My hands shoved Adriana, and for a brief second, she teetered back, eyes wide with shock. I hadn't meant to push her that far—it wasn't even a strong shove—but true to form, she made it a performance.
"You little—!" she hissed, lunging at me, nails aiming for my hair.
Before I could react, she had grabbed a fistful, yanking my head violently to the side. Pain lanced across my scalp as I struggled, clutching her wrist, trying to free myself.
"Enough!" I shouted, shoving her back again.
She scratched me. Sharp, burning lines marked my cheek and neck. We stumbled backward, grappling like feral children.
"What the hell is happening here?" Dante's voice boomed as he stormed in.
Adriana melted into tears instantly. "She hit me! Look what she did!" she whimpered, holding up a faint red line on her arm.
"She attacked me first!" I shouted, pointing at my torn shirt, messy hair, and the small trickle of blood on my cheek.
Dante didn't hesitate.
"Bianca, what is wrong with you? Are you insane?"
"She started it!" I yelled, desperation in my voice. "She provoked me! She said—"
"Shut up," he snapped, the word cutting like a whip. "God, you're pathetic. Always the problem."
I froze as Adriana sniffled behind him, clutching her staged injuries. The tip of her tongue touched the edge of her canine, and through my blurred vision I caught the ghost of satisfaction cross her face before it crumpled back into tears.
Dante's eyes locked onto mine, colder than I had ever seen. "You're nothing compared to Adriana. Elegant, composed. And you? Just a bitter, messy shadow."
The room fell into a heavy silence. The kind that follows betrayal—weighty, permanent. He didn't even check on me. Somewhere beyond the study door a soldier shifted his weight, leather creaking, and then went still, the way men in this house always went still when the heir lost his temper.
I am his wife. And none of it mattered anymore.
That night, I cried myself to sleep. The scratch on my cheek throbbed, but the ache in my chest was far worse.
The next morning, Dante asked me to accompany him shopping for the gala. I agreed—for the last time.
At the boutique on Via Monte Napoleone, he draped a hand lightly on my lower back, as he always did in public, as if to show care. As if he hadn't spent the previous night in someone else's arms. The Russo driver waited at the curb with the engine running; the second soldier held the door. To anyone passing, we were a young couple from a respected Family, blessed and untouchable.
He browsed suits and luxury gifts while I followed behind, silent, detached. My phone buzzed. Gia.
"Who's that?" Dante asked suddenly, narrowing his eyes as he reached for my phone.
I pulled it back, holding it close. "Do you really need to read my private messages?" I asked, arching a brow.
His jaw tightened, but he stepped back. "Enough with the phone. We're heading home soon."
Once back at the estate, he excused himself, claiming a sit-down with one of the Capos.
The moment the door clicked shut behind him, I moved quickly. Into the study. The room still smelled faintly of cigar smoke and old leather, the scent of men making decisions about other people's lives. I opened the hidden safe behind the bookshelf and retrieved the clinic report from my miscarriage—the one no one mourned with me.
I slid it into an envelope, added the signed dissolution papers, and finally, our wedding ring.
Sealing it carefully, I called a private courier to deliver it to Dante during the gala.
Then, I took one last walk through the estate. Wiping down every surface I touched. Deleting my fingerprint from the biometric lock. Leaving the keys neatly on the dining table. Every trace of me erased.
The house was enormous and quiet, the way houses owned by dangerous men always are—too many rooms, too few honest words ever spoken inside them. I passed the hallway where the Russo family crest hung in a gilded frame, the motto beneath it in Latin that Dante once translated for me on our wedding night, proud and a little drunk: Loyalty unto death.
I rubbed at the crescent of dried paint beneath my thumbnail and kept walking.
