During an incursion into the frozen border country, the ambush came without warning. My betrothed under the alliance pact, Aldo Bellini, didn't even hesitate. He ran straight for Noemi Valente, his first love, and left me to die in the open.
Dario Moretti, the Capo leading the run, saw me sliding toward the edge of a black crevasse and didn't think twice. He risked his own life to drag me back from it.
Later, on the day our union was to be sealed before the Family, Aldo abandoned me at the altar. No explanation. No warning.
He simply left with Noemi. And in that moment, Dario, without missing a beat, dropped to one knee and asked for me himself.
We were bound together under the Family's witness, and for a while, things seemed fine. Dario treated me well, the way a husband should.
Life felt normal for the first time in years.
But like everything that feels too good to be true, the peace didn't hold.
Two years into our union, Dario was suddenly marked with a death-debt. A mortal sickness in the blood, they said, the kind no doctor could buy off.
I didn't think twice. I gave two-thirds of my own body to settle it, to keep him breathing. Anything to keep him alive.
But as I lay recovering in the Family doctor's keep, everything changed. I overheard his trusted man, Lorenzo, speaking to him in Sicilian, the private tongue of the inner circle.
"If Adriana ever learns you staged the whole death-debt just to save Noemi, aren't you afraid she'll leave you with nothing?"
Dario held my hand, looking at me with those soft, affectionate eyes. But his next words chilled me to the bone.
"The pact was never real. But I do owe her. I'll make it up to her."
I had thought I'd finally found someone who cared whether I lived. Someone who wouldn't leave me alone in this world.
But it was all a lie.
A well-played, elaborate lie.
——
I followed Dario up to the private rooms on the top floor of the keep, thinking he meant to check on me. But in his haste, he forgot to pull the door all the way shut.
As I came closer, I caught a glimpse through the narrow gap. Noemi was in his arms, her face glowing with relief, her smile as radiant as ever.
I caught my own reflection in the dark glass of the corridor. Pale. Thin. Barely holding on.
Between the two of us, who was truly close to death?
"Dario, I knew you'd never abandon me!" Noemi's voice was sweet, relief dripping from every word.
Dario stroked her hair, his voice low and tender, a warmth I had never once felt turned toward me.
"As long as you're alright, nothing else matters."
...
I spent five months in that keep after they cut into me. Five months drifting in and out, while Dario came and went. And how many of those visits had been for Noemi, not for me?
I watched him, his eyes full of a warmth I'd never seen on his face. So this was how he looked when he loved someone.
A memory surfaced. Not long ago, when I'd first come back to myself. Dario was sitting beside the bed, gripping my hand tight.
I tried to speak, to say his name, but before I could, I heard Lorenzo, his right hand, speaking in Sicilian. His hand drifted to the back of his neck as he said it.
"Noemi's safe now, isn't she? I don't believe you. Five years chasing that woman wasn't enough? And now you've played Adriana, who gave up two-thirds of herself to keep you alive."
Dario's voice was even, untroubled. "I told you. I'll protect her the rest of her life, no matter who she chooses in the end."
Lorenzo scoffed. "You lied to her. You bound yourself to her under the Family's witness and used her to save Noemi. Aren't you afraid she'll learn it all and leave you with nothing?"
Dario answered with that same coldness that froze the blood in me. Two fingers settled against the inside of his left wrist as he spoke. "We were never truly bound. The pact was a fiction. But I do owe her. I'll make it up to her."
Lorenzo had no answer for that. "Dario. You're unbelievable. You still mean to go to Noemi in the end?"
Dario said nothing. His silence said everything.
He went on holding my hand, smiling down at me as though none of it had happened. But I could feel it now. The warmth in his touch was draining away, and for the first time, I understood.
I had never known this man at all.
I tried to keep myself together.
"What were the two of you talking about?" I asked softly, working to keep my voice level. "Did something happen?"
Lorenzo hesitated, then turned to Dario and murmured in Sicilian. "She didn't catch any of that, did she?"
Dario, though, didn't so much as flinch. His voice stayed calm, as if he hadn't just shattered me.
"It's about the incursion. The high table found old ancestral ground out in the frozen country, a buried place, maybe sacred. They're still choosing men for it. The matter's sworn to silence."
He lied with such ease. And there, in that moment, I understood everything.
I had never truly known him. Not at all.
