I pulled myself back to the present, grabbed a black trash bag from under the kitchen sink, and walked into the study to start clearing out what no longer mattered.
The room still smelled like him. Leather and sandalwood and the faintest trace of the Turkish cigarettes Dante smoked only when he was on the phone with the Consigliere. For ten years this had been his private sanctuary inside the brownstone, the one room where Family business bled openly through the walls. Ledgers on the lower shelves, locked drawers I had never been invited to open, a framed photograph of his father shaking hands with a federal judge. I had never touched anything in here without permission. Tonight, I did not ask.
I tore up over a hundred love letters I had written Dante.
Every single one. Some on linen stationery I had bought with my own money because I thought the weight of the paper might make him keep them. Some on napkins from restaurants where he had left me waiting. I ripped them down the center, then again, then again, until confetti gathered around my shoes like the aftermath of a celebration no one had attended.
Smashed the stargazing telescope I had given him when we were kids. The brass barrel cracked against the edge of his desk, and a lens popped free and rolled across the hardwood floor, catching the overhead light before it spun to a stop. I watched it settle. I felt nothing.
I was about to toss the childhood photo of the two of us that had sat on that shelf for ten years when my hand accidentally nudged the mouse.
The computer screen lit up.
I had barely a second to register Serena Bellini's smiling face on the monitor before Dante, who had apparently turned back, shoved me hard.
A deafening bang.
The back of my skull hit the glass door of the bookcase and the color drained from my face. Pain detonated behind my eyes, white and blinding, and for a moment the room tilted sideways. I heard the bookcase rattle, heard a paperweight slide off the shelf and thud onto carpet, heard my own breathing turn sharp and shallow.
Dante didn't look at me. He moved past me, reached for the porcelain piggy bank Serena had given him, the cheap ceramic thing painted with little daisies that sat next to ledgers worth more than some men's lives. His fingers turned it over, checking every seam, every curve, the way a jeweler inspects a stone for fractures.
Once he had confirmed that Serena's ceramic piggy bank was unscratched, Dante glanced sideways at me.
"Bianca, from now on, you're not allowed in this study."
His voice was the same controlled register he used at sit-downs when sentencing was already decided and the only remaining question was how much the condemned would beg. He didn't raise it. He didn't need to. The authority in this house was absolute, and we both knew the hierarchy had never included me anywhere near the top.
The pain was so bad I couldn't speak. I watched in silence as he opened the wall safe behind the portrait of his grandfather, took out the family heirloom diamond ring, the one his mother had worn until the day she died, the one the Falcone women had passed down for three generations, and walked out looking thrilled. The safe door swung shut with a heavy metallic click that sounded, in the silence he left behind, like a lock turning on something I would never be allowed to open again.
I pressed my thumb to the inside of my wrist and held it there for one measured breath. Then I dropped it and reached for the trash bag.
Not long after, I received a video from one of Dante's close associates.
The rooftop level of Stellare, the restaurant the Falcone crew used for celebrations when they wanted the city skyline as a backdrop. White tablecloths. Champagne towers. The kind of evening that cost more in a single toast than most families earned in a year.
In front of all their mutual friends, Dante held out flowers and the ring and dropped to one knee in front of Serena.
"Ms. Bellini, before I met you, I never believed in so-called true love. The moment you appeared, a world that had been dark for thirty years was suddenly lit up. Here and now, I humbly beg you. Please give me the chance to protect you for the rest of my life."
Beneath a sky full of brilliant fireworks, Serena accepted the ring with tears in her eyes and threw herself into Dante's arms, laughing.
The Falcone heirloom. On her finger. In front of witnesses from every allied crew in the borough.
The moment the video ended, a location pin arrived from their private club, the one off Atlantic Avenue where Dante's inner circle drank and gambled and decided who deserved what.
I knew right away. Dante and his friends were making a game of me again. Betting on how fast I'd race to the club to catch him in the act. Betting on whether I'd lose it in public, screaming and sobbing and making a scene, handing them the spectacle they could laugh about over grappa for weeks.
Over the past ten years, every time Dante bet I'd cry, he won.
But this time, I only typed one reply:
Tell Dante congratulations. He finally got what he wanted.
Then I muted my phone and went to bed. The back of my skull throbbed against the pillow, a dull, spreading ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat, but I closed my eyes and did not move.
The next morning when I woke up, there were two missed calls. Dante's number.
I didn't call back. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was throwing up. Bile and nothing, over and over, my knees on the cold tile and my hands gripping the rim of the basin until my knuckles went white. The pain at the back of my head was getting worse by the hour, a deep, nauseating pressure that turned every overhead light into a small act of violence against my eyes. I had no choice but to drive myself to the hospital.
Not the Family's off-book clinic. I couldn't go there. Dante's people staffed it, and anything that happened inside those walls found its way back to him before the anesthetic wore off. I drove to the public hospital on the other side of the borough, the one where Falcone money didn't own every clipboard, and I parked and walked myself through the double doors like a woman who had simply woken up feeling unwell.
I was sitting in the corridor waiting for my number to be called, the fluorescent light buzzing faintly above me and the smell of antiseptic sharp enough to make my stomach turn again, when I saw them.
Dante and Serena.
They flanked a middle-aged woman, one on each side, propping her up, chatting and laughing like a family. Teresa Caruso walked between them with her arm looped through Serena's, her posture just fragile enough to justify the attention, her smile just grateful enough to earn sympathy from anyone watching.
"Mamma, look how much Mr. Falcone cares about you. Even when he's busy, he comes with me to see you every single day since you got sick." Serena's voice was bright and warm, pitched to carry. Her fingernail dragged once across the inside of her wrist before the words left her mouth, that tiny, habitual reset, but no one beside me was close enough to notice.
"Serena, don't say that." Dante's tone was easy, open, a version of himself I had spent a decade trying to unlock. "If you and Teresa hadn't stayed by my mother's side and looked after her so devotedly, she would never have held on until I came back to the country. I'm the one who should be grateful."
Teresa Caruso. The former Family medic. The woman who had nursed the elder Mrs. Falcone through her final years, who had parlayed that bedside access into permanent proximity to the Falcone inner circle. She was smiling, about to say something, but the moment her eyes met mine she looked away, suddenly guilty, and faked a cough. Her gloved fingers smoothed together at her side, the tips pressing and sliding as though cleaning off something no one else could see.
All at once, I understood why Dante had fallen in love with Serena.
Not because of Serena herself. Because of the debt. Because Teresa had tended his dying mother when he was overseas handling Family business, and that debt had been quietly, patiently converted into devotion for her daughter. Every hospital visit, every spooned broth, every midnight vigil had been an investment, and Serena was the return.
My throat itched and a small laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
Dante heard it and found me. He was frowning before he even reached me, his stride long and sharp, the kind of walk that made people in hallways step aside without being asked.
"Bianca, where the hell were you running around in the middle of the night?"
I pressed my lips into a line and answered flatly. "I was home the whole time."
He gave me a half-smile that wasn't really a smile, like he was angry. His jaw tightened, and I saw his hand move toward his tie knot, one sharp, precise tug that pulled it flush against his collar.
"Home, and you didn't pick up my calls?"
Since the day we had made things official, the day the betrothal pact between the Valenti and Falcone houses had been signed over wine and witnessed by the Capos, I had never once missed a call from him. Not once in ten years. Not when I was sick, not when I was alone, not when he called at three in the morning reeking of another woman's perfume through the static of the phone line. I had always answered.
That thought must have crossed his mind, because his hand came up and gripped my jaw. His fingers were cold, precise, the hold firm enough to tilt my face toward his. Not a lover's touch. An interrogation.
"You think you can play me like I'm three years old?"
But the damp, cold feel of my skin against the crook of his hand caught him off guard. Surprise flickered through his eyes. Genuine, unguarded, the first honest reaction I had seen from him in months.
"Bianca, why are you sweating this much?"
Before I could answer, Serena's teary little whimper floated over from behind him. "Dante..."
And just like that, he was pulled back to her side. His hand dropped from my jaw, and the ghost of his grip stayed on my skin like a bruise already forming. He turned without another word, and I watched his back as he crossed the corridor in three strides, drawn to her the way a compass needle swings north.
Out of the corner of my eye, Teresa was clutching her chest, wailing that she was in pain. The timing was surgical. The performance seamless. Two women, working in concert, and the man between them never once looked back at me.
I pressed my thumb to the inside of my wrist and held it there for one measured breath. The fluorescent lights buzzed on above me, indifferent, and I sat very still and waited for my number to be called.
