For once, the composure Dante always wore slipped, and something close to panic crossed his face.

"It's not what you think."

"Vittoria was in a bad way that night. One of the dogs nearly died whelping, so I took her out to settle her nerves. She drank too much, and I was only driving her home. That's all."

His voice softened noticeably as he spoke.

"All right. Let's not drag this up again."

"I'll come with you to the next checkup at the clinic. Okay?"

Something in me almost wanted to laugh.

All these years, he had done this every single time.

A flimsy explanation full of holes, followed by some weightless promise.

As if all he had to do was say the words, and I would choose to believe him the way I always had.

But Dante.

There would be no more checkups.

Our child was already gone.

I lifted my eyes to him, my voice flat and unmoved.

"There's no need."

"Dante, let's sever the union."

The air went silent all at once.

He froze for a beat, then his face darkened.

"Adriana, do all you people who spend your lives chasing whispers love making things bigger than they are?"

"I already explained. It was just an accident."

"You see me drive Vittoria home, and now you want to dissolve everything between us?"

"Is it really worth it?"

His voice grew colder.

By the end, there was even anger in it.

"And what kind of position are you in right now? Don't you know that yourself?"

"You walked away from the network years ago, and now you're just shuffling papers in the back rooms, arranging schedules nobody notices."

"You're about to turn thirty, and you're carrying a child."

"Besides me, who else would have you?"

"I'm run off my feet keeping men alive every day to keep this household standing, not to come home and put up with you making a scene over nothing!"

With that, he snatched up his car keys and headed for the door.

As if staying one more minute would be a waste of his time.

But as he passed the entryway, his steps suddenly stopped.

His gaze fell on the corner of a document poking out of my bag.

The bold black words stood out sharply.

Death certificate.

His brow furrowed slightly.

"Who died?"

He reached out, meaning to pull it free for a look.

But in the next second, his phone rang.

The call had barely connected before Vittoria's tearful voice spilled out.

"Dante, please come quick."

"One of the puppies seems to have choked on its milk. There are still people in the club, and I can't handle everything alone."

"What if it dies? I'm so scared…"

His expression changed in an instant.

Every bit of his attention from a moment ago was wiped clean away.

"Don't cry."

"I'm coming right now."

He didn't even glance at me again.

He didn't ask another word about that death certificate.

He just turned and hurried out of the house.

The heavy slam of the front door reached me.

The whole place sank back into silence.

I stood where I was for a long time.

And suddenly it felt pitiful.

If only he had been willing to stay one more minute.

Maybe he would have known.

The ones who died were not strangers.

They were my parents.

They were his father-in-law and mother-in-law too.

But in his eyes, their lives and deaths counted for less, in the end, than a puppy choking on its milk.

I don't know how long passed.

My gaze drifted to the closed study door at the end of the hall.

Dante had never allowed me inside.

He said there were important papers in there, the kind that kept men out of the ground.

But today he'd left in too much of a rush.

He had even forgotten to lock the door.

As if pulled by something, I pushed it open.

The study was as tidy as ever.

But when my eyes landed on the desk, my heart clenched hard.

A worn old card had been wedged under one leg of the desk.

I walked over and pulled it out.

It was a press credential.

My credential.

The thing I had once treasured more than anything, back when I ran information for the Family and no door stayed closed to me.

In that instant, a flood of memories rushed back.

Back then, I had been the most promising young set of eyes the network had.

It was my first time working a mark on my own.

The subject was a respected old man, held in high regard within his field, a man the whole field watched and no one could reach.

The old man was difficult, and he turned me away at the door for days on end.

To land him, I kept watch for a full week.

In the end, between sleepless nights and low blood sugar, I collapsed in the garden outside.

When I woke, Dante was sitting beside me.

In those days he was full of spirit, the youngest doctor the Family had ever trusted with a knife and a secret.

Seeing how dejected I was, he smiled and handed me a piece of orange hard candy.

"Once that old man makes up his mind, no one can change it."

I nodded, crestfallen.

The next second, he gave me a wink.

"But I happen to admire people who take their work seriously."

"If you can't get him to talk."

"How about getting me to talk instead?"

It was only later that I learned the truth.

Half the network had wanted a sit-down with that young genius doctor.

He had turned every one of them down.

I was the only exception.

That was how we met, fell in love, and bound ourselves together under the old codes.

Later, as both our worlds grew busier and busier.

Dante began bringing up, again and again, that the elders of the famiglia needed looking after.

He said:

"Adriana, I know making your name in the network is your dream."

"But someone has to keep this house."

"Could you step back, just a little?"

"I promise I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

I couldn't bear to put him in a hard place.

I couldn't bear to give up the union either.

In the end I didn't walk away entirely, but I asked to be moved to the quiet work in the back.

From a woman who went to the front lines, to someone sorting files and arranging schedules in the shadows.

On so many sleepless nights.

I would quietly dig out my credential.

Tracing the name on it again and again.

As if mourning another version of myself.

Every time Dante caught me at it, he would hold me and apologize.

He'd say once things weren't so hectic, he would make it up to me twice over.

That he would be good to me for the rest of my life.

But now.

That credential I had treasured like a jewel.

He had carelessly shoved under the leg of a desk.

Like trash.

Just like me, worn down to nothing little by little over these years.

I drew in a deep breath and walked to the safe beside the bookshelf.

I tried the combination three times.

In the end I entered Vittoria's birthday.

"Beep—"

The safe clicked open.

And my heart sank all the way to the bottom.

On top lay a thick kraft-paper envelope.

When I opened it, photo after photo spilled out.

Embracing.

Kissing.

Fingers laced together.

Walking by the sea.

Holding each other in the snow.

The two people in the photos were smiling, so happy.

As happy as real lovers.

And the span of time stretched a full five years.

Beneath the photos was a thick stack of receipts.

Buying a house.

Renovations.

Seed money for the social club.

Cash to cover the front's losses, month after month.

Every sum was staggeringly high.

Even though Vittoria's club had been bleeding money the whole time.

Dante had poured tribute into it without a moment's hesitation.

I turned through them one by one.

And suddenly I understood something.

So it turned out that all these years.

It was never that he had no time.

Nor that he had no strength left to give.

He had simply given all his favor.

To another woman.

On the front of the kraft envelope, in a hand I knew too well, was a single line.

It was Dante's writing.

【I will always clear every thorn from the path of your dreams.】

I stared at those words for a long time.

Long enough for my eyes to sting, long enough for a fine, spreading ache to settle in my chest.

For five years I had given up my place running wires for the Family, stepping back from the network that had once feared my instincts, to keep our home together; I had learned to wash and cook and run a household so the Moretti elders would want for nothing at their table; I had swallowed my own hurt so he would never have to be distracted by it.

But every time I heard of my old comrades slipping into some foreign city, working a source through the night, too lit up by a fresh thread to sleep, I still couldn't help the envy.

That had been the work I loved most.

And the life I'd given up with my own hands.

All this time I'd believed Dante simply didn't understand.

Didn't understand how precious a dream was.

Didn't understand what a person who abandoned hers had actually lost.

It was only now that I saw the truth.

He understood all of it.

He just couldn't bear to let Vittoria give hers up.

And had no trouble letting me give up mine.

The thought made me laugh out loud.

And as I laughed, the tears slid down without a sound.

I photographed every picture and receipt inside the envelope to keep, then set each one back exactly where it had been.

Then I picked up my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in a long time.

"Renata Conti, it's me."

There was a pause on the other end, then a delighted voice.

"Adriana? What's gotten into you, calling out of nowhere?"

I drew in a deep breath.

"I heard the Family needs someone to run information out of Central Asia, somewhere in the worst of the fighting, and nobody's stepped up."

The line went quiet for a beat. I heard the small tap of a ring against the rim of her cup before she spoke.

"You want to go?"

"Yes."

I looked at the dull gray sky outside the window and said softly,

"If the Family still needs someone, I'll go."

Renata's voice lit up at once.

"Of course we need someone!"

"Back when you asked to step out of the field, I thought it was such a waste."

"You always read a room better than any made man we had."

"That posting is dangerous, cara, no lie. But as long as you come home breathing, a placement like that puts you right back at the top of the network."

"Have you really thought this through?"

I slowly closed my eyes.

Once, for Dante, I had given up my dream.

Now, for myself, I wanted to take it back.

"I've thought it through."

"I'll go."

After I hung up, I started packing.

There was nothing left in this house worth holding on to.

Not the apartment.

Not the union.

And least of all Dante.

But I searched the entire closet and never found that one sweater.

It was the last gift my mother gave me before she died.

When I was little, she always loved knitting sweaters for me.

Later I grew up, and her eyes grew worse and worse, and it hurt me to watch her strain them, so I kept telling her not to bother anymore.

But after I got pregnant, I started getting cold so easily.

She'd promised out loud not to knit, then secretly went and bought the yarn anyway.

By the time the sweater was done, her eyes were red and raw from the late nights.

It hurt so much I cried.

She only laughed, completely unbothered.

"How could anything from a store be as warm as something I made myself?"

"You love the baby in your belly, and I love my baby too."

I'd never been able to bring myself to wear that sweater.

I'd even thought I would put it away carefully, treasure it, once the baby was born.

But now it was gone.

I was about to call Dante when a notification lit up my phone.

The post was Vittoria's.

In the photo, a litter of newborn puppies was curled up in a bed at the back of her social club.

The caption read,

【Hehe, the second I said the babies were cold, a certain someone brought over a sweater~】

【Thank you, Daddy, on the babies' behalf~ And of course, this mama's remodeling skills are pretty amazing too.】

The instant I saw the photo, my breath caught hard.

The so-called "pet clothes" those puppies were wearing were unmistakably cut from the very sweater my mother had left me.

I recognized it in a single glance.

Because at the left cuff there was still that extra ring of stitches my mother had added, afraid I'd be cold.

So that was it.

The last sweater my mother had ruined her eyes knitting for me.

Dante had taken it and put it on Vittoria's dogs.

The hand holding my phone wouldn't stop shaking.

The next second, I turned and walked out.

When I pushed open the glass door of the club, a cheerful birthday song was playing inside.

The air smelled of cream and fresh flowers, a thin sweetness laid over the place like a coat of fresh paint over rot.

Dante and Vittoria stood in front of a cake.

The two of them close together.

Close enough that their shoulders were pressed flush.

They were eating the cake with the same single spoon.

My steps stopped.

And suddenly I remembered that Dante had a severe phobia of anything unclean.

The dishes at home had to be sorted and sterilized.

Serving food meant using the communal spoons, never your own.

He wouldn't even let anyone touch the glass he drank from.

Once I'd cleaned the whole apartment for an entire day, parched and worn out, and absently took a sip from the glass on his desk.

He said nothing at the time.

But that same night, the glass turned up in the trash.

Afterward he'd held me and explained.

Said it was a habit from his work, from the years of keeping a man's blood off everything that mattered.

That it wasn't about me.

So it had never been a habit from the work.

It only depended on the person.

Seeing me appear, Vittoria arched an eyebrow.

A flash of undisguised triumph crossed her eyes.

"Adriana, you're here?"

"Now don't go getting the wrong idea. Dante and I grew up together since we were kids, we've never drawn lines between us."

She deliberately waved the spoon in her hand, her smile heavy with meaning.

Then she turned to Dante.

"Dante, see? What did I tell you?"

"Adriana can't actually bear to sever the union at all."

"After all, a woman who walked away from her own standing, who can only live off her husband's name, how is she supposed to keep herself once she leaves you?"

"And she's got a child to raise, and parents to look after in their old age."

"There you have it. She's even followed you all the way here."

She covered her mouth and laughed.

"Compared to her, I suppose I'm just too thin-skinned, all I can do is lean on my own hard work and build something of my own."

Dante didn't stop her.

If anything, he doted on her, giving the tip of her nose a fond pinch.

"You're the clever one."

"Always full of little schemes, even as a kid."

Only then did he finally lift his head and look at me.

There was no guilt in that gaze.

No shame.

If anything, it carried the helpless air of a man who'd been indulging someone too long.

As if he were looking at a child throwing a senseless tantrum.

As if all it took was for him to be willing to turn back.

And I was supposed to be grateful, and go on standing right where I was, waiting for him.

Dante acted like my walking into the place barely registered.

He rose from where he crouched, his voice carrying that easy, charitable patience of a man who believed the room belonged to him.

"All right, Adriana."

"Since you came looking for me on your own, I'll treat all that talk of severing the union as you throwing a tantrum."

"Let's just put it behind us."

He glanced down at the pup cradled in his arm, and his face went soft.

"Go home first and tidy up the place. These pups were just born, and things are still touch and go."

"I need to stay a few more days, keep an eye on them with Vittoria."

I stood there on the social club's polished floor, and the whole thing suddenly struck me as absurd.

A mistress installed in plain daylight, in a front the Family's money had built.

A man bound by the codes of the union, betraying the blood without a shred of shame.

And the two of them somehow convinced they were the ones in the right.

As if I had always been the one in the wrong.

I ignored Dante and looked straight at Vittoria, slowly curling my lips into a mocking smile.

"Miss Greco."

"Stealing another woman's man is one thing."

"Now you're stealing her clothes too?"

"Weren't you always parading yourself as some self-made woman?"

"Turns out the empire you built rests on stolen husbands and stolen keepsakes from the dead?"

The air in the club went dead quiet.

A few women picking through the feed and leashes nearby turned to look. One of them blinked, caught off guard.

"Ma'am, aren't you two together?"

"You were sharing one spoon over that cake a minute ago…"

Another frowned.

"Right, I was just saying how good you two looked."

"So he's got a wife?"

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

A few sentences, and Vittoria's face flushed scarlet. Her smile stayed fixed where it had always served her, but her eyes flicked once toward the door, then toward Dante, hunting for the thing that would protect her. She opened her mouth, and not a single word of defense came out.

The customers traded glances, contempt plain in their eyes. The collars and toys they'd already chosen went back onto the shelves. One after another, they filed out of the front.

Watching her marks walk away, Vittoria's eyes reddened in an instant. She flung herself to Dante's side, the picture of injured innocence.

"Dante."

"Did Adriana come here on purpose to wreck my business?"

"I really didn't mean anything by it."

"I just thought that sweater was so warm and soft, perfect for the puppies."

"She spends so much of your money all the time. What kind of clothes can't she buy? Why does she have to fixate on this one?"

"Now everyone who walks through that door thinks the worst of me."

"How am I supposed to keep this place running after this…"

The more she said, the more wronged she sounded. The tears fell one after another.

Dante's heart melted at once. He wiped her tears and turned a cold face on me.

"Adriana, are you done making a scene?"

"I'm the one who took the sweater."

"Why are you taking it out on Vittoria?"

"It's just a piece of clothing. Is this really necessary?"

He frowned, his eyes full of impatience.

"Besides, your body's going to change once you're carrying a child anyway. The sweater wouldn't fit you for long."

"Just have your mother knit another one. Problem solved."

"It's not some collector's piece out of Milan. Why treat it like it's so precious?"

In that moment.

The last thread in my mind snapped clean through.

Crack—

The sharp sound of a slap rang out. Dante's face whipped to the side.

The whole club fell into a dead silence. Even the men near the back, the ones who carried iron under their jackets, went still.

I looked at him, shaking all over, and the tears I couldn't hold back any longer poured down.

"Yes!"

"What my mother knitted is precious!"

"Because she'll never knit anything again!"

My voice came out nearly as a scream. Two days of suppressed breakdown finally tore loose all at once.

"Dante, do you have any idea—while you were here helping her dog give birth, toasting her like she'd become a mother, my parents were already dead!"

"I called you seventy-six times!"

"Seventy-six!"

"And you never picked up once!"

"You'd rather sit with a litter of puppies than come back and save them!"

Dante went rigid where he stood. The color drained from his face completely. He let go of Vittoria without thinking. For the first time, panic surfaced in his eyes. His thumb pressed hard into the knuckles of his other hand, the old surgeon's reflex, scrubbing at skin that was already clean.

"What did you say?"

"How could your parents possibly…"

But before he could finish, Vittoria lunged.

She shoved me hard.

"What gives you the right to hit people!"

"It's just a ratty old sweater!"

"Who even wants it!"

She spun, grabbed the sweater off the puppy, and yanked it free. Then she threw it straight into the litter box one of the staff had just carried out.

"Here, take it back!"

"Who knows if anything you said is even true!"

"I ran into your folks at the market just this morning!"

"Cursing your own parents dead just to fight over a man. Do you have any conscience left?"

The litter box hadn't been cleaned. The moment the sweater landed, it was coated in clumped filth and waste. The sharp stench rose up at me.

That sweater my mother had ruined her eyes knitting. The last thing she'd left me. Defiled like this, beyond saving. An insult against the sacred dead, the kind that, in our world, demands blood.

The young staff member went pale with fright.

"I… I didn't know the owner brought that in…"

"I didn't mean to…"

But I couldn't hear anything anymore. All that remained in my sight was that filthy, befouled sweater. Rage and hatred churned in my chest like lava. Burning until my insides ached.

I walked toward Vittoria, one step at a time. I raised my hand. This slap, I was going to give back to her no matter what.

But before it could land, a rush of air came at me.

The next second.

Crack—

A slap louder than the one before landed hard across my face.

The whole club went silent in an instant. The blow knocked my head to the side. My ears rang. My cheek burned.

And Dante stood in front of me.

Shielding Vittoria.

Like he was shielding the most important person in his life.