Dante finally came home. I heard the car first. Then the gate. Then the front door, and the familiar sound of his shoes on the marble entryway. His voice was gentle as he lightly scolded me, "Olivia, why didn't you turn on the lights? It's so dark. What if you fall?"
He flipped the light switch, and the room lit up. I quickly covered my tear-streaked face as he knelt in front of me and took my hand.
"Why are you crying? Who made my precious wife and our little one so sad?" he asked, his voice soft as he kissed my belly.
His hand was warm. His touch was practiced. This was the version of Dante that the household saw. The devoted husband. The expectant father. The Capo who kept his home in order. I wondered how many times he had knelt like this after coming from her apartment, still carrying her scent, and played the part so well that even I believed it.
As he leaned closer, I smelled the same sweet jasmine fragrance. Struggling to keep calm, I asked, "Where were you?"
"I was at the club, finishing up some business with Enzo. What's wrong, honey?" Dante replied casually, as though nothing was out of the ordinary. He ran his thumb along the edge of his jaw, a gesture I had once found attractive. A man measuring his next move. Now I saw it for what it was. A man deciding which lie to tell.
You're lying, Dante. You were with Cara. She had a craving for those cannoli from Sal's on the east side, and since they don't deliver, you drove over an hour from the west side to get them for her. She even posted the whole thing.
Feigning nonchalance, I smiled, gently squeezing his hand. "Honey, I suddenly have a craving for those cannoli from Sal's on the east side, too," I said, resting my hands on my belly.
As if sensing my pain, the baby kicked hard. "Can you get some for me?"
Annoyance flickered across Dante's face as he pulled his hand away, frustration creeping into his expression. "Those cannoli aren't anything special. Besides, you're pretty far along. You should watch what you eat." Standing up, he straightened his cuffs, the casual authority returning to his posture like a coat he'd shrugged back on. "For the sake of our son, just bear with it a little longer, okay?"
Our son. He was so certain it would be a boy. A Moretti heir. Another name to carry the legacy forward, another generation to inherit the territory and the blood that came with it. He never once considered that the child might be a girl, or that the child might not carry his name at all.
Without waiting for a response, he muttered, "I'm going to take a shower. I'm exhausted. Why don't you call your mother and ask her to make you something?"
The bathroom door clicked shut. Water began to run. The sound of it filled the house, and I sat perfectly still on the leather couch that his mother had chosen, in the estate that his family had built, wearing the ring that bore his family's crest.
Swallowing my sobs, I gently stroked my belly and whispered, "Oh, sweetheart, you and I are about to fight a tough battle together."
The house was quiet. The soldiers stood at the gate. The water ran behind the closed door. And in the silence, I began to plan.
Dante's phone sat on the dining table, screen facing up, the way it always did. He never bothered to hide it. Not from me.
Did he really think I was that blind? Or did he simply not care enough to wonder?
The sound of water running in the master bathroom echoed through the house. Through the walls of the Moretti estate, everything carried. Every door. Every footstep. Every lie.
With a sigh, I braced one hand against the edge of the table and struggled to my feet, my belly pulling me forward like an anchor. I tried the obvious passwords first. Our wedding date. His birthday. Mine. The anniversary of the ceremony at St. Augustine's, where half the Family had gathered to watch us become something neither of us fully understood. None of them worked. My hands trembled as I entered the date from Cara's ultrasound report.
Success.
I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste copper. Sneering, I opened the messaging app's storage. Sure enough, Cara's profile picture was there. Their avatars matched.
He said, "If love lasts forever," and she replied, "Does it matter if we're together every day?"
I clicked into the chat and was greeted by a flood of "Darling, I miss you" and "Baby, when will I see you again?" Determined not to let my emotions take over, I activated the screen recording feature. My thumb pressed against the inside of my wedding ring, hard, the gold biting into skin. I kept scrolling.
Next, I opened his shopping app. To my dismay, his order history was filled with pregnancy supplements, high-end skincare, imported cosmetics. Every item shipped to the same address. Every delivery made to Cara. The address in Maplewood, that gated enclave the Family controlled, where the homes sat behind iron fences and the neighbors knew better than to notice who came and went.
With one hand resting on my restless baby, I took screenshots with the other. I sent the videos and screenshots to myself, then carefully deleted the evidence. Satisfied that everything was in order, I placed the phone back exactly where I'd found it. Same angle. Same distance from the edge. The way a woman learns to move in a house where nothing is truly hers.
Waddling back to the bedroom, I lay down on my side. The weight of betrayal settled over me as my heart felt like it had a hole ripped through it, and I couldn't stop shivering from the cold weight of betrayal. After seven years of marriage, seven years of carrying the Moretti name like a second skin I never asked for, I had been reduced to a cruel joke. The dutiful wife. The clean face of a dirty family. And all along, he'd been spending Family money on a woman from the Valentes, a name so small it barely registered in the territories.
