"The union is off. From now on, I'll be your right hand, fully devoted to the work."
Don Ferrante, who treats me like his own daughter, immediately sensed something was wrong. I could hear the faint sound of him removing his reading glasses, the soft drag of cloth against a lens.
"Today's the deadline. I'll put your name on the list. Come back to Palermo soon so we can get started. Keeping busy will help take your mind off things."
"Don't think I'm meddling, but over the past two years, it's always been you looking after Clearmont Harbor, while he's never bothered to come to Palermo. That's a clear sign he doesn't love you as much as you believed."
"Once you've made up your mind to move on, don't linger in the past."
If it weren't for that thick stack of flight tickets, I could have confidently dismissed Don Ferrante's warning that "he doesn't love you as much."
No wonder he was always out of touch at the end of each month.
Turns out, he was busy traveling thousands of miles to be with Elara.
For two whole years, I felt like a fool, desperately racing to master the cipher work and prove my value to the Ferrante operation, just to carve out time to fly back and see him.
Those brief meetings after long flights were once the happiest moments of my life.
Yet, my cross-ocean love, in the face of that stack of tickets Ansel cherished, had become a joke.
As I made my way to the proposal site, I tried to convince myself that maybe he had traveled to Palermo for business. A sit-down with an allied family. A supply-chain problem. Anything.
When I saw him offering the blood-bound ring to Elara, the very woman who had once tormented me, it became clear why he hadn't visited me despite the mere hundred kilometers between us.
Elara had barred him from seeing me, leaving him to send word through intermediaries, stories of longing and sorrow to explain his absence.
He knew exactly how much Elara and I were sworn enemies.
After my father remarried, Vittoria Corsetti and her daughter became the most persistent shadows of my childhood. The beatings behind closed doors. The isolation. The burning of my mother's letters. All of it hidden behind the Valente name while the name still meant something.
I had imagined countless scenarios over the past two years of our separation.
Ansel might fall for someone else, I thought, but I never expected him to fall for Elara. I never anticipated that he would go so far as to agree to let me be humiliated at the union ceremony just to please her.
I submerged myself in a warm bath, the heat gradually stopping my trembling. The water stilled around me. My breathing slowed until it was almost nothing, a long, measured silence, the kind that comes when a decision has already been made and the body is simply catching up.
Then, Ansel's call came in.
"Serafina, where are you? I'm already at the seaside park!"
I stayed silent.
Ansel grew anxious.
"Serafina, what's wrong? Are you upset?"
"Where are you? I'll come get you right now."
He remained as attentive and careful as ever, able to pick up on my emotions and offer comfort.
"I'm at the estate. I don't want to go to the park today."
There was a brief pause before Ansel spoke again, still trying to reassure me.
"Alright, I'll come home right away to be with you."
He didn't question why I had canceled.
It wasn't that his love for me was so deep that he could overlook my whims. It was simply that he had successfully offered the blood-bound ring to Elara in that carefully orchestrated setting. I was merely his backup plan for when the proposal didn't go as expected.
As Ansel walked in, I was just coming out of the bathroom. Seeing Elara behind him, I couldn't help but frown.
"Why did you bring her here?" I asked warningly.
Was he really so eager to rub my face in it?
Ansel, looking a bit guilty, rubbed his nose. "Serafina, I ran into Elara downstairs and found out she lives on the next block over. She heard you were back in Clearmont Harbor and insisted on coming up to apologize…"
