Nico had stopped deserving me a long time ago. Still, deciding to end things hadn't been easy. Not until the accident. Not until I lost our baby.
It had happened two weeks earlier. I was driving, Serafina, my adopted sister, riding shotgun. I'd had a single glass of wine — not nearly enough to feel drunk — but I didn't want to drive that day. Serafina insisted, and I relented. Then it all fell apart. A car slammed into us. Too fast. Too sudden. No chance to react.
When I woke in the hospital, the doctors told me two things:
One, Serafina had a fractured leg and a broken arm, but she would recover.
Two, I had lost the baby. My baby. The heartbeat I had clung to, the one I thought would save our marriage.
Instead of comfort or support, there was only blame. I knew it wasn't my fault — it was the other car — but because Serafina mentioned the wine, everyone decided it was my negligence. The whole Family closed ranks around her. A Ferrante daughter, injured. That was the story they chose to tell.
"You should have let Serafina drive," Nico had snarled beside my bed, eyes blazing. A soldier stood by the door, gaze carefully averted, but hearing everything. "She had an important sit-down with the Ricci associates. And now? Look at her. You've ruined everything. All you do is sit in the compound and do nothing — and now this? You're useless!"
I blinked at him, the sterile lights flickering, and wondered how the man who had once held my hand so gently could crush it now. Yet this wasn't the first betrayal — it was only the loudest.
I had grown up thinking love meant giving endlessly, bending until it hurt, sacrificing everything. I believed that if I gave enough, love would come back to me.
Serafina and I were born the same day, in the same hospital, just minutes apart. A power outage, a terrified nurse, and a tragic mistake: our identities swapped. One nurse carried the guilt for decades without ever correcting it.
Serafina went home with the Ferrantes — old-blood Italian-American royalty, a Family whose name could silence a courtroom or empty a city block. I, Bianca — the real Ferrante daughter, the true blood heir — was sent to a working-class couple on the outskirts, to a quiet, humble life full of hard work and love.
I never knew the truth until years later. The dying nurse finally confessed. Blood tests, legal documents, undeniable confirmation: I was the real Ferrante daughter. Serafina wasn't.
But by then, it was too late. Serafina had been raised as the golden child, the public darling, trained for the life — the formal dinners, the careful silences, the Sunday gatherings where loyalty was measured by who sat closest to the Don. She fit seamlessly into their world.
The Ferrantes welcomed me, yes — but not as a daughter. As a charity case, a correction of a mistake. Donna Ferrante made sure I understood the difference every time she touched the crucifix at her throat and addressed Serafina first. Serafina remained the daughter they celebrated, while I was merely tolerated. Even Nico had chosen her.
At first, I tried convincing myself it was just admiration, old ties, the history they shared. Then, a few days after the hospital, I overheard him behind the garden wall during a Feast Day gathering at the compound.
"I should have married Serafina. Marrying Bianca was a mistake. She's weak, ordinary… lacks spark. Serafina would have made sense — a real alliance, a real pairing," he whispered. I could hear him exhale smoke, the faint clink of a glass being set on stone.
My hand flew to my mouth, hidden behind the hedge, frozen.
Then he continued.
"I'm thinking of spiking her drink at the next gathering. Make it look like she dishonored the Family. Then I can push for an annulment — everyone would side with me. Even the Don. And I could finally be with Serafina."
My stomach twisted. He wanted me gone. Not divorced — discarded. In this world, you didn't simply leave a blood-bound union. You had to be cast out, and he was building the case to make sure I had nothing and no one when it happened. That was the breaking point — the moment something inside me snapped, replaced by something harder, colder.
It was then I called Gianna. The phone barely rang twice before she picked up.
"Gianna…" I murmured, voice trembling. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that already felt like it belonged to someone else's life. "I need you. My divorce… it's final in five days. Can you pick me up then?"
There was a pause, then faint shuffling. "Wait — what? Divorce?" Her voice cracked with shock. "Bianca… finally! You've finally seen reason. I told you — you didn't deserve that bastard."
A bitter laugh escaped me. "Yeah… I didn't."
I could almost hear her thinking, calculating routes and safe houses and which of her contacts could move me without leaving a trail the Family's soldiers could follow. What she was agreeing to do was a violation of omertà. She knew what it could cost her. She didn't hesitate.
I shook myself back to the present when Nico's voice called from the kitchen.
"Babe! I made your favorite!"
I wiped my eyes and stood, walking toward the smell of food. The act. The performance. The perfect husband before the next betrayal.
In the kitchen, he waited by the stove, smiling, an apron Serafina had bought him draped over his chest. The kitchen in the compound was enormous, marble and dark wood, built for Sunday dinners that fed thirty. Tonight it held only the two of us and the quiet weight of everything unsaid.
"Come on, sit." He kissed my cheek as if nothing had happened. Like we hadn't lost our child. Like I wasn't in pain. "We can have another one," he said casually.
I stared at the plate, stomach twisting. Mushroom risotto. Serafina's favorite. Not mine. My favorite had always been steak. He knew — or maybe he didn't. Because he never really noticed me. Never truly saw me. I had been nothing more than convenient. A name to marry into the Ferrante bloodline. A seat at the table he thought he deserved.
Five days. That's all that remained before I could finally walk away and never look back.
