After two years of waiting across distance, I was finally counting down the days until we could share a roof. Then the man courting me looked me in the eye, said something about steady work down at the docks where a man could disappear and keep his head down, and vanished into it.
For two years I lived for the half hour we got to talk each week.
Then, on a trip across the city into a borough I'd never set foot in, in a territory that belonged to people I didn't understand, I saw the man who was supposed to be loading crates at the waterfront.
Salvatore Lombardi, dressed in a suit that cost more than a year of my wages, one hand at the small of a woman's back as he eased her into a low black car that purred like something dangerous.
Her laughter drifted across the air, light, careless, the laughter of a woman who had never once had to wonder where her next dollar came from.
"Salvatore, are you still playing the dockworker for fun? Carlotta isn't like the girls in our circle. If she finds out the two of you have been bound two years and you're still tangled up with some wildflower off the street, she'll burn the whole alliance down. Her people don't forgive that kind of stain."
Salvatore brought the engine to life.
"Once the anniversary comes in five days, I'll end it. Carlotta wants her name lit up on every billboard in the city to mark it. There's no hiding it anyway."
I wiped my eyes, packed every feeling back down where it belonged, and told my mother yes. I'd let her introduce me to the surgeon's son.
But later, I would hear that Salvatore had given up everything, walked away from the alliance with nothing, severed every obligation of blood and honor, shown up covered in blood, all to earn the chance to bind himself to me.
——
The exhaust from the car drifted back and stung my eyes until they watered.
I lifted my hand and sent a message to the Salvatore on the other side of the screen.
【When do you finish at the docks?】
Silence on the other end.
In the car, Salvatore glanced at his phone, then tossed it onto the seat.
Watching him drive away into the heart of a world I'd never been allowed to see, I felt my grip on my phone tighten and tighten, my breath slipping out of my control. My thumb found the thin silver band on my right hand, my father's ring, and turned it without my knowing.
I refused to give up and sent another message. Still nothing.
I scrolled slowly up the thread. The whole screen was green.
Over two years of days and nights, I'd sent Salvatore more than ten thousand messages.
He'd answered maybe a few dozen.
And on those scraps of love, I'd held myself together until now.
I searched the name Carlotta. The very first result said it all.
【Celebrated jeweler weds the young heir of the Lombardi bloodline. Two great houses, one perfect match.】
The date: the day after I watched Salvatore leave for the waterfront.
He'd told me goodbye, walked into the night, and gone straight into his union with Carlotta Ferraro.
My phone rang. I covered the screen, then slid my hand away inch by inch, and when I saw my mother's name pulsing there, something in me went cold.
"Gianna Russo, when are you coming home? How long are you going to keep waiting on that man?"
I forced the ache back down. The tears fell without a sound.
"Mom, I'm coming home. I'll meet him, like you said. I can't keep doing this."
She hung up overjoyed. I sank into memory.
All these years, worried the dock work was hard on him, that the cold off the water got into his bones, I'd scrimped to buy Salvatore blankets and warm clothes, and after he turned me down again and again, I just started wiring cash straight to his account, tribute paid to a man who never needed it.
Only now did I see it clearly: all that money put together wasn't worth the watch on his wrist.
I watched the screen light up and go dark again, and drifted, hollow, back to the rented rooms that were supposed to be ours.
I pulled the cardboard box out from under the bed and opened one letter after another.
From the long-distance days to the night he left for the docks, all the way to now. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days together.
These hundreds of letters were what made his love feel like it was right there beside me.
Even when Yara said you could find the exact same lines printed in any cheap paperback, I told myself he just wasn't good with words.
There were only a handful of photos on the wall. All those years of love had been a one-woman show.
Salvatore came in road-worn, dragging a big suitcase, nuzzling against my hand, a thread of complaint in his voice.
"Gianna, I told you I got off early. Why didn't you come meet me?"
His thumb moved, slow, along the inside of a band on his finger I had never been meant to see, turning it as though he could twist the truth away.
Feeling the warmth in his palm, my tears fell all at once.
This love was never real. Just a dream Salvatore had spun on a whim, and I had only five days left to feel it.
He'd decided how we ended long ago.
