Inside the spacious black car, the armored sedan that ferried the Don through territory he controlled, silence hung heavily. The driver kept his eyes forward. The partition was up. The leather seats smelled of expensive cologne and something else, something faintly sweet and wrong. And then, as if right on cue, I spotted something wedged between the seat cushions.
A pair of still-damp lace panties.
"Oh my!" Daniela gasped, her hand flying to her mouth with the precision of a woman who had placed them there herself and rehearsed the discovery. "How did that end up here?"
"Dominic, didn't you say you took care of it already?"
Biting her lip, Daniela threw herself into his arms, blushing as she playfully hit his chest.
Dominic chuckled and apologized, blaming everything on himself, yet his eyes subtly shifted, watching my reaction.
But when he saw that I wasn't angry at all, the same restlessness he'd felt back in the hospital room crept back into his chest, inexplicably heavy.
"Seraphina," he said coldly, "you've been glued to your phone ever since you got in the car."
His voice carried a note of jealousy, low and controlled, the way a man accustomed to absolute authority sounds when something slips beyond his reach.
"Chatting with your cousin? Or someone else I don't know?"
I had just finished booking my plane ticket and locked my phone screen.
"Just reading the news," I replied calmly.
But rather than easing his mood, my answer only deepened the frown between his brows. The silver lighter appeared in his hand, turning end over end between his fingers, the soft click of metal filling the silence of the armored sedan.
Catching me off guard, he snatched the phone from my hand.
"What's your password?" he demanded. The lighter stopped moving.
"My birthday," I said.
Nine years of marriage. Nine years of a blood-bound union.
A six-digit password that simple, and yet, he still failed to unlock my phone before it locked itself from too many incorrect attempts.
The rest of the ride passed in silence. The enforcer behind the wheel kept his eyes on the road. The one in the passenger seat did not turn around. They knew the temperature of the air between us. Everyone in the Valente household always knew.
When we arrived at the estate, Dominic immediately helped Daniela, who was suffering from pregnancy nausea, into the master bedroom with a look of deep concern. The soldiers stationed along the hallway straightened as he passed, eyes forward, postures locked. He moved through his own home the way he moved through every room: as though it had been built around him.
Then he instructed the cook to prepare all her favorite dishes.
Coming back downstairs, he caught a glimpse of me walking alone toward the guest room. Something about my lonely silhouette made him pause. My shadow stretched long across the marble floor of the foyer, thin and solitary against the dark wood paneling and the oil portraits of Valente men who had come before him.
After a moment's thought, he said to the cook, "Prepare a couple of Seraphina's usual dishes too. Set the table for three tonight."
In the guest room, I opened my suitcase, and every piece of clothing inside had been slashed to ribbons. Silk blouses gutted seam to seam. Dresses split open like wounds. The kind of damage that required patience, a sharp blade, and hatred held at a steady simmer.
Thankfully, my passport and the documents tucked deep inside, the ones that mattered, were untouched. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band used to sit. The skin there was smooth now. Almost healed.
Just as I gathered everything and turned to leave, I found Daniela blocking the door.
She held a black bottle in her hand, eyeing me with scorn as she scanned me from head to toe. Her other hand rested on her stomach, that practiced, deliberate gesture, though no one else was in the room to perform for. Old habits. Or perhaps she simply never stopped performing.
"Wow, Seraphina. You've got some nerve," she sneered.
"Even after I waltzed in here and made you the laughingstock of every Family wife on the Eastern Seaboard, you're still shamelessly clinging to the Valente name like some parasite."
"Oh right, your grandmother died last month, didn't she?" Her tone was syrupy and cruel, the kind of sweetness that coats a razor.
"Now that your precious old woman's gone, I guess you've got no one left to rely on. Well, it makes sense you'd cling to Dominic like he's your last lifeline."
She suddenly remembered something, laughing as she brought her phone screen up to my face.
