My husband, the most feared Don in the city, told me he loved another woman. On the night of our anniversary. Over the wine I'd poured for him with my own hands. He didn't want me dead. He wanted something colder. "Elena, I'm not asking you to leave. I'm asking you to share. To let her have a place beside me. At the table. In the family." I didn't scream. I didn't reach for the blade strapped to my thigh, the one he'd taught me to use. I gave him a choice: "If she stays, I go. If I stay, she goes." He drank until the bottle was dry that night. By morning, he gave in. "Book the flight," he rasped. "I'll drive her to the airport myself." He never asked whose name was on the ticket. Rain lashed the windows of our compound, the fortress on the hill we'd bled to build, and Dante Marchetti stood by the glass and delivered his verdict in the same flat voice he used to order a man's execution. "Her name is Sofia. She handles the books now. It isn't physical, Elena. I haven't touched her. I won't. That would be an insult to you." He paused, weighing each word like he'd rehearsed them somewhere that smelled of her perfume. "I only need you to allow her a place. That's all I'm asking." That's all. I looked at this man—the boy I'd found bleeding in an alley fourteen years ago, with two enemies dead at his feet and nothing in his pockets but ambition. The boy my father, the old Don, said would either rule the city or get me buried in it. I gave him my father's army. The Vasquez name, the only name in this city that could open the doors his fists couldn't. My loyalty. My silence. My twenties. Everything. And now the Marchetti empire controlled three ports, half the docks, and every man who mattered for two hundred miles. And his heart had room for a twenty-three-year-old who called him "Don Marchetti" in front of the men and texted him at 2 a.m. "You'll always be my wife," he said, taking my hand. His palm was warm. It made my skin crawl. "My partner. She's just... softer." Partner. Fourteen years, and I'd been demoted to a business arrangement, while Sofia Russo got to be his heart. "If she stays, I go," I said. "If I stay, she goes. Choose." He chose. It took him a bottle of the Sicilian wine my father gave us at the wedding, and one long night of shattering glass in his study. But he chose. "Fine," he said at dawn, reeking of grief that wasn't for me. "She goes to Italy. But Elena—give me this month. Let me say goodbye properly. Nothing will happen. I just want to look at her a little longer." A month. That month held my birthday. Our anniversary. The day my mother was buried. He missed all three. So I went to the safe behind my closet—the one Dante didn't know existed—and I took out two things. A folder of papers he'd signed fourteen years ago without reading. Back when my father's lawyers were the only lawyers we could trust. And a phone I hadn't used in a decade. My father answered on the fifth ring. He didn't say hello. He just breathed, the way old Dons do. "Papa," I said. "I need a way out. A real one." A long pause. "Finally." "As Elena Vasquez," I said, watching the rain swallow the city my blood built. "Not Mrs. Marchetti." "Done," he said. "One week." Downstairs, Dante was telling his men to clear his schedule. He was taking Sofia to the coast. A proper goodbye. Go ahead, Dante. Say your goodbyes. Because the ticket I booked this morning—the one you think carries her away and saves our marriage— it was never for her. It was for me.
