table like soldiers awaiting orders. Rocco Valente. Dario Ferretti. Luca. A few others from the crew who'd been present when the remarks were made.

Rocco came over first. He greeted me with a nod that was barely a nod, then pulled out the chair beside him and gestured for me to sit. "Grazia. I'll be the first to apologize."

His tone wasn't exactly sincere. There was something underneath it, something that sounded less like remorse and more like a man who'd been told to do this and resented the instruction. Once everyone was seated, Rocco poured me a drink, announced he'd take a shot to make up for his mistakes, and raised his glass. He drained it in one swallow, set it down with a deliberate clink, and began.

"Well, I don't usually think before I speak, so don't take it to heart." He cracked the knuckle of his right index finger. A single, sharp pop. "Honestly, I never thought you were good enough for my brother. But he wants to be with you, so I'm here to support him."

"Thanks," I said. "I guess."

He poured another glass and said he'd take a second shot for what he'd said that day. He drank it, and the apology sat between us like a stone neither of us wanted to pick up.

Right after that, the others jumped in. Dario ran a hand through his hair and glanced at Simone before offering his own version of contrition. Luca tilted his chin up slightly before mumbling something about not meaning any disrespect. The words came quickly, rehearsed, a chorus of men who'd been told to perform and were performing.

Seeing the tension ease, Simone took charge. He straightened in his seat, gestured broadly, and told everyone to eat. The waiters appeared. Plates were set down. For a few minutes, the room sounded almost normal.

Then Silvana stood up.

She held a glass of juice, because of course she couldn't drink, and her free hand rose to the hollow of her throat. Two fingers resting there, light as a whisper. The room shifted. Conversations didn't stop, exactly, but they thinned, the way sound thins when everyone starts listening without wanting to be caught doing it.

"Grazia, I want to apologize to you too." Her voice was warm, pitched perfectly for an audience. "Simone and I had a past, so with our situation now, I think I've made things difficult for you."

Simone moved immediately. "Hey, Silvana, no. You didn't do anything wrong."

His thumb traced the edge of his jaw. Slowly. The gesture I'd learned to recognize in our first year together. The one that meant a lie was coming, or had just arrived, or had been living in his mouth so long he'd forgotten it was there.

Then he turned to me, and his expression shifted to something that was supposed to look earnest. "Darling, I'm sorry. I admit I didn't handle this situation well."

"Alright," I said. My voice was level. The room was quiet enough to hear the ice settling in someone's glass. "But someone else wants to hear you both apologize too."

Every head at the table turned toward me.

Then the door swung open.

He walked in sharp and unhurried, dressed in a dark suit cut so precisely it looked like armor. The kind of man who entered a room and changed its temperature without raising his voice or lifting a hand.

"W-why are you here?" Silvana stammered, her face draining of color, the glass of juice trembling in her grip.

Her husband stood in the doorway, and the room went very still.