I found out I was the villainess of a romance novel called Sunshine Donna when I was already pregnant.

For twenty-two years, I'd chased Renato Gatti without a shred of shame. Then came three years of marriage, just the two of us, wrapped up in each other. I'd thought it was everything.

Then his true love showed up.

According to the story, I was supposed to fall apart. I'd torment the girl, sabotage their relationship, and in the process, destroy myself. A bullet through the forehead. That was how it ended for Gianna Milano.

I looked up. Renato was across the room, phone in hand, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

He'd met her.

Fine.

This time, I'd step aside.

But when I asked for a divorce—

He cried. He begged me to stay. He threw the entire East Coast at the problem, just to keep me from walking out the door.

Three days before I woke up to all of this, Renato stopped eating my breakfasts.

His excuse: running late.

I didn't think much of it. I kept making them anyway. Three years of marriage had made it reflex.

Now I knew why he was in such a hurry. He was saving time to have breakfast with Noemi.

Noemi Vessi, the heroine of Sunshine Donna.

She was the kind of woman who lit up a room: vivid, warm, bursting with life at every seam.

The morning I first understood, I walked Renato to the door and watched his car pull out of the drive. I took a step forward, cupped my hands around my mouth, and called out:

"Renato, I love you!"

He waved without looking back and hit the gas.

Nothing.

The wind from his tires scattered dead leaves across the pavement, as if echoing an unspoken thought.

He'd changed.

I stood there in the sunlight, hollowed out.

I was three years old when I first saw him. It felt like lightning. I followed him home that day and made a scene, and the family laughed about it for years. I spent my entire childhood trailing after him like a second shadow.

When I was ten, I spent three thousand dollars at a charity lunch auction just to sit across from him for an hour.

At thirteen, I asked him to the spring dance. He said yes. I didn't sleep for a week.

At eighteen, the night of prom, after enough persistence that even I was embarrassed by myself, I finally kissed him.

At twenty-five, we stood before God and made our vows.

Everyone said we were a perfect match, a union of the Gatti family and the Milano family, two of the most powerful names on the East Coast.

I believed that. I believed it until the moment I woke up inside this story and understood the truth: it had always been one-sided. Whatever Renato felt for me was habit. Duty. The kind of feeling that grows in the space where real love never bothered to show up.

He was a ship with no engine. I was the wind that had been pushing him forward for twenty-five years.

Then Noemi walked in and changed everything.

She worked at his club, a bartender with skills that caught his attention. Her energy fascinated him. Admiration became attraction, and attraction became something more. But Renato remained physically faithful to me. What he shared with Noemi was nothing but platonic love.

A great love story always needs a villainess to make it burn.

And that villainess was me. Gianna Milano.

The plot called for me to discover the emotional affair and go to war against Noemi: petty cruelty, jealous rages, one humiliation after another, all of it making Noemi shine brighter by contrast.

Renato's contempt for me would grow until he handed me the divorce papers himself.

Then I'd run to my father, try to use the family to tear them apart.

Renato would outmaneuver me, dismantle the Milano organization, and deliver his final verdict personally.

A bullet, center of the forehead.

After that, he and Noemi would live happily ever after.

I came back to my senses and pressed my fingers to my brow. A faint, phantom pain bloomed there, as if the bullet had already chosen its destination.

If I'd known from birth how this story ended, I never would have gone near him.

But I only woke up now.

Twenty-five years had carved Renato into my bones. I loved him. Genuinely. And somewhere underneath everything, I believed he loved me too, just not the way I loved him.

Finding out this late that I wasn't his destination, just a rest stop along the way, wasn't tragedy. It was a bad joke, and it was happening to me.

The housekeeper's voice broke through my thoughts.

"Donna, what would you like for lunch? I'll have it prepared."

I considered for a moment. "Make whatever the Don likes. I'll bring it to the club."

Renato ran most of his business from his office there. We needed to talk.

The housekeeper left, and I drifted, my hand settling unconsciously over my stomach.

There was a child in there. Ours.

In the original story, Gianna loses the baby. During a group outing, Renato gets pressured by his men into singing a duet with Noemi, a love song, of course.

Gianna walks in on it, loses her temper, goes for Noemi's hair and raises her hand to slap her.

Renato shoves Gianna away hard enough that she miscarries.

After that, her hatred becomes absolute.

Out of guilt, Renato transferred Noemi to the warehouse department, far away from his sight.

But that whole arc was designed for Noemi. The loss, the exile to the warehouse department, the reconciliation that follows: all of it built to make their reunion more affecting.

The thought sent a dull ache through my stomach. I pressed my fist against it.

I didn't believe the book had to be the end of the story.

Twenty-five years. His child inside me. I believed I could change the ending.

Don't let me down, Renato.

At eleven, the housekeeper brought the lunch box to me with a smile.

"Donna, you two are the most devoted couple I know. People envy you."

I nodded and said nothing, thinking: God, I hope you're right.

I drove to the club and walked straight to Renato's office. On the way past the bar, I scanned for Noemi. She wasn't there.

A bad feeling settled in my chest.

I pushed open the office door. And stopped.

Renato and Noemi were sitting side by side at the big mahogany desk, close enough to touch. On the desk between them was a little dog-shaped lunch box, the kind you'd buy at a market stall. Pasta bolognese inside, from the look of it.

Noemi was laughing, head tilted down, bright and unguarded.

Renato was watching her the way you watch something that delights you.

Then he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, pulled out his pocket square, the one I'd chosen for him, the one I'd picked to complement that exact suit, and gently wiped the corner of her mouth.

Damn, it looked like a painting.

I let out a short, cold laugh.

They both turned. Renato froze, still leaning toward her, his hand still raised, his eyes locked onto me like he'd been bolted in place.

The absurdity of it made me laugh for real.

Renato recovered in a second, his expression shutting down into something dark and guarded. I looked at the pocket square in his hand, raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.

My gaze drifted towards Noemi.

Noemi scrambled to her feet. Too fast: her hand clipped the lunch box, her heel caught on something, and she went down hard, the entire contents of the pasta box landing on her lap.

Renato was at her side before the box stopped rolling. He helped her up, started cleaning her off.

I tightened my grip on my own lunch box, turned around, and walked out.

I had too much dignity for that hysterical farce in the original story.

I turned right at the end of the hall and found Luca, the warehouse manager, in his office.

He stood when he saw me. "Donna. You wanted to see me?"

I sat down in his chair and opened my lunch box.

I was actually hungry. I'd been running on nerves since morning, and I was eating for two now.

Luca stood to the side, watching me eat with a completely baffled expression.

When I'd finished, I dabbed my mouth with a napkin and said, casually: "I know about your arrangement with the South American suppliers. Wait for my call. We'll talk."

He nodded, confused and alarmed in equal measure.

Renato found me a minute later.

"Gianna, what are you doing? Why are you having lunch in here?"

"You're allowed to eat with the bartender, but I can't eat with a man?"

Renato's head snapped toward Luca. Luca looked like he was considering the merits of kneeling. Renato studied him for a long moment, apparently decided he wasn't a threat, and said flatly: "Don't cause a scene. We'll talk at home."

I stood, dropped the used napkin in the empty lunch box, and pushed it toward Renato.

"Clean that up."

I walked past him without a second glance.

He stood there, staring after me like he'd never seen me before. Because he hadn't, not like this. I'd always been soft with him, patient, accommodating, endlessly warm.

Because I'd loved him.

There was no point in that anymore.

After all, the blood of the Milano family ran through my veins.

My father was Ricardo Milano, the Don of the Milano family. He had always taught me an eye for an eye.

I left the club and checked into a suite at the Four Seasons nearby. Then I called Luca.

He arrived thirty minutes later, gray-faced.

He stepped inside, clocked the bed, and stammered, "Donna, I swear on everything—I'd never—"

I laughed despite myself and smacked the back of his head. "Idiot. Don't be dramatic."

In the story, Luca was a minor villainess. He ran the club's warehouse, but he also managed the dock shipments, and he'd been skimming from both for years. When Noemi got transferred to the warehouse, she uncovered his operation, handed the evidence to Renato, and earned herself a second act in the love story.

Not if I got there first.

I laid out everything I knew about his operation, line by line. His color drained with each detail. By the end, he'd slid halfway off his chair.

"Did Don Milano send you? Am I getting the last rites?"

Last rites. The family's way of saying a bullet.

"No. Don Milano doesn't know I'm here, and I have no intention of telling him. As long as you follow my instructions, your secret stays with me."

"What do you need?"

"I'll tell you when the time comes. And keep today between us." I leaned in slightly. "We just spent an hour alone in a hotel suite. That's hard to explain, especially with Renato's temper."

I gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Nod if you understand. Then go back to work."

Luca nodded and stumbled out.

I stretched out on the bed and started thinking through what came next. I liked to think with music on, something with weight to it. I settled on Beethoven's Fifth. Good for the baby, supposedly.

I was asleep before the second movement.

A sharp ring cut through my nap. Renato. I checked the time: eight in the evening, his usual hour for coming home.

I ended the call.

He didn't try again. Renato was a Don. People didn't hang up on him.

No rush. He could get used to it slowly. I had plenty of time.

I washed my face and called the family lawyer.

"Draft divorce papers. I need them by tomorrow."

A long pause. "...Whose divorce papers?"

"Mine and Renato's. Obviously."

He collected himself. "Understood. No children yet, no custody dispute. Have you two agreed on the division of assets?"

"Pre-marital property follows the prenup. As for everything we accumulated together, we can let it go."

Sorting through our shared assets was far too tedious. A legal dispute in court dragged on for ages, and I had no patience for that.

"You're... waiving the marital assets? That's very generous of you."

I pulled the phone away from my face and stared at it. Whose lawyer was he?

"I mean he can forget it. Everything we built together goes to me. I'm just not asking for alimony."

A Don had to have some standards.

"Of course. I'll start drafting now and send it over when it's ready."

I hung up, listened to a bit more music, then decided to get some air.

I'd barely stepped out of the hotel entrance when Renato materialized from the side, jaw tight, face unreadable.

I'd always assumed that was just how he was. A Don couldn't afford to show his hand. But then I'd seen him with Noemi: laughing, at ease, completely open.

He was capable of it. He just didn't do it for me.

"You're going to give me a heart attack," I said, one hand going to my chest, the other dropping instinctively to my stomach.

"Why did you hang up on me? I thought you'd been taken."

He said flatly, "Do you have any idea I nearly sent all the family’s soldiers out to look for you?"

"A kidnapping would've been convenient for you. No one standing between you and Noemi."

He paused, then seemed to take this in stride. He straightened up, hands in his pockets, looking down at me.

"Noemi and I are colleagues. That's it. Stop making things up. Let's go. I'm taking you home."

He reached for my wrist.

I stepped back.

His hand hung in the air, fingers still extended. His brow pulled tight.

"Renato." I kept my voice level. "I need to say something."

I looked past him, at the sky beyond his shoulder. The moon hung there, half-eaten, pale and isolated.

"I want a divorce."