My mother's last wish had changed. It wasn't only the final Sunday dinner at the family table anymore, the one no one came to.
She wanted me to find happiness.
Her frail voice echoed in my mind, each word heavier than the last, the way her breath had rattled in that quiet infirmary room. My throat constricted, and my eyes blurred with tears that wouldn't stop coming.
When I finally spoke, my voice trembled and cracked with emotion. "Salvatore, you can't give me the happiness I want anymore, can you?"
He didn't answer immediately. Somewhere behind him I heard the click of a lighter, the slow exhale of a man used to letting silence do his work. Then he let out a low, deep sigh.
"Adriana… we're in our late twenties now. It's time we grew up. Whether we love each other or not… it doesn't really matter anymore."
There it was.
He didn't need to say it directly.
I knew exactly what he meant.
He didn't love me anymore.
I let out a soft, bitter laugh, one that caught in my throat like a noose. It was a laugh of surrender, something breaking deep inside me that I couldn't hold together anymore. My mother's thin gold ring turned twice around my finger before I even knew my own hand had moved.
"Fine, then," I whispered, the words barely escaping my lips. "I'll let you go… and I'll let myself go too."
The moment I said it, my chest tightened, and my heart clenched so painfully I thought I might collapse from the weight of it, because I'd heard it before. Five years ago.
Back then, we had nothing. Not a name, not a soldier to our detail, not even a decent roof over our heads. Our tiny walk-up in the old quarter was barely more than four cracked walls, but we made it ours.
The only ring he could afford was a plain silver band, nothing like the signet he wore now.
But when he asked me, his eyes held a fire that made me believe everything he said.
"Adriana, I promise you. Wherever I am, that'll always be your home. I'll give you the life you deserve. You'll never have to suffer again. From now on, it's just happiness. Just us."
I believed him. I didn't hesitate. I said yes.
He was ecstatic, like a kid who'd just taken the whole city. He lifted me up and spun me around, laughing like we were the only two people left alive.
"From this moment on, you're my wife. In this life and the next, we'll never be apart. Don't even think about making me let go of your hand."
But now?
Now, he had forgotten every single word of that promise.
And he didn't even bother fighting me on it.
Instead, he just said, "Fine. But don't worry, Adriana. No one can replace you. No matter what, the wife's seat at the Vitale table will always be yours."
Once, I had felt something close to pride when men lowered their eyes and called me Signora Vitale. It made me feel secure, loved, like I belonged somewhere the world couldn't touch.
Now?
Now it felt like a cruel joke.
Ever since Salvatore's name started passing from mouth to mouth with a different woman each season, the whispers around me never stopped. In this life, a whisper travels faster than a bullet, and it does more damage.
Some of the wives pitied me.
Others… they mocked me, behind their wine glasses at the club.
"The Don goes through women like a revolving door. Do you really think you'll keep that seat much longer? If I were you, I'd give him a bloodline while I still had the chance. Might buy you something when he finally signs your release."
"Five years, and no child yet? Maybe she can't. No wonder she can't hold him."
What they didn't know, what no one knew, was that I had been pregnant.
In our first year bound to him, I carried our child.
But then, there was that night.
Salvatore had been sitting down with men we needed on our side, the kind who smiled while they measured you for a grave. Someone had deliberately put drink after drink in front of him, humiliating him at his own table while he swallowed it and smiled through the pain, just to close the arrangement.
I had come straight from patching up one of our soldiers when I saw him. His face flushed, his posture rigid, his fists clenched beneath the table where they thought no one could see.
My heart broke for him. I wanted to take him out of that room, away from men who saw him as nothing but a tool to be used and discarded.
But then they turned their eyes on me.
"If the Signora drinks with us, we sign tonight. Hell, we'll even walk the two of you to your car ourselves."
I knew what that arrangement meant to him. I knew what it had cost him to claw his way to that table.
So I swallowed my pride.
I picked up the glass.
And I drank.
That night, Salvatore closed the deal he'd bled for.
And I lost our child.
After that, no matter how careful we were, it never happened again.
Maybe it was punishment.
Maybe the universe decided I wasn't meant to be a mother. Maybe it was for not protecting my baby when I had the chance.
As Salvatore's voice faded into the silence of the room, the tears I'd been holding back finally broke free. Warm, heavy tears spilled down my cheeks, landing on my hand, on the thin gold ring that was all my mother had left me.
For the first time in a long time, I let myself cry.
