Bianca's POV
I stiffened at the sound of his voice.
There was a time when just hearing Salvatore say my name made my heart flutter—when I was young and foolish enough to believe that a man who commanded death could also command tenderness. Now? The sound of it crawled across my skin like the cold touch of a mortician preparing a body.
I didn't turn around. My eyes were probably red and swollen, the evidence of weakness I refused to display. In this world, tears were currency you paid to your enemies.
"Nothing important," I said, wiping at my cheeks with the silk sleeve of my blouse. My voice cracked, so I cleared my throat and added, "Just making a call."
Salvatore stepped farther into the study. The floorboards groaned beneath his polished Ferragamos, and I could feel his eyes on me—studying me the way a butcher studies a carcass, calculating where to make the next cut.
"You look like a mess. Have you been crying?"
A lump formed in my throat, hard as a bullet casing.
"Something got into my eyes," I mumbled, rubbing at them with deliberate carelessness. "Probably dust. This house hasn't been cleaned properly in weeks."
He didn't believe me. I could tell by the weighted silence, by the way he stared without blinking. But he didn't press, because he didn't care. My suffering had never been anything more to him than background noise—the static between the stations of his real life.
His phone rang.
I didn't need to look. I already knew who it was.
Adriana.
Because of that stupid, soft ringtone he only used for her. It was a gentle tune, like a lullaby sung over a cradle—or a grave. He never had a special ringtone for me. For me, there was only the default tone. The sound of obligation.
Salvatore glanced at the screen, and his whole face changed. The granite hardness in his jaw melted into something warm, something human. It was like watching a snake shed its scales to reveal the man it had devoured.
He stepped into the hallway, his voice dropping to a register I had never heard directed at me—gentle, tender, almost reverent. It sounded like he had switched personalities, like the Don had stepped aside to let someone else wear his skin.
"Hey, Ana… yeah, I just got back."
I turned away, pretending not to hear anything, pretending the words didn't slice through me like a stiletto between the ribs.
He laughed at something she said. The kind of laugh that came from somewhere deep and real—the kind of laugh he had never shared with me. Not once in six years. I stood there, frozen in place beside the mahogany desk, wondering how I had been so blind. How I had mistaken ownership for love, possession for protection.
The man I had spent six years loving blindly was already in love with someone else. Someone he had introduced to the Family as his cousin. Someone who sat at our table during Sunday dinners, who kissed my cheek at the annual gala, who called me sister while she warmed his bed.
Salvatore glanced back at me briefly, his eyes flat and dismissive, as he continued speaking to her. "Yeah, I'll be there soon. I just need to take care of something here."
Something. That's what I was now. Not someone. Something.
He hung up and slid his phone into the inner pocket of his jacket—a custom-tailored piece that cost more than most men earned in a month. The fabric whispered against his silk shirt as he turned to face me.
"I need to head out for a bit. I want grilled lamb and mashed potatoes for dinner, with that rosemary sauce you make." His tone was the same one he used when ordering his soldiers to dispose of a body—flat, expectant, already moving on to the next thought.
That was it. No how are you? No what were you crying about?
He had only just walked through the door, and he was already leaving. Already running back to her.
As he turned toward the hallway, I called out to him.
"Hold on, before I forget," I said, pulling a manila folder from the drawer beside me. The paper was heavy, expensive—the kind used for documents that changed lives. Or ended marriages. "The Commission sent these over earlier. They've been asking for your signature all week."
He groaned impatiently, already checking his watch. "More damn paperwork?"
"Just a couple of pages," I said, handing him a Montblanc pen. "It won't take long."
Without even glancing at the contents, without reading a single word of what he was signing, Salvatore scrawled his name on the marked lines and thrust the folder back into my hands. His signature was sharp and careless—the signature of a man who believed his name alone was enough to make anything legal.
"Tell the Commission I handled it."
"I will," I said quietly, placing the annulment papers back into the drawer with steady hands.
"Have dinner ready by the time I get back."
Salvatore didn't wait for a response. He was already through the door, his footsteps echoing down the marble corridor like the countdown to an execution.
I clenched my fists so tightly my nails bit crescents into my palms. I stared at the door—at the space where he had stood—and I couldn't help it. A bitter laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest, scraping against my throat like broken glass.
How hadn't I noticed all this time?
As I turned, my shoulder bumped the edge of the bookshelf, and a wooden box fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
I crouched and picked it up, my fingers tracing the familiar grain of the walnut wood. I recognized that box.
Salvatore had warned me once, months ago, to never touch it. He had claimed it contained sensitive Family documents—business records that were none of my concern. He had snapped at me the day I merely brushed my fingers against its surface, his eyes going cold and dangerous, like I had tried to steal from the vault itself.
Back then, I had apologized and backed away like the obedient wife I was trained to be. But now? Now I unlocked the box without hesitation, using the key Salvatore thought he had so cleverly hidden under a false bottom in his desk drawer.
Inside, documents and photographs were arranged with military precision.
The first thing I noticed was a folded sheet bearing an official stamp—the seal of the Church and the Commission's notary. I opened it, and my blood turned to ice water in my veins.
Marriage Registration for Don Salvatore Pini and Adriana DeAngelis.
I froze.
Salvatore had already been planning a future with her. A legitimate future. A blessed union. While he was still married to me.
My hands shook as I set the paper aside and picked up the next document.
My stomach twisted violently as I stared at the contents. Medical records. Clinical notes. Dates and dosages written in the cold, precise hand of someone who viewed human beings as inventory.
It contained everything about the miscarriages.
Every single one.
The dates of my "complications." The medications slipped into my evening tea. The samples harvested from my body while I lay unconscious in the back clinic, believing I had simply lost another child to fate's cruelty.
My name was listed as the donor. Adriana's name as the recipient.
"Termination successful… stem cells harvested… womb responding to treatment."
My hand covered my mouth.
I felt sick. The room spun around me, the walls closing in like the sides of a coffin. Every miscarriage. Every time I had wept in the darkness, blaming my own body, wondering what was wrong with me—it had been orchestrated. Calculated. Harvested.
My children had been murdered before they could draw breath, their cells extracted to repair the damaged womb of my husband's mistress.
This was evidence of everything Salvatore had done to me. Everything the Family's black clinic had helped him accomplish. A paper trail of horrors, filed away like receipts.
I clenched my fists so tightly my knuckles went white, and I stared at the documents before me as my eyes blurred with tears that I refused to let fall.
After staring at everything for several minutes—memorizing every date, every signature, every damning word—I calmly stood and returned everything exactly as I had found it. The box went back on the shelf. The key went back beneath the false bottom.
Then I walked to the closet, pulled out a leather suitcase, and I started packing.
I packed my clothes first. I folded them neatly—the way my mother had taught me, the way a Valente woman always conducted herself—and placed them in the bag with deliberate precision. I picked up the things we had collected over the years, the gifts, the decorations, the photographs in their silver frames, and I tossed them all into a cardboard box destined for the trash.
The diamond necklace he gave me on our first anniversary? Into the box.
The framed photograph from our alliance wedding, blessed by the Commission itself? Gone.
The candle he once said smelled like me—like jasmine and honey? Gone.
I lost track of time. The afternoon light shifted from gold to amber to the deep purple of approaching dusk, and still I packed. Still I purged.
Until I heard the door open again.
"What are you doing?"
Salvatore stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed as he surveyed the chaos of the bedroom. Clothes scattered across the bed. Boxes stacked against the wall. The closet doors thrown wide open like the gates of a prison.
I didn't even look up as I replied. "I'm reorganizing my closet."
He stepped inside slowly, his shoes silent on the Persian rug. "What about these ones here?" He gestured toward the box I was using to discard the remnants of our marriage.
I shrugged casually, folding another blouse. "I'm getting rid of old things."
"You're throwing all this out?" His voice held genuine surprise—as if he couldn't comprehend why I would want to erase the evidence of our life together.
I nodded. "Yeah. I don't need them anymore."
He reached into the donation box and pulled out a small stuffed wolf—a ridiculous, sentimental thing I used to keep by the bed. He had given it to me during our first year of marriage, back when I still believed his rare moments of softness meant something. "Even this?"
I nodded without hesitation. "It's old."
He looked at it like he was trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces. "You loved this so much."
He was right. I had cherished it like a fool cherishes a lie. I shrugged, my face a mask of indifference. "Things change. People change. Love fades."
He frowned, his jaw tightening like he wanted to say something else—like some dormant instinct was warning him that the ground beneath his feet had shifted. But before he could speak, a voice called from the hallway.
"Salvatore? Where are you?"
His body tensed. Just slightly—just enough for me to notice. The tension of a man caught between two worlds, two women, two lies.
A second later, Adriana stepped into the room like she already owned it.
She was beautiful, I had to admit. The kind of beauty that men started wars over, that made other women feel like shadows. Her dark hair fell in perfect waves over her shoulders, and her dress—designer, of course—clung to curves that had never known the violence of forced terminations.
She rested a hand on Salvatore's arm, casual and possessive, her manicured nails pressing into the fabric of his jacket like claws marking territory. Her lips curled into a smile that didn't reach her eyes as she stared at me.
"Oh. Am I interrupting something?"
Salvatore didn't even hesitate.
"No," he said smoothly, as if nothing about this scene was strange. As if his wife packing her belongings while his mistress draped herself over his arm was perfectly normal. "You're not interrupting anything."
I didn't react. I simply turned away and continued folding a shirt, pressing it down into the suitcase like I couldn't hear them. Like they were ghosts. Like they were already dead to me.
Salvatore cleared his throat, trying to command my attention the way he commanded his soldiers. "Actually, Bianca… I meant to talk to you about something."
I continued folding. The silk whispered against my fingers. I counted the threads. I breathed.
He continued anyway, his voice carrying the casual authority of a man who had never been denied anything in his life.
"Adriana will be staying here with us for the time being."
