He didn't respond.
"Dante."
Still nothing.
It was as if I had disappeared from the room. The Underboss of the Valente Family, a man whose attention soldiers competed for, whose silence could empty a room. And he couldn't hear me sitting three feet away.
Later, while he was in the shower, his phone lay on the bedside table.
I stared at it for a long moment before reaching out. My thumb drifted to my left ring finger, pressing against the band there without thinking.
To my surprise, the lock screen code had been changed.
It used to be my birthday.
For years, he had used my birthday as his code. He once said it was because the day I was born was the luckiest day of his life.
But now, that code no longer worked.
I tried again.
Wrong.
Again.
Still wrong.
Then, for some reason, I thought of Serafina.
My fingers stiffened.
I entered 1123.
The screen unlocked.
For a few seconds, I just stared at the phone in silence.
So that was it.
My birthday had been replaced.
And so had I.
November 23rd.
That was the day Serafina Russo came back from London after her marriage fell apart.
No wonder Dante had changed his cipher to 1123.
The moment I realized it, I couldn't help letting out a cold laugh. My fingers tightened around his phone as the screen unlocked, and the first thing that appeared was his message thread with Serafina.
I opened it.
The sweetness in her words was almost nauseating.
[Serafina: Dante, thank you so much for today. I really don't know what I would've done without you. Sometimes I think, if only you were Matteo's dad.]
And Dante had replied almost immediately.
[Dante: If you don't mind, let Matteo call me Dad. I actually quite like it. ]
A smiling emoji sat at the end of the sentence, bright and harmless-looking, but it stabbed into my eyes like a blade.
My heart sank so hard it felt as if it had fallen into a frozen lake.
For a moment, my whole body went numb. The blood in my veins seemed to turn cold, inch by inch, until even my fingertips lost feeling. Somewhere down the hall, one of the soldiers shifted his weight outside the bedroom door, the floorboard groaning beneath him. Even the guards knew not to knock when the Underboss was home.
Just then, another notification popped up.
It was from Serafina.
A voice message.
Only two seconds long.
I stared at it for a few seconds before pressing play.
A young boy's cheerful voice came through the speaker.
"Thank you, Daddy Dante."
The room fell silent.
Then I laughed.
It wasn't because I found it funny.
It was the kind of laugh that came from pain too deep to cry over.
I was carrying Dante's child inside me, risking my body, enduring the discomfort and fear of pregnancy, while he was out there happily playing father to another woman's son. A Bellandi daughter, married into the Valente bloodline to carry an heir, and the heir meant nothing to the man who put it there.
On our wedding night, he had held my hand and promised me forever.
He had said he would love only me.
He had said he would be loyal.
He had said he would cherish me for the rest of his life.
It had only been three years.
And already, those vows had rusted into something ugly and worthless.
The bathroom door opened.
Dante stepped out with damp hair, a towel in his hand. The moment he saw me holding his phone, his expression changed.
His face twisted with rage.
Before I could even speak, he strode over and shoved me hard.
I lost my balance and crashed to the floor. The cold marble of the townhouse sent a shock up through my palms. A sharp pain tore through my lower abdomen, and I instinctively curled one hand over my stomach. My teeth sank into my lower lip as I forced myself to breathe through the pain.
