The ash still smoldered faintly at my feet, tiny orange veins pulsing through the blackened remains of what had once been a decade of captured moments. I watched them die, one by one, like the last stars winking out before dawn. And above me, Nicholas Valenti's anger was already dissolving into something worse than rage.
Regret.
His eyes, those dark Valenti eyes that had once made me feel like the only woman in any room, dimmed under the fading moonlight that spilled through the courtyard's iron lattice. He adjusted his shirt collar with practiced fingers, a habitual gesture I'd seen a thousand times before, the unconscious recalibration of a man who ruled an empire and could not afford to appear anything less than composed. The Don of the Valenti Syndicate did not lose control. Not in front of anyone.
But I wasn't fooled. I had spent eight years learning the language of his body, reading the micro-expressions that his soldiers and associates never saw. The tension in his jaw. The way his breathing came too fast, too shallow. The barely perceptible tremor in his left hand, the one he kept curled at his side as if he could will it still. His heart was hammering. I could practically hear it in the silence between us, that frantic percussion betraying everything his face tried to conceal.
I brushed the soot from my hands and rose to my full height, meeting his gaze without flinching. My voice came out steady, stripped of warmth, polished smooth as the marble floors of the estate behind us. "It's fine. I saw bugs crawling in the album. Maybe cockroaches. So I burned it."
Nicholas's brows furrowed, dark slashes drawing together over those treacherous eyes. He stepped closer, and I felt the familiar weight of his presence press against me, that gravitational pull that had once made my knees weak and my pulse race. Now it just felt heavy. "You burned it? That was ten years' worth of memories, Aria. Ten years. How could you—" His words faltered. His hands had clenched into fists at his sides, and I watched the tendons in his forearms strain against the rolled cuffs of his dress shirt. He caught himself mid-sentence, recognizing the raw edge in his own voice, the loss of composure that no Don could afford.
I held my ground, raising an eyebrow with the kind of calm indifference that had taken me years to perfect. "Are you done?"
The sheer flatness of my tone hit him harder than any insult could have. I saw it land, watched the impact ripple across his features like a stone dropped into still water. He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his dark hair, disrupting the careful arrangement that his barber maintained with almost religious precision. For a moment he looked less like a Don and more like the boy I'd fallen for at eighteen, the one who'd promised me the world and then spent eight years failing to deliver even a fraction of it.
"I'm sorry. I overreacted," he said, his voice dropping to something softer, more intimate, the register he reserved for moments when he wanted something from me. "But that album meant a lot to us. Why didn't you wait for me?"
Us.
I let out a humorless laugh, a sound as dry and brittle as the ashes at my feet. There was no "us" anymore. Not since he'd chosen Selena Russo, the woman of no name and no family, who had materialized from nowhere with her sickly-sweet perfume and her crocodile tears and her extraordinary talent for positioning herself exactly where she needed to be. A woman without affiliation, without a code, without loyalty to anything but her own ambition. And Nicholas, the feared Don of the Valenti Syndicate, had fallen for it like a mark in a street con.
"You've been too busy with Family matters," I said, letting the pause stretch just long enough to sharpen the next words into a blade, "or whatever it is you've been doing with her. I didn't want to bother you with something so trivial."
Something tightened in his expression, a flash of anger that made his jaw clench and his shoulders square. His body went rigid for a fraction of a second, that coiled tension I'd learned to recognize as dangerous. But I didn't flinch. Let him get angry. Let the great Don Valenti stand in his own courtyard and feel the sting of truth he'd been avoiding for months. I was past caring. That part of me, the part that had trembled at his displeasure and rearranged her entire existence to keep him satisfied, had burned up with the album.
Nicholas stepped closer, closing the distance between us until I could smell his cologne, that expensive blend of sandalwood and bergamot that his tailor in Milan sent by the case. His voice softened further, dropping into that persuasive register, the one he used in sit-downs when he wanted the other party to believe they were getting a fair deal. "I've been neglecting you. I know that. But we can fix this, can't we? Once things stabilize with the Family, we'll retake those photos. We'll fill another album. Better than the last one."
There was a time, not so long ago, when those words would have melted every defense I'd built. I would have believed him. I would have let the warmth of his voice seep into the cold places inside me and convince myself that this time would be different, that the promises would hold, that the ceremony would finally be planned, the ring would finally appear, the life he'd dangled before me for eight years would finally materialize into something real.
But not anymore. I couldn't unsee the way he looked at Selena Russo, that particular softening around his eyes that he thought no one noticed. I couldn't forget the scent of her cheap perfume clinging to his shirts when he came home late, or the way his phone lit up with her name at all hours, or the casual cruelty of watching him give her the attention and tenderness he'd been rationing from me for years.
"Sure," I said, my tone as flat and final as a coffin lid closing. "If you really want to make it up to me, throw me a proper birthday party for once."
The request seemed to catch him off guard. Something flickered behind his eyes, surprise layered over guilt layered over calculation. For years, my severe allergies to dairy and certain ingredients had meant I'd never been able to truly enjoy my own celebrations. The few birthdays I'd spent at the Valenti estate had been afterthoughts, hastily arranged affairs where the food was wrong and the guest list was populated by his associates rather than anyone who actually cared about me. And Nicholas had always been too "busy" to arrange anything special. Too many meetings with the caporegimes. Too many late nights reviewing accounts. Too many urgent calls from Selena that couldn't wait.
His eyes flickered with hesitation, a shadow passing across his face that might have been shame if he were capable of feeling it anymore. But then the mask settled back into place, and he nodded with the easy confidence of a man accustomed to granting requests. "Of course. Whatever you want."
Before he could say more, his phone buzzed in his breast pocket. The distinctive vibration pattern he'd programmed for one contact and one contact only. I didn't need to see the screen to know who it was. He glanced down, and I watched his expression tighten, that involuntary shift from husband to something else, something that belonged to Selena Russo and whatever hold she had over him.
"It's something urgent from the Family," he said, already half-turning toward the estate. "I'll be back soon. Don't wait up."
The lie was so transparent, so insultingly lazy, that it almost made me laugh. He wasn't even trying anymore. A Don who could deceive federal prosecutors and rival Families couldn't be bothered to craft a convincing excuse for the woman who'd given him eight years of her life.
"Go ahead," I said, waving him off with a gesture that felt like releasing a bird I'd been holding too tightly for too long. "I'm used to it."
He hesitated at the threshold, one hand on the iron frame of the courtyard gate. For a moment I thought he might turn back, might say something real, something that wasn't rehearsed or calculated or designed to keep me docile for another week. His shoulders tensed. His mouth opened.
Then he closed it, turned, and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the flagstones until they faded into the vast silence of the Valenti estate. And I stood alone with the dying embers of our past, watching the last spark gutter and go dark.
