The girl who smiled so prettily and spoke so softly and always, always found a reason to be near Dominic. The soldiers doted on her. The household staff cooked her favorite meals without being asked. Even the Consigliere spoke of her with a gentleness he reserved for no one else. She had wrapped the entire Valente empire around her delicate finger.

But Nonna, like me, had never trusted her. Not once. Not from the very first day Chiara had been brought through the compound gates as a frightened twelve-year-old, clutching a rosary and weeping for her dead mother.

"That injury is a fake." Nonna's voice was flat, certain, the voice of a woman stating a fact as plain as the weather. "Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?"

My heart hammered against my ribs. It was not just me. I was not paranoid. I was not the jealous, bitter woman the whispers in the hallways made me out to be.

"You think she did this on purpose?"

Nonna scoffed. The sound was quiet, almost elegant, but it carried the weight of absolute contempt.

"Oh, child. Of course she did. She has been playing this game for years, pulling Dominic closer every chance she gets. Every scraped knee. Every tearful confession. Every little crisis that requires the Don's personal attention. You think she is helpless?" Nonna leaned forward, and her dark eyes burned. "I see right through her. I have seen women like Chiara Mancuso my entire life. They are the most dangerous kind. The kind who smile while they slip the knife between your ribs."

I clenched my fists in my lap. My nails bit into my palms.

"Then how come Dominic doesn't see it?"

"Because that boy has been blinded since the day she arrived. His father's dying oath, the debt of honor to Rosaria Mancuso, it clouds everything. He confuses obligation with affection, and Chiara knows exactly how to keep the confusion alive." Nonna's mouth thinned. "But you know the truth. So you must be strong enough to face it."

I nodded. The motion felt mechanical, hollow. My stomach churned. I did not want to be strong. I wanted Dominic to walk through that door, take my face in his hands, and tell me he was sorry. I wanted him to make it right. I wanted him to choose me.

"I'm sure you'll think of something. I know you are strong and wise, Neve." Nonna rose from the chair with a grace that defied her years. She crossed the room and pulled me into a hug. Her arms were thin but firm, and she smelled of rosewater and old lace. "Do not let this Family break you. You are worth more than they know."

She released me, smoothed the front of her dress, and left without another word. The door clicked shut behind her.

Silence filled the room like floodwater.

My phone vibrated against the duvet, and I flinched. I crossed to the bed and picked it up. A message from Ivo Valente, the Underboss. My childhood friend. The man who had grown up beside Dominic and me, who had stood at Dominic's right hand since the day the old Don was buried.

"Neve, I heard the news. Don't be too disappointed. Dominic had to do this. It's his obligation as the head of the Family. He needs to ensure the safety of everyone under his protection."

"Yeah, right!" The words tore out of me, loud and raw in the empty room. I tossed the phone back onto the bed without typing a reply. Ivo and his endless excuses. Ivo, who always found a way to make Dominic's choices sound reasonable, who always smoothed the edges until the blade didn't look like a blade anymore.

Two minutes later, the group chat buzzed again. I picked up the phone against my better judgment. Chiara had posted more photographs. Dominic sitting at her bedside, spooning broth into her mouth as though she were an invalid. Dominic pressing the back of his hand to her forehead to check her temperature. Dominic adjusting the bandage on her ankle with the careful, focused attention of a man tending to something precious and breakable.

As if she were his wife. As if she were the woman he was supposed to marry today.

Beneath the photos, Chiara's message glowed on the screen:

"Everyone, I am so sorry for any trouble, especially to Neve and Dominic. I didn't mean to ruin the most important day of your lives. Dominic, thank you for being the best Don I could ever ask for. You always make me feel like the most important person in the world."

The reactions piled up beneath her words. Hearts. Prayers. Adoring replies from soldiers and household staff alike. And then the bolder ones, the ones that twisted the knife.

"You two look so good together."

"If fate had willed it differently, you would make such a beautiful pair."

"God works in mysterious ways."

Chiara, Chiara. It was always Chiara that everyone favored. Chiara, the saint. Chiara, the angel. Chiara, the poor little orphan who could do no wrong.

Tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them. They fell onto the screen of my phone, blurring Chiara's smiling face into a watercolor smear. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, but more followed, hot and relentless.

Five years. I had waited five years, and all I had to show for it was the slow, sickening realization that I had been making a mistake this entire time. Loving Dominic Valente had cost me my pride, my peace, and very nearly my sanity.

It was time to correct it. It was time to choose myself.

I opened a new message to Dominic. My fingers were steady now. The tears still fell, but something inside me had gone very quiet, very cold, the way a lake freezes over in the dead of winter.

"Call me."

I sent it. I knew he would not call unless I asked. Even then, there was no guarantee.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. The clock on the nightstand ticked. Outside the window, the late morning sun cast long shadows across the compound's manicured grounds, where the chapel still stood draped in ivory silk and red roses that no one would see.

Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Nothing. No call. No reply. Not even the three pulsing dots that would have told me he was typing.

I was about to stand, to do what I did not yet know, when the phone finally rang. His name filled the screen. I answered.

"Anything happen, Neve?" Dominic's voice was clipped. Distracted. Irritated, as though I had pulled him away from something far more important.

"Is that all you have to say?"

The hurt in my own voice surprised me. I had meant to sound cold, controlled, the way the women in this world were supposed to sound. Instead, I sounded exactly like what I was: a woman whose heart was breaking.

"Sorry." He exhaled. The sound was heavy, tired, the exhale of a man carrying the weight of an empire on his shoulders. "I can't think clearly right now. Chiara got hurt. I needed to make sure she'd be okay."

"Right. As expected from Don Valente."

A beat of silence. When he spoke again, his voice had an edge.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I closed my eyes. The tears had stopped. The cold, frozen thing inside me held firm.

"It means we're over. The betrothal is severed."

I ended the call before he could draw another breath.

After Neve hung up on me, the room felt like a sealed coffin. She had never done that before. Not once in all the years I had known her, in all the years she had been promised to me. The silence that followed the dead line was louder than any gunshot I had ever heard.

I set the phone down on the mahogany desk, slow and deliberate, the way a man sets down a weapon he is trying not to use. Then I leaned back in the leather chair and stared at the ceiling of my study, at the hand-painted fresco my grandfather had commissioned decades ago. Angels and serpents, tangled together. He'd always said that was the truest portrait of our family ever made.

Her words had cut deeper than I wanted to admit. After everything we had been through, after all the years bound together by our fathers' blood oath, how had it come to this?

But what else could I have done? Chiara had been hurt during combat training, and as the Don, I had an obligation. The Family always came first. That was the weight I accepted the day they placed my father's signet ring on my finger and every man in the room kissed my hand. I thought Neve, of all people, understood this. She was my betrothed. She was supposed to stand beside me as Donna of this Family.

I exhaled through my teeth and picked up the phone again. The group message thread had blown up while I was dealing with the fallout, and I hadn't even glanced at it. When I opened it, every message was from Chiara. She had been updating the Family's inner circle on her injury, picture after picture, message after message. My jaw tightened as I scrolled through the photos she had sent. They were carefully framed. Every single one featured her and me. I lingered on the worst of them: Chiara lying on the medical cot in the compound's infirmary, her face arranged in an expression of fragile suffering, while I stood over her looking every inch the concerned protector.

I ran a hand through my hair and dropped the phone face-down on the desk.

Everything seemed to be spiraling out of my control, but none of it was my doing. Chiara needed me. My father had sworn a blood oath to her dying mother. I could not simply abandon that debt because of the ceremony. Neve should have understood how sacred the obligations of this Family were. She knew the life. She had always known the life.

Still, the guilt gnawed at me like a rat behind the walls. I had canceled our wedding. Our blood-bound union. For Chiara. And now Neve was furious, and the silence on the other end of that phone call had been the kind of silence that preceded war.

Maybe I could have handled it better. I should have called her first, spoken to her directly, asked for her understanding before making the decision. Or at the very least, I should have explained my reasons face to face instead of sending a message as if the union meant nothing. As if she meant nothing.

But what was done was done, and I had to deal with the fallout.

A knock on the study door pulled me from the spiral.

"Come in."

Ivo stepped through the heavy oak door with his usual measured calm, the kind of composure that had made him invaluable to me since we were boys running through the corridors of this very compound. He closed the door behind him without a sound, lowered himself into the chair across from my desk, and studied me with those sharp, patient eyes. If there was anyone in this world I could count on to help me make sense of this wreckage, it was him. My underboss. My brother in everything but blood.

"Dominic." His voice was low, almost gentle. "I heard what happened."

I leaned forward and pressed my knuckles against my temples.

"Yeah. Neve's furious."

Ivo raised an eyebrow, settling deeper into his chair, one ankle crossing over his knee with the ease of a man who had never lost a moment's sleep in his life.

"Furious at you for fulfilling your obligation?"

His words made me drag a hand down my face.

"I canceled the wedding, Ivo. The blood-bound union. She has every right to be upset."

He shook his head slowly, as though Neve's reaction was something he genuinely could not fathom.

"She might be upset, but you did what you had to do. Chiara was hurt. You're the Don. Your first responsibility is to the Family. That means ensuring every person under this roof is safe, especially when they're injured. Especially when they carry the weight of your father's oath."

"I know that." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "But Neve doesn't see it that way. She thinks I'm choosing Chiara over her."

Ivo's expression softened. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

"Dominic. You didn't choose Chiara over Neve. You chose the Family over everything. That is what being the Boss means. Neve knows that deep down, even if anger is blinding her right now."

I clenched my fists on the desk, the signet ring biting into my finger. Frustration coiled inside my chest like smoke with nowhere to go.

"I know she does. But it feels like I'm losing her, Ivo. I've been so consumed with the Family lately, with Chiara, with every crisis that walks through that door, that I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone be with her."

"You're not neglecting her." Ivo's tone was firm, certain. "You carry responsibilities that most people will never understand. Neve is upset, sure. But she'll come around. You have always been there for her, and she knows that."

I didn't respond. I turned my head toward the window, where the city lights of Manhattan bled through the bulletproof glass like distant fires. A part of me knew Ivo was right. Neve had always stood by me. Through the wars, through the funerals, through every blood-soaked night that came with this throne. But lately, something between us had shifted. I could feel the distance growing, a silence that had nothing to do with loyalty and everything to do with loneliness.