He hadn't even called. Hadn't had the rispetto to let me hear his voice, to offer an explanation, an apology, anything that might have softened the blow. He had typed out a message the way a man might cancel a dinner reservation. Brief. Dismissive. As if the most important day of my life was an inconvenience he could pencil in for a later date.
Five years. Five years of loyalty. Five years of standing beside him at sit-downs and Sunday dinners, of pressing my lips shut when the whispers followed me through the halls of the compound. She's not good enough for a Valente. She's just a Serafini girl. Her father was a soldier, not a boss. What does the Don see in her? Five years of being his rock, his confidante, the woman who waited up for him on the nights he came home smelling of gunpowder and rain, who never asked questions she knew he couldn't answer. Five years of Omertà kept not out of obligation but out of love.
And now, this.
I did not respond. What was there to say? My fingers trembled over the screen. I wanted to call him and scream until my throat was raw, to demand he explain why he chose her, again, always her, over the woman he was supposed to bind his blood to. But instead, I swallowed the rage like a mouthful of broken glass and hurled the phone onto the bed.
It bounced once against the duvet and lay still, its screen dark.
I paced. The bedroom was enormous, one of the finest rooms in the Valente compound, with its vaulted ceilings and its windows overlooking the estate's private gardens. Dominic and I had built a life together in these rooms. His suits hung beside my dresses in the walk-in closet. His cologne lingered on the pillows. His reading glasses sat on the nightstand beside a dog-eared copy of The Prince. But lately, this place had begun to feel less like a home and more like a gilded cage. I lived in his shadow, surrounded by his name, his legacy, his obligations, and I was alone almost all the time.
A knock broke through the silence. Three sharp raps, unhesitant, the knock of someone who did not need permission.
I opened the door. Nonna Lolita Valente stood in the hallway, her small frame wrapped in black lace, her silver hair pulled back in a severe chignon. She was eighty-three years old. She had buried two husbands, survived three assassination attempts, and outlasted every enemy who had ever underestimated her. Her face was a map of decades spent navigating the treacherous waters of La Cosa Nostra, and her dark eyes, still sharp as stiletto blades, held a sympathy that nearly undid me.
"I heard what happened, child," she said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. She never waited. In the Valente household, Nonna Lolita went where she pleased.
She settled herself into the armchair by the window as though she owned it. Which, in a sense, she did.
"You deserve better than this."
I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted copper. I would not cry. Not yet. But Nonna had always seen through every mask I wore. She was the sharpest person in the Family, sharper than the Consigliere, sharper even than Dominic himself, though she would never say so aloud. There was no hiding pain from a woman who had spent a lifetime reading the faces of killers and liars.
"I thought today would be different." My voice came out smaller than I intended. I sank into the chair across from her, my knees suddenly too weak to hold me. "I thought he'd finally choose me over her."
Nonna's eyes darkened. The sympathy did not leave her face, but something harder settled beneath it. Something cold and knowing.
"Dominic is a fool. He cannot see what he is losing." She paused, her gnarled fingers laced together in her lap. "But I know that Chiara Mancuso is not the innocent little lamb she pretends to be."
I stared at her. My pulse quickened. Everyone in the Family adored Chiara. The sweet orphan. The tragic ward.
