"How could men and women ever be equal? Stop stirring things up, alright?"
I no longer wanted to keep debating and turned around to walk away. Marco reached out and tried to hold me back.
With a loud crash, Enzo Ferrante struck the table hard with his palm.
"Go. Let her leave!"
"A woman living off my son is acting all proud now, don't come back crying and begging later!"
His chin was lifted, arms crossed against his chest, the posture of a man who believed he was the highest authority in the room. He had never once stood that way in front of my father.
Marco truly listened this time and did not run after me.
The cold wind on the road rushed straight toward me, just like that winter when I first fell for Marco at a single glance.
Back then, my closest friend warned me.
"Him? He's that well-known nobody in our crew who only focuses on the work. Runs logistics for one of the Family's smaller fronts, keeps his head down, never looks up."
"So many connected girls tried to get close to him, and he didn't even look their way. When asked, he only said he didn't have time for that nonsense."
"If you want to go after him, that'll probably be tougher than reaching the sky."
But I still liked him.
So I hid who I was, switched into his world, and began shamelessly sticking close to him, doing everything I could to make myself noticeable to him.
Behind the scenes, I covered his expenses through anonymous channels my father's people never questioned. I used every connection the Valentini name could quietly open to make sure Marco trained under the best operators in the organization, sat in on meetings he had no business attending, received territory assignments men twice his age would have killed for.
I refused every son of every allied family my father introduced and poured all my time and energy into Marco alone.
In the end, as someone considered "on the same level" as him, I naturally became his partner.
After we settled into the arrangement, with everything already in place, he and I both moved into roles within my father's front operations. The Valentini hospital network, the pharmaceutical logistics, the legitimate face of everything the Family touched.
I did not move into the apartment my father had bought long ago in the secured building near the compound. Instead, I chose to squeeze into a small studio close to the hospital with him.
We once shared a truly happy time.
In the mornings before work, when I didn't want to get out of bed, Marco would hold me and help me brush my teeth and wash my face.
In the evenings after work, we would walk hand in hand to buy groceries together.
Curled up on the couch watching television, I would rest against his shoulder, and he would feed me fruit he had peeled himself.
But after Serena returned from Europe, everything became different.
She turned into Marco's focus and main concern.
The car Marco bought using his very first real earnings from the front business, its front seat turned into a seat meant only for Serena.
"Anyway, our place is very near the hospital. Walking a little more is good exercise for you."
One evening after working late, some sick and deranged man followed me through the parking structure.
With shaking hands, I called Marco and begged him to come get me, yet he was already heading to Serena's place.
"Serena is at home with bad cramps and can only drink the ginger tea I make. At a moment like this, can you stop being jealous and causing problems, okay?"
When that man rushed at me, I fought wildly in fear and despair.
When I grabbed a brick and swung it down, blood scattered across my face.
I was a Valentini. The Don's only daughter. And I was alone in a parking garage with blood on my hands because the man I had given everything to was making tea for another woman.
The next day, when I walked out of the police station, Marco was nowhere in sight.
Instead, I saw two flight tickets posted on Serena's social media.
Feeling awful during my time of the month. My good friend didn't hesitate to take me on a trip to relax.
That place was the Maldives, the spot I had always held onto Marco about wanting to visit.
Every time I talked about it before, he would always say our main focus right now was saving money for the future, not wasting money to enjoy ourselves.
Yet the moment it had Serena involved, every plan about saving money completely disappeared.
I slowly let out a breath and wiped the tears away.
Then I thought about every visit I made to the Ferrante home, where I busied myself serving the whole family like hired help in a house that should have bowed to mine.
Patrizia would always smooth the front of her dress with both palms, then slip the family heirloom sapphire bracelet onto Serena's wrist, sighing again and again about how perfect it would be if she and Marco were together. Serena would tilt her head to the right, that closed-lip smile of hers, and say nothing. She never had to.
Bit by bit, moment by moment, I always believed that as long as I loved Marco, I could endure everything.
But now, I could no longer keep loving.
Since in their family's hearts, I would forever be an outsider, I decided from then on I would no longer mistreat myself.
I turned my mother's ring slowly around my finger. The garnet caught the streetlight, small and dark as a drop of old blood. The decision was already made.
I went back to the villa to pack my belongings and leave, but the keypad at the door failed again and again.
Just as I was about to call Marco to ask, the door suddenly opened from inside.
