I spent the night in the corridor like a wounded animal left to die in the shadows, my fingers wrapped around the pain pump as though it were the only thing tethering me to this world. The hours crawled past in a haze of fluorescent lights and distant footsteps—soldiers walking their rounds, nurses who averted their eyes when they passed the Young Don's discarded wife.
That night, body and soul alike were drowning in agony.
Pain so intense it circled back to numbness, a mercy I hadn't earned.
"I'm sorry, Signora Volpe." Dottore Salvatore Greco's voice was careful, measured—the tone of a man who understood exactly whose wife sat before him, and exactly how little that title meant anymore. "Due to the comminuted fracture in your right hand, combined with the surgical delay, some of the muscle tissue has already necrosed. I'm afraid you won't be able to lift heavy objects in the future."
He offered an awkward smile, the kind men give when they're delivering a death sentence wrapped in clinical language.
"I know you trained in the Family's medical network yourself, so... I'm afraid you'll never be able to hold a scalpel again."
The words hung in the sterile air like smoke after a gunshot.
"Perhaps you could speak with the Young Don? The Volpe Family has always controlled the finest medical operations on the Eastern Seaboard. If you sought treatment through their European contacts, there might still be a chance."
I shook my head.
I looked down at my right hand, swathed in white bandages like a burial shroud.
I couldn't even bend my fingers.
Once, these hands had been my ticket out. My value. The only thing that made Isabella Mancini more than just a pawn in an alliance marriage. Now they were nothing but dead weight wrapped in gauze.
"Could you help me get a new phone? I need to contact—"
The authorities, I almost said. But what law existed for women like me? What cop would take a statement against the Volpe Syndicate?
Before I could finish, the door slammed open with a bang that echoed off the walls like a warning shot.
Nico had arrived.
He filled the doorway the way he filled every room—with the cold, suffocating presence of a man born to command. His expression was taut and grim, jaw set like marble, eyes the color of a winter storm. But when he saw me—covered in bandages, IV drip threading into my arm, face hollow from a night of unmedicated hell—he paused.
Something flickered across his features.
Surprise, perhaps.
Or a slight softening, so brief I might have imagined it.
His lips parted.
Still, no words came.
Of course not. The selective mutism that had plagued him since Massima's departure three years ago hadn't lifted for his wife. It never had. I was not the woman who held the key to his voice.
He grabbed a notepad and pen from the bedside table—the same way he'd communicated with me throughout our entire blood-bound union—and scrawled a few lines in his sharp, elegant hand.
"I didn't know you were hurt this badly last night. I'll contact specialists through our European network for your hand."
I let out a cold laugh.
The sound scraped against my throat like broken glass.
"No need." My voice was steady, even as something inside me crumbled. "I'll fix my own hand myself."
His brow furrowed slightly—a crack in the mask. Clearly displeased with my response. The Young Don of the Volpe Family was not accustomed to refusal.
I wanted to ask about the dissolution.
About the blood oath I'd shattered when I signed those papers.
But then I thought better of it. What was the point? He'd made his choice the moment he left me bleeding on that floor.
He pulled a checkbook from inside his tailored suit jacket—Brioni, I noted distantly, the kind of fabric that cost more than most soldiers earned in a month—wrote down a figure, and placed it on the table between us.
"This is compensation. I hope you won't blame Massima."
The moment I saw her name, my whole body began to tremble uncontrollably.
Massima.
Massima.
The woman who had stolen my research. Who had clawed her way back into Volpe favor through seduction and lies. Who had pushed me down those stairs and watched me fall without a flicker of remorse in her eyes.
And he wanted me to forgive her.
"Get out!"
The words tore from my throat like a scream.
"I don't ever want to see you again, Nico!"
"Massima? I'm going to report her to the authorities—I don't need your blood money!"
I snatched up the check, tore it in half with my one good hand, and hurled the pieces at him. They fluttered to the ground like dead leaves.
He froze.
As if he'd never seen me lose my temper like this before.
And perhaps he hadn't. For three years, I had been the perfect blood-bound wife. Quiet. Devoted. Invisible. I had swallowed every slight, every absence, every night spent alone in our bed while he stared at photographs of another woman.
No more.
He lowered his head and wrote another line.
"I won't let you hurt Massima."
Those words drove into my heart like a blade.
One I couldn't pull out no matter how I tried.
He turned and left without looking back. The door clicked shut behind him with a sound like a coffin closing.
The room was silent except for my trembling.
I stared at the ceiling—water-stained, institutional, nothing like the gilded ceilings of the Volpe compound—and murmured to myself.
"Ten more days... Ten days, and we're done for good."
Ten days until the dissolution was finalized.
Ten days until I was free of the Volpe name.
If I survived that long.
Three days later.
"Signora Volpe, these flowers are from the Young Don."
The nurse's voice was carefully neutral, but I caught the pity in her eyes. Everyone in this Family-controlled clinic knew the truth. Everyone had heard the whispers.
He'd been sending flowers for three days straight.
Red roses, dozens of them, delivered with mechanical precision every morning.
I didn't look at them. Just gave a flat acknowledgment.
Leaning on my crutch—my leg still weak from the fall, my hand still useless—I gathered my few belongings and prepared to check out. A change of clothes. My phone, retrieved by a sympathetic nurse. The divorce papers, tucked into my bag like a loaded weapon.
The moment I pushed open the door, I froze.
The entire corridor was engulfed in flowers.
Roses everywhere—climbing the walls, spilling from vases, carpeting the floor in a sea of crimson. Identical to the ones delivered these past few days. The scent was overwhelming, cloying, almost funereal.
My heart skipped a beat.
How did he know I was being discharged today?
Had he been watching?
For one desperate, foolish moment, hope flickered in my chest like a dying candle. Perhaps he did care. Perhaps this was his way of apologizing, of showing me that I mattered—
But the very next second, voices drifted from a neighboring room—and shattered every last illusion.
"The Young Don of the Volpe Family is so devoted." A nurse's voice, hushed with awe. "To save Signorina Gallo from any awkwardness after her return from Europe, he sent flowers to every room in the clinic and completely redecorated this entire floor for her."
"Must cost tens of thousands a day. The Volpe Family really does romance differently."
"Shh, keep it down—the Young Don's blood-bound wife is recovering here too."
I braced myself against the wall, my face drained of color.
A bitter laugh escaped my lips.
Of course.
The flowers had never been for me.
They were for her. For Massima. To spare her the embarrassment of being seen as the other woman while his wife lay broken in the same building.
Every rose was a declaration.
Every petal was a knife.
Excited murmurs rose from downstairs, echoing through the marble lobby like the roar of a crowd at a blood sport.
I leaned over the railing instinctively to look.
The lobby on the first floor had been transformed into a sea of crimson roses. Thousands of them, arranged with the precision of a military operation. Crystal chandeliers cast golden light over the display, and soldiers in dark suits lined the walls like an honor guard.
Nico and Massima stood in the center.
He was down on one knee.
The Young Don of the Volpe Crime Family—heir to an empire built on blood and silence—kneeling before the woman who had destroyed me.
His lips moved.
And then—
He spoke.
"Massima, will you stay with me forever?"
The most clichéd line in existence.
Yet he delivered it so naturally.
So effortlessly.
His voice.
I hadn't heard his voice in three years. Not once. Not a single word spoken aloud in my presence. The selective mutism had been absolute, unbreakable—a curse that had defined our entire marriage.
But for her?
For her, he could speak.
Massima's cheeks flushed as she accepted the ring box. Diamonds glittered against black velvet—a ring that probably cost more than my family's entire holdings.
Everyone around them burst into applause. Soldiers, associates, bought doctors—all of them celebrating the Young Don's romantic gesture.
He leaned in and kissed her.
I touched my own lips without thinking.
How long had it been since he'd touched me?
Over a thousand days and nights.
I'd lost count.
Around me, he hadn't just been mute.
He'd been almost pathologically distant. Cold. Untouchable. A husband in name only, bound to me by blood oath and Family obligation, but never—never—by choice.
But now—
He kissed her without a shred of hesitation. His hands cupped her face like she was something precious. Something worth protecting.
Something I had never been.
Suddenly, the world felt like some absurd stage. A cruel comedy written by a God with a taste for tragedy.
My blood-bound husband, the one with selective mutism—
Publicly proposing to his former lover.
In the same building where his wife lay recovering from injuries his woman had caused.
So that was it.
Not loving someone was the original sin.
And I had been guilty from the very beginning.
