I finally noticed Lorenzo had changed the words beneath his name.
For years it had been the same, a single word. [Wait.]
When I once asked him what it meant, he smiled and said he was waiting for my legs to heal.
But now, it had changed. [Home.]
And at last, I understood.
Wait had never been for me. He had been waiting for Vittoria. Home meant she was finally back inside Family walls.
I placed his phone back on the nightstand and stepped onto the balcony, my fingers tightening around my own.
"Yes, I'd like to arrange passage overseas. Departure in five days."
Five days. Just enough to bury five years of lies.
That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
The next day, at the long table where the Family took its midday meal, my phone lit up.
Lorenzo's gaze flicked to it from the corner of his eye. His expression darkened.
"Wife, why are you moving to close your accounts?"
I shut off the screen, my voice calm. "The account was flagged for renewal. I scheduled it."
He looked like he wanted to press further, but then his phone rang. He smoothed the front of his jacket with one flat palm, top to bottom, before he answered.
"Something's come up with Family business, tesoro. I have to handle it. I won't be able to sit with you."
I nodded, watching as the Don and Donna rose and followed him out.
And just like that, I was left alone in this house, with only the soldiers at the doors for company.
Just as I was about to leave, a message came through.
[Adriana, you heard everything at the physician's yesterday, didn't you?]
It was Vittoria.
[Your husband and I have a son.]
[Even your own blood, the moment Dr. Russo told them your injuries had left you barren, chose me instead. They told Lorenzo to be with me. To give the Family an heir with me.]
[We're the real couple. You? You're nothing but a joke.]
[They even set me up with a front of my own. The opening is in five days. I suppose no one bothered to tell you that either, did they?]
[I regret not running you down sooner. Then all of this would've been mine from the start.]
…
Each word sliced through me like a blade, cutting deep, leaving nothing but raw, open wounds.
So this was why my own blood had cast me aside.
This was why Lorenzo had stayed at her side so willingly.
Fingers trembling, I took screenshots of every message and turned to the nightstand, retrieving the papers of my blood-union.
Buried inside, I found something else: his formal pardon, the document that was meant to clear the debt owed for crippling me.
Clutching both, I pressed my thumb hard against the inside of my wrist, the old spot where the line once sat, and went straight to my Consigliere.
But after reading through them, Salvatore Conti frowned.
He explained that messages like these couldn't stand as solid proof, and that a pardon signed by blood carried weight before the Commission.
When I asked him to draw up the terms to sever the union, his frown deepened. The union, he told me, had never been sanctified. It was void. A forgery that had never been Family law at all.
It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me, leaving my heart plummeting into a bottomless abyss.
So Vittoria hadn't lied. I truly had been nothing but a fool, a puppet in their cruel game.
But just as despair threatened to consume me, something new flickered in Salvatore's eyes.
He squared the edges of the papers into a clean stack, then set them down and said that, under these circumstances, Lorenzo's pardon held no weight either. It was fraud. Concealment. A lie dressed as mercy.
A surge of hope rushed through me, breaking past the suffocating grief. Clutching onto that sliver of light, I begged him to bring it before the Commission.
Leaving his office, I found a car and made my way to a physician outside Family reach, my fingers clenched tightly around the fabric of my dress.
This time, I needed the truth.
When he told me there was still hope for my leg, I broke down in tears of joy.
A sob tore from my throat as my vision blurred with tears.
He explained that the crash had left me unable to conceive, but that surgery could restore what had been taken. As for my leg, the fracture hadn't worsened in five years. With surgery, I would walk again soon.
I choked on my breath, struggling to process his words.
He smiled to reassure me. "Someone has clearly been seeing to your care. If these legs had truly been left to rot for five years, there would have been no hope of recovery."
A bitter chill seeped into my bones, spreading through my heart like ice.
He didn't know.
He had no idea that the very people he spoke of, my so-called blood, were the ones who never wanted me to stand again.
No.
They were no longer my Family.
As I stepped out, my phone vibrated in my hand. Another message from Vittoria.
It was a photo.
In it, she held her son in Lorenzo's arms, their faces glowing with contentment. The Don and Donna sat beside them, mirroring the same joy.
The five of them smiled as if they had always belonged together.
Behind them, on the pale wall of the grand estate, in the Don's own hand, the words read:
[A united famiglia wants for nothing.]
The cruel irony twisted deep inside me, cutting sharper than any blade.
