Right before I lost consciousness, I had seen everything clearly.

The car.

Salvatore in the passenger seat.

And the girl he had just kissed. She was the one behind the wheel.

He hadn't given me a chance to question him. Not even a single second. He had simply brushed it off, thrown out an excuse about the Family being too busy, and left as if I had imagined the entire thing.

At the time, I thought he was avoiding me because he didn't know how to face me after hitting me with the car.

But the truth was even more pathetic than that.

I didn't matter enough to him.

Not even enough for him to feel guilty.

Still a little dizzy, I forced a polite smile onto my face, as if everything was perfectly normal.

"Guess I was still a bit foggy when I woke up," I said lightly. "Didn't recognize you, boss."

The word slipped out naturally, but it carried none of the warmth it used to.

He barely reacted. The lighter kept moving over his knuckles, steady as a heartbeat.

And I kept going along with it, as if this distance between us had always existed. As if there had never been anything more.

He finally looked at me again, his brows drawing together slightly, confusion flickering in his eyes.

The girl who used to cling to him over the smallest things, who would demand hugs and kisses over something as trivial as a paper cut, was gone.

In her place was someone quiet.

Still.

Unreachable.

Salvatore glanced around the room, making sure no one else was there. Even in a clinic that answered only to his Family, old habits held. Only then did his expression soften a fraction, his voice dropping lower.

"Elena," he said, almost gently, "these places are full of people. And whispers travel." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "We can't risk anyone seeing us like this."

Like this.

What we were had to stay hidden. Even now. Omertà didn't just govern secrets about blood and money. It governed me.

"Just rest," he continued. "Focus on recovering. Once you're home, I'll make it up to you."

I looked at him, then gave a small, composed smile.

"Thank you… boss."

I used to call him that as a joke, a teasing nickname when we were alone. Back then, it had been playful, intimate, filled with something unspoken between us.

Now, it felt completely different.

Cold.

Distant.

Like a wall had been built between us, brick by brick, until there was nothing left to cross.

He frowned slightly. He noticed it.

Of course he did.

Just as he was about to say something else, the door opened again and the doctor walked in for a routine check.

In an instant, Salvatore changed.

The softness disappeared as if it had never existed. His posture straightened, his expression cooled, and the distance returned. He was once again the Don, untouchable and controlled. The silver lighter went still in his hand for one beat, then slipped into his jacket pocket.

After exchanging a few brief words with the doctor, he turned to leave.

At the door, he paused.

Then he looked back at me one last time.

"Get some rest," he said.

There was a slight pause before he added, his tone firm, almost like a warning.

"And don't think your… special arrangement gives you any privileges inside my Family."

His eyes held mine, steady and unreadable.

"Everyone is treated equally. Everything follows the code."

With that, he walked out, the door closing softly behind him, leaving the room colder than before.

The doctor glanced at the smile I was forcing onto my face and let out a light, teasing chuckle, like he could see straight through it.

"Your boss already left," he said casually. "No need to push yourself to keep smiling like that anymore."

I didn't respond.

"But I'll give him this," he added with a grin, flipping through my chart. "Stubborn mouth, soft heart. He already took care of all your medical bills."

My smile didn't disappear, but it shifted—subtly, almost imperceptibly—into something bitter.

Salvatore really did deserve an award for his performance.

To everyone else, he was just a responsible boss at the front office, someone who took care of his people out of basic decency. A man with principles. No one knew the truth. No one knew that behind the locked door of his private study at the compound, I had been in a relationship with him for five years. Five entire years of secrecy, of compromise, of waiting.

No one except a handful of his closest men. His inner circle. The ones bound by the same silence that bound me.

I had asked him more times than I could count, always carefully, always hoping for a different answer.

"When can we stop hiding?"

Every single time, he brushed it off with the same vague excuse.

"The timing's not right."

I used to believe him.

I used to tell myself that there was a reason, that the Family's politics demanded patience, that one day things would be different.

But today, I finally understood.

When he thought I had lost my memory, the first thing he did was draw a line between us.

I'm your boss.

That was the truth.

That was all I had ever been to him.

An associate working the books in his legitimate front.

A secret.

My injuries weren't serious, so the doctor kept me under observation for three days before discharging me. Everything was routine. Quiet. Uneventful. The private clinic smelled of antiseptic and old money, and the staff moved with the particular carefulness of people who knew better than to ask whose name was really on the bill.

The charges went through the Family's insurance arrangement, and whatever was left over was refunded directly back to Salvatore's account.

Three days.

Not a single visit.

Not even a message.

And then, on the day I was discharged, my phone rang.

"You're out already?" Salvatore's voice came through, casual, almost mildly annoyed. "You could've at least given me a heads-up."

I held the phone in silence.

"I've got a meet today," he continued. "Can't come pick you up."

"…Okay."

That was all I said.

I swallowed everything else. The questions that rose to my throat. The ones that used to matter.

I didn't ask where he was.

I didn't ask who he was with.

Instead, I opened my phone and checked his location.

A hotel. One of the ones on Family-controlled territory, the kind with discreet staff and no cameras in the hallways.

I didn't need him to explain anything. I didn't need confirmation.

Then, faintly, through the receiver, I heard a woman's voice.

"Come dry my hair, will you?"

The line went dead almost instantly.

He hung up.

I stared at my phone for a moment, unmoving.

Not long after, two transfer notifications popped up.

$1,314.

$1,520.

The numbers hit me harder than anything else.

They weren't random.

They meant something. They always had.

1314 meant forever.

1520 meant I love you.

For years, I had wished for this. For him to send me those numbers, for something so simple and symbolic. I had imagined taking a screenshot, posting it, just once, like everyone else. Just once, to show that I had something real.

But every time I brought it up, he refused.

He didn't like attention.

He didn't want people asking questions.

He didn't want anyone knowing. A Don's private life was a liability, he said. Something rivals could use.

And now… now that I had already decided to let him go, he sent them?

I didn't know if it was guilt. Or habit. Or something else entirely.

I opened his profile without thinking.

The moment it loaded, I froze.

His profile picture had changed.

It was a couple photo.

But not with me.

I didn't hesitate.

I returned both transfers immediately.

A few seconds later, my phone buzzed again.

A string of question marks.

I didn't reply.

When I got back to the apartment, nothing had changed.

Everything was exactly the same as the night of the gala. The same shoes by the door. The same jacket tossed over the chair. The same faint scent lingering in the air, cologne and something sharper beneath it, the ghost of a world where decisions were made in back rooms and sealed with handshakes that could never be taken back.

Which meant one thing.

He hadn't been back.

Not once.

I stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle around me. Then I took a deep breath, pushed down the tight ache rising in my chest, and started packing.

It didn't take long.

Piece by piece, the space began to empty.

Five years.

Five years of a life I had carefully built around him, dismantled in just a few hours.

Most of what I packed were things I had chosen myself.

Couple items.

Matching mugs. Coordinated clothes. Small decorations that hinted at something shared.

Salvatore had never liked any of it.

He never wore anything that could suggest he was taken. Never used anything too obvious. He said a man in his position couldn't afford to look soft. Couldn't give anyone a handle to grip.

I used to joke about it.

Saying he acted like some deep-cover fed, hiding his identity from the world.

Now I realized.

It was never a joke.

He just never saw me as someone he needed to claim.

I was halfway through packing when I heard the door open.

He came back.

"Elena, what's this about?" he snapped the moment he saw me. "I've been calling you! I told you to come out for dinner. You didn't pick up or reply!"

I didn't look up immediately.

The scent reached me first.

A woman's perfume.

Not mine.

Not even close.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand slightly, stopping him from coming any closer.

When I finally raised my eyes, they drifted to his neck.

Faint red marks.

Hickeys.

"Sorry," I said calmly, my voice steady. I smoothed the fold of a blouse flat against the suitcase lining, pressing the crease until it was sharp enough to cut. "I've been busy. Didn't check my phone."

He frowned, his gaze sweeping across the room.

Only then did he notice the suitcases. The empty shelves. The missing pieces.

"Don't tell me you've been busy tearing down the house," he said, irritation creeping into his tone. "You just got out of the clinic. You should be resting."

His eyes landed on a few unopened boxes I hadn't gotten to yet.

Inside were the couple items I had bought recently. Still new. Still unused.

"You don't want any of this?" he asked.

I bent down to pick one up.

Before I could even straighten, he reached out and took it from my hands.

"Fine, I'll throw them out for you," he said, almost impatiently. "But stop wasting money on useless stuff. What, do you think money grows on trees?"

His tone was casual.

Indifferent.

Like none of this mattered.

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, he added, "Go change. I'll take you out to eat."

Like this was just another normal day.

Like nothing was ending.

Instead, I walked out to the balcony.

From there, I watched him.

He carried the boxes downstairs and walked straight to the dumpster behind the building, past the black sedan idling at the curb where one of his soldiers sat waiting with the engine running.

No hesitation.

No second glance.

He tossed them in.

Just like that.

The same way he had thrown away our five years.

Effortlessly.

Like they meant nothing at all.

At the restaurant, a quiet place on neutral ground where the Family sometimes held private tables, he ordered several dishes without asking.

Most of them were our usual favorites.

The kind we always shared.

The kind tied to memories. Late-night laughter, old movies on the couch, lazy Sundays where time seemed to slow down and the world outside, with all its blood and obligation, couldn't reach us.

For a moment, it almost felt familiar.

Almost.

But then I saw it.

One more dish.

Bitter melon with scrambled eggs.

The one I hated the most.

He knew that.

He had always remembered.

Every little thing.

Until now.

My appetite disappeared completely, like something inside me had quietly snapped. The smell of the food, the low conversation at nearby tables, even the old Sinatra record playing through the restaurant's speakers all felt distant. I didn't feel like forcing myself anymore, didn't feel like pretending everything was normal.

"Excuse me," I called gently to the waiter standing nearby, keeping my tone polite and controlled. "Could you take this dish off the table? I'll pay for it separately."

The waiter hesitated for a second, clearly unsure, but before he could even reach for the plate, Salvatore moved first. He dragged the dish back toward himself with a faint scoff.

"Oh, come on," he said, his voice edged with annoyance. "I miss a few days while you're in the clinic and suddenly you're acting like a drama queen?" He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Maybe if you were actually paying attention to where you were going, you wouldn't have gotten hit by a car in the first place."

The words landed harder than they should have.

Because I knew what it looked like when he cared.

I had seen it before.

There had been a time when I caught a fever in the middle of winter. He had panicked, lifted me onto his back, and carried me all the way to a safe doctor through freezing wind, his hands trembling, his voice breaking as he kept asking if I was still conscious. I still remembered the way he cried that night, like losing me would destroy him. Back then he wasn't the Don yet. Back then his hands still shook for reasons that had nothing to do with violence.

And now?

Now he had been part of the accident that hurt me… and didn't even bother to show up.

He knew I hated bitter melon. For five years, he had never once ordered it, never once brought anything remotely bitter to our table. He used to say even the smell made me frown too much.

And yet now, like we had gone back in time to when we had just met, like none of those years had ever existed, he casually ordered it again without a second thought.

I curled my lips into a faint, tired smile, the kind that didn't quite reach my eyes.

"I really hate bitter melon," I said softly. "I can't even stand the smell."

"Then don't eat it," he replied immediately, his tone sharp and impatient. "Simple."

The irritation in his voice wasn't even hidden. The silver lighter appeared in his hand, turning slow across his knuckles, each rotation catching the candlelight like a small, indifferent blade.

But I kept my expression calm, polite, like I had trained myself to be over the years.

"I think… we should—"

I didn't get to finish.

A woman's voice cut in smoothly from the side.

"Salvatore, after all these years, you still remember I love bitter melon!"

I lifted my gaze.

She stood right beside our table, perfectly put together from head to toe. Flawless makeup. Impeccable styling. Her posture straight, chin slightly lifted as she looked down at me with a faint, unmistakable trace of disdain. One finger rested on the pearl at her throat, light as a breath, as if confirming something only she needed to know.

Without waiting for any invitation, she stepped closer.

With an easy familiarity, she nudged Salvatore slightly inward on the booth, then slipped into the seat right next to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The two soldiers sitting at the bar didn't turn, but I could feel the room's attention tighten, the way it always did when the Don's table changed shape.

"Let me introduce myself," she said sweetly, her voice smooth like syrup. "I'm Salvatore's girlfriend. Adriana Caruso."