He looked ready to come apart at the seams, a Don's fury straining against the silk of his control. "If any of you think this kind of stunt is amusing," Dominic said, his voice low and lethal enough to still every glass in the private dining room, "consider this your only warning. Stay the hell away from Gianna."
Gianna stood frozen near the head of the table, her cheeks burning, her eyes brimming with tears she let everyone see. Then she spun on her heel and fled toward the door, barely holding the pieces of herself together, every step a performance the room drank in.
Dominic panicked. He could hardly walk a straight line, the wine still heavy in his blood, but he didn't hesitate for a breath. He released me, his hand falling away from my arm as though it had never rested there, and stumbled after her.
"Gianna, don't. Wait. Please. Just wait for me."
I stood where he'd left me and watched the two of them disappear down the hallway, his soldiers parting to let them pass without a word. Strangely, I felt almost nothing. Maybe because somewhere deep beneath the ribs, in the place I no longer let myself examine, I had always known the truth of it. I was the one he would drop the instant another voice called his name.
Once Dominic was gone, the room came slowly back to life. The voices returned, low at first, careful, then louder as the careful faded. The clink of crystal, the scrape of a chair, the soft confidence of people who knew exactly where the power in this Family had shifted.
"Dio, I've never seen him that worked up."
"Think he's serious about her this time?"
"Anyone with eyes can see it. Women who throw themselves at a man like that always end up looking cheap."
Laughter broke out again, easy and unhurried.
They didn't bother lowering their voices. Dominic had no respect to spare for me, and so neither did they. In this world respect ran downhill from the Don like water, and mine had been cut off at the source. My shoulder throbbed where he had leaned his weight on me earlier, the fracture beneath the bandage flaring with a deep, grinding ache. I lifted my hand and pressed it flat against the pain, gathering myself to leave before the whispering turned into something I would have to wear all night.
I caught myself twisting the thin band on my finger, the wedding ring I no longer believed in, turning it round and round as if friction could summon back something that had never truly been there.
Then Lorenzo's voice came from behind me, quiet and certain. "Eva."
I turned.
The Consigliere's face was drawn tight, the look of a man holding something carefully behind his teeth. He had taken off his glasses, but he wasn't cleaning them. He simply held them in one hand, set against his palm, untouched. "Let me drive you home," he said.
He had been in the room the entire time, then. He had seen all of it. The way Dominic let go of me without a thought. The way the laughter found its target. The way I stood there and took it like a debt come due.
I didn't know what he made of any of it. I wasn't sure, anymore, that I had the strength left to care. Lorenzo had always been there, sworn brother to Dominic from the very beginning, bound to him by blood and oath long before I ever entered this house. From the moment I first fell for Dominic, foolish and grateful and ten years deep in the Family's debt, Lorenzo had stood at his right hand. He had witnessed every pathetic, hopeful, humiliating moment of mine. There was nothing left to hide from him, and I no longer had the will to pretend there was.
The drive through the dark territory was silent. Lorenzo said nothing the whole way, the city sliding past the glass in slicks of wet neon, his hands steady on the wheel, the heavy quiet of a man who chose his words the way the Family chose its enemies. Carefully. Once.
Right as I reached for the door handle, he finally spoke.
"You're truly certain you want this? The severance?"
I stopped turning the ring. My hand went still around it, and then I let it go entirely.
I nodded.
I didn't even hesitate when I gave him my answer.
Lorenzo looked right at me through the open window, and then, without a word, he killed the engine and got out. The interior light caught the sharp line of his jaw before the door swung shut behind him. He crossed the few steps of cracked pavement between us with the unhurried calm of a man who had never once needed to rush, because in our world men waited for him.
He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the cold night clinging to his coat, and said in a low, serious voice, "Then maybe you should consider me instead."
I froze. That wasn't what I'd expected. Not from him, the Family's Consigliere, the man Dominic trusted above any soldier in the Moretti bloodline, the sworn brother whose loyalty had never once cracked in all the years I'd watched him from across the long dinner tables of the estate.
I wasn't trying to take revenge on Dominic. I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone. I was just tired. Tired in a way I hadn't known at eighteen, when I'd been the orphan girl who believed the Family had saved me for love and not for debt, when I'd dreamed of a fairytale stitched out of his name. Now all I wanted was peace. Just peace, quiet enough that I could hear myself breathe.
So I turned it into a joke. "Sure," I said. "Once the severance is final, I'll come find you." Then I walked away, my heels echoing against the silent courtyard, my thumb finding the thin wedding band I no longer believed in and turning it, turning it, the way I always did when the ache pressed too close.
Not long after I got inside, my phone buzzed against the marble counter. A message from Lorenzo.
I'm done waiting.
I stepped out onto the balcony and looked down into the dark. His car was still there, idling at the edge of the gated drive where the Family's soldiers usually stood watch. Lorenzo was leaning against the hood, one ankle crossed over the other, smoking.
It was the first time I'd ever seen him smoke.
I'd always heard whispers about where he came from. An old, respected bloodline, older than the Morettis in some tellings, raised under a code so strict it made our father's house look soft. A cold man, they said, a calculating one, the kind who cleaned his glasses with slow, deliberate hands while three other men decided whether you lived. His name could stand beside the Moretti name without flinching.
Maybe he sensed me watching from the dark, because he slowly lifted his head until our eyes met across the distance. He exhaled a long, pale stream of smoke into the cold air, and the corner of his mouth curved into a faint, crooked smile that I had never seen him give anyone. Then he turned, slid into the car, and drove away into the quiet streets that belonged to us.
I stood there long after, watching his taillights bleed red into the night and then vanish. And to my surprise, something inside me stirred. Something I had buried so deep I'd nearly forgotten it could move at all.
By the time Dominic finally came home, the sky had already begun to pale at its edges, the kind of gray that came before the city's legitimate face woke up and pretended it hadn't spent the night in our hands.
He stepped through the door and immediately scowled, his nose wrinkling in distaste, the heavy signet ring catching the early light as his hand came up.
"Eva," he snapped, "can you try acting like a decent woman for once? You stink of smoke. It's disgusting. Quit that habit. It's not fitting for a Moretti."
He hated it when I smoked. He always had.
But I hadn't always been like this. I'd picked it up after the union was sealed, after I'd become the wife the Family had arranged to settle the orphan's debt and nothing more. When the silence and the cold shoulders and the long, hollow routine had swallowed whatever girl I'd been.
I'd needed some kind of release. Even if it was only the slow burn of nicotine in my chest, even if it was only something that was mine and not theirs.
I stubbed the cigarette out against the rail without a word and walked toward the bathroom, my fingers still resting on that thin band, still turning it.
He followed me in, his footsteps measured, the door of the marble bath swallowing the sound. "Did you hear me?" he demanded.
Dominic was getting irritated, and I knew exactly why. For years I had revolved around him like a moon that had no light of its own. I had never once defied him, never made him wait, never made him wonder. Now that I had stopped falling into line, it rattled him in a way no rival Family ever could. He could read a threat across a sit-down table. He could not read me anymore, and the not-knowing sat under his calm like a blade he hadn't yet found.
I gave him a half-hearted answer. "I heard you."
Dominic paused, caught off guard. Through the mirror set above the marble basin, he studied my face the way he studied men who owed him tribute, looking for the angle, the lie, the weakness underneath.
"What's wrong with you?"
His eyes dropped to my collarbone, where the edge of the bandage peeked above the silk. "What happened to your neck?"
He reached out, as if to check it, the heavy signet ring catching the low light of the study. I turned away. His hand froze midair, suspended in the silence between us. For once, I didn't let him touch me. In a house where his word moved soldiers and silenced rooms, that small refusal cost me everything I had.
He grew impatient. Then he turned to leave, the obsidian floor swallowing the sound of his footsteps.
"Eva, I've given you everything I promised. You have no reason to act out like this."
But I hadn't done anything at all. That was the thing he could never see. I had spent years being nothing, being quiet, being the dutiful Mrs. Moretti who folded herself into the shape the Family required, and still he spoke as though I had crossed him.
As he started walking away, I looked at his back, at the breadth of those shoulders that had once felt like the only safe wall in the world. My fingers found the thin wedding band I no longer believed in, turning it slow against my knuckle.
"If you think I'm standing in your way, with her or whoever, then maybe..."
I made myself continue. "...we should get a severance. A divorce."
Dominic stopped cold. The clock somewhere in the study ticked once, twice, impossibly loud in the stillness. Then he turned around, staring at me with open disbelief, as though I had said something in a language the Family had never permitted.
"What did you just say?"
A beat of silence stretched between us, thin as wire. Then he let out a dry, bitter laugh, the kind that scraped.
"So that's your move now? First you clung to me like your life depended on it. Now it's emotional blackmail?" He took a step closer, and the temperature of the room seemed to drop with him, the way it always did when his patience thinned. "Eva, do you really think a manipulative woman like you is someone I could ever love?"
The words landed exactly where he aimed them. He had always known where the soft places were.
"You've been coming to this house since you were ten." His voice was sharper than usual, each syllable filed to an edge and meant to draw blood. "If we sever this, where the hell would you even go?"
An orphan the bloodline had taken in. A debt with a face. That was all he was reminding me of, and he wasn't wrong, and that was the worst of it.
"If you're not strong enough to walk away, then stop pretending to be. Just stick to your role as Mrs. Moretti."
It wasn't often he lost his temper like this. But when he did, the ugliness showed through the tailored calm, the way violence always lived just beneath the silk in men like him. He didn't stop until he'd as good as called me a leech, something that fed off the Family's name and brought nothing of its own to the table.
I didn't argue. There was no winning a sit-down where only one of us was allowed to speak. I just turned on the faucet and washed my hands, watching the water run clear over my fingers, over the band I no longer believed in.
Behind me, I could feel his gaze lingering, heavy as a hand on the back of my neck. Eventually his tone shifted, calmer, colder, the boss again instead of the man.
"The Old Don's birthday is next week. Get something respectable and come with me."
A command. No different from how he spoke to the soldiers who waited by the door. No different from an order passed down the line, expecting only obedience.
Then the day of the feast arrived.
Dominic actually came home early to collect me, which should have warned me. The estate was already humming with the quiet machinery of a Family gathering, cars idling at the gate, men in dark coats standing at the edges where the light didn't reach. What I didn't expect, what I should have, was that Gianna was already in the car.
She was in the front seat, settled there as though the place had always been hers. When she saw me, she offered a polite, wounded little smile and greeted me softly as Mrs. Moretti. For just a fraction of a second, before the sweetness arranged itself across her face, her eyes passed over me flat and assessing, measuring exactly how much ground she had taken. Then it was gone, and she was all gentleness again, and I was the one left holding the cold knowledge of what I'd seen.
My fingers found the thin band at my knuckle and went still around it.
