Through the gap in the ward door I saw Salvatore pulling Bianca into his arms.
His hoarse voice trembled with the bitterness of unrequited love.
"No... Bianca, you don't owe me anything. I did all this willingly. Now that you're carrying my child... that's the greatest blessing I could ever ask for. Besides, Adriana's always been kind to me... you don't need to feel guilty."
Outside the ward, the man and woman embraced, kissing with abandon.
His voice, thick with sobs, revealed everything. He truly loved her.
They were going to have a child. The pain tore through me like an old wound ripping open all over again.
Tears spilled silently down my cheeks.
So, I was nothing more than the extra. The unnecessary one. From beginning to end. A bride bound into the Moretti name to fill a seat that was never meant for me.
I tried to shut out their voices, to silence the intimate sounds coming through the door.
But they wrapped around me like a curse, refusing to let go. I buried my face in the quilt, biting it until my gums bled. I didn't know how long I lay there like that.
Until the door creaked open, and the soft scent of powder drifted in over the sharp hospital cold.
Before I could react, a pair of slender hands gripped my chin.
"Don't be scared, Adriana," came the voice. "It's me. Bianca..."
Hearing her name made me flinch and thrash against the leather restraints that held me to the bed.
She let out a soft laugh and calmly began working the buckles loose.
"Adriana, the proud daughter of the Falcone name, the one every man in the Cosa Nostra wanted, reduced to this. What a joke. The men of the Moretti Family... either of them would choose me over you in a heartbeat. Especially Salvatore. He gave up everything for me..."
Her voice turned cold, laced with pride.
"He's such an honorable man, isn't he? But for my sake, he forced his own capo to his death, just to buy me a place and see our union blessed by the Family. What kind of love do you think that is?"
I stared at her, stunned.
"After your father died, you begged Salvatore to look after you. Your pathetic mother probably thought he was your bloodline's savior. So pitiful. But it was Salvatore who scattered your father's ashes with his own hands."
Her words struck me like lightning.
I had always believed my father took his own life, a broken old capo stripped of his territory and his respect until there was nothing left.
But no. Salvatore, the man my father mentored, the one he treated like a son, the one he taught the ways of the Family, had driven him to his death. And then desecrated what remained of him. There was no sin the code punished more surely than that.
Fury exploded in me. I shot up and wrapped my hands around Bianca's throat.
But before I could squeeze, the door slammed open.
Seeing Salvatore, Bianca immediately threw herself into his arms, sobbing. One hand pressed flat against her stomach.
"Salvatore! I only wanted to help Adriana. I felt sorry for her, so I loosened her restraints... but she said I stole everything from her and tried to strangle me!"
I opened my mouth to explain.
But the slap came before I could utter a word.
"Adriana!" Salvatore's eyes blazed. The temperature in the room seemed to drop with them. "People are trying to help you and this is how you repay them? Why blame Bianca for everything? You've completely lost your mind!"
He didn't give me a chance to speak.
He just left me there, trembling on the cold floor, while he wrapped his arms around her the way a made man shields what is his.
As the door shut, Bianca looked back at me with a slow, mocking smile, that smile widening just a half-second too late.
She had every reason to laugh.
I was a failure. A discarded thing. A bride with no protection left, no standing, no name the street would still respect.
But what they didn't know. Even a cornered rabbit bites.
After they left, I forced myself to stand. My mother's thin gold band turned once, twice around my finger, and this time my hands weren't shaking.
I discharged myself from the ward before the Don's men could think to stop me.
And once I got home, I followed the instructions from my aunt Vivian's letter, every word of it, exactly as she'd laid it out.
With everything in place, I left. Without looking back.
