When I came to again, the sharp sting of antiseptic filled my nostrils. I frowned, the smell alone enough to make my stomach turn.
I struggled to sit up, but Vittorio's voice cut through the silence before I could manage it. "You're hurt. Rest. What are you squirming around for?" A pause, then a sigh heavy with irritation. "You never make anything easy."
I clenched my fingers into the bedsheet. "And whose fault is it that I ended up like this?"
Vittorio's expression froze for a split second before hardening over. His signet ring was still against his knuckle, not turning, not moving at all. "You brought this on yourself. Don't blame anyone else."
His words drove through my chest like a blade, buried themselves deep in my heart. The pain stole every word I might have said.
When I stayed silent, he opened his mouth to speak again, but a shrill ringtone cut him off.
He answered, and just like that, his voice softened without him even seeming to notice.
"Serafina... yeah... I'll pick some up for you on my way over..."
He hung up and the warmth vanished, replaced by ice. "Serafina is being generous this time. She's not pressing charges. Her birthday is in two days. Don't show your face there."
Two days. That was exactly when I'd planned to leave.
I lowered my gaze and said nothing.
The moment Vittorio walked out, the soldier stationed in the corridor pulling the door shut behind him, my phone buzzed with a text from Serafina.
Don't kid yourself into thinking Vittorio actually cares about you. He's planning to propose to me at my birthday gala. You're welcome to come watch, of course, but he'd really rather you didn't.
I turned off the phone and stared out the window at the blue sky and drifting clouds. My mind pulled me back to the day Vittorio had proposed to me.
After I'd said yes, he'd lifted me off my feet and spun me around, laughing, again and again. He'd even had fireworks set off over Crestfall for nine straight nights to celebrate. Every family in the territory had known what those lights meant. The Don was claiming his bride, and the sky itself was supposed to remember it.
Back then, he'd been so happy he wanted the whole world to know I was his.
But after that... everything changed. The estate was the same. The man was not.
The next day, I was discharged and went home. I punched in the door code at the front gate, and the screen flashed red. Incorrect password.
I tried again. And again. Each time the same cold rejection blinked back at me, until the lock froze me out entirely.
That code, the one my fingers had entered thousands upon thousands of times, now told me I didn't belong here.
I remembered the day I'd first moved into this house. Vittorio had taken my hand, and together we'd set the password.
"Just in case a certain someone forgets," he'd said with a grin, "I picked the day we got together."
That date was also my birthday. There was no way I'd gotten it wrong.
Yet the alarm kept blaring, each beep a slap across my face.
I was still standing there, frozen, when the door swung open from inside.
Serafina stood in the doorway wearing my silk nightgown. She yawned, slow and lazy, as if she'd just rolled out of bed. The faint scent of Vittorio's cologne clung to the fabric.
Then she swept her hair to one side, deliberately baring a neck mottled with hickeys. Her eyes glittered with satisfaction she didn't bother to hide.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetie. Vittorio brought me home last night, and I threw a little fit, so he changed the code." She tilted her head, lips curling. "Guess he forgot to tell you."
My thumb brushed once over the bare inside of my ring finger. The gate sensor pulsed red behind me, patient and indifferent, waiting for a code that no longer existed.
