This was the sixth time Dante Falcone had slammed that damned divorce agreement down in front of me, forcing me to sign.

This time, I did not resist.

He set down the pen. In that instant, a suffocating silence filled the room. His deep brown eyes locked onto me, sharp and probing, as if he were trying to see straight through my soul.

"Why so obedient this time, Sofia? Or are you planning another trick? Don't forget who you are. Mrs. Falcone."

I removed the ruby ring that symbolized the mistress of the family, the one he had placed on my finger when he proposed to me in Sicily. I set it gently on the desk, a surface stained with both blood and money. My voice was calm, lifeless.

"No, Dante. I'm just... tired. Your world is too loud."

A long silence followed.

Dante Falcone closed the folder and leaned back, his body sinking into the expensive Italian leather chair behind his desk. He picked up a pair of scissors, clipped open a Cuban cigar, and lit it with unhurried precision. Smoke curled through the air, obscuring his expression, leaving it unreadable.

"It’s not actually that urgent," he said at last. "Even though you’ve signed, the lawyers are still dealing with the trust fund split. It’s complicated. Until the judge signs the Final Judgment of Dissolution, legally speaking, you’re still my wife."

He exhaled a slow stream of smoke.

"The main issue is Olivia. She’s about to run for chair of the Falcone Charity Foundation. That foundation is key to cleaning up our image in New York City.

"You keep showing up at Massachusetts General Hospital, causing scenes. You disrupt her fundraising galas. It embarrasses the family. A few of the old men on the board are very unhappy about it."

I did not respond. I simply held the pen and signed the agreement, stroke by stroke, with the name "Sofia Rossi".

My real name.

When I finished, I looked up and met the gaze of the Don who ruled Boston’s underworld.

"Don’t worry," I said. "I won’t do it again."

Dante’s fingers paused slightly around the cigar. Smoke blurred his handsome yet ruthless face. After a moment, he straightened, his tone carrying a faint trace of irritation layered with threat.

"Good. It’d better stay that way."

"Otherwise..." He smiled thinly. "You know what happens to people who go against the family, Sofia. In this house, no one can hear you scream."

My body shuddered before I could stop it.

The last time he forced a divorce on me, I completely fell apart.

I released the evidence of Olivia Ricci stealing my laboratory data on Twitter and Reddit. The screenshots clearly showed that her research on a new opioid drug, published in The Lancet, had copied the core data directly from my notes from two years earlier.

And the result?

Dante mobilized the family’s legal team and sued me in Boston Federal Court for theft of trade secrets and federal defamation.

Afterward, Olivia’s fanatical supporters—or rather, the online shills hired by the family—doxxed my home address and launched a targeted harassment campaign meant to destroy me.

After the judge ruled in her favor, Dante stood exactly the same way he was now.

In his tailored Tom Ford suit, he looked down at me as I broke apart, sobbing. He raised his brow, the corner of his mouth curled into the cruel smile of a victor.

"My dear," he asked softly, "are you satisfied with the outcome? Now you understand. Some families are not meant to be crossed."

Strangely enough, the suffocating pain I felt back then—the despair so deep I wanted to die—felt distant now.

Looking back, there was no emotion left. Only irony.

Dragging my Louis Vuitton suitcase out through the doors of the Beacon Hill mansion, I stood in the freezing wind, staring down at the one-way plane ticket in my hand.

It was only then that it hit me. I was finally escaping this marriage that dragged me into hell.

And I was getting out alive.

Inside the VIP lounge at Logan International Airport, a massive LCD screen was playing a CNN special report.

On the screen, Olivia stood in an immaculate white lab coat, giving an interview. Behind her was the logo of Falcone Pharmaceutical Group.

"Dr. Ricci, you’re only twenty-eight, yet you’ve already published more than a dozen papers in top-tier medical journals. You’ve even been called the ‘Joan of Arc of the pharmaceutical world’. What’s your secret to success?" The host looked at her with open admiration.

Facing the camera, Olivia offered a modest smile, one clearly crafted by an expert PR team.

"There’s no secret," she said gently. "I’m just more persistent than most people. Medical research requires sacrifice. I often stay in the lab until four in the morning.

"But when I think about how these new drugs can ease patients’ suffering, everything feels worth it. This is the mission God gave me."

The host’s eyes reddened with emotion. "You’re truly America’s pride."

On the screen, Olivia’s saintly expression made me want to throw up.

Slowly, it overlapped with the memory of the woman who used to bare her fangs at me, who strutted around arrogantly, backed by the family’s power.

Dante had been right about one thing.

Olivia had become the family’s new golden child.

The so-called "evidence of academic fraud" I had exposed not only failed to destroy her. Instead, the family’s PR department repackaged it as "smear attacks by jealous rivals".

She was transformed into a warrior "bravely standing up to online harassment," a "true angel in white."

The Boston Globe and The New York Times ran feature after feature praising her perseverance in the face of malicious attacks, celebrating her devotion to science.

On the other hand, I was rewritten into the narrative as a gold-digging socialite consumed by jealousy, a mentally unstable madwoman.

The first time I discovered Dante’s affair had started with Olivia’s own provocation.

Three years ago, I came home from my lab at Harvard Medical School and found a black lace La Perla lingerie set tossed casually onto the Italian-import sofa in our living room. It wasn’t my size.

I confronted Dante on the spot.

He loosened his tie impatiently. "Olivia left it behind. She came over today to discuss a new drug formula. That was legitimate business. We worked late. Sofia, don’t act like some unsophisticated housewife. Olivia’s contributions to Falcone Pharmaceutical are contributions to the family. You know that."

I didn’t believe him.

So I started tracking his movements.

Then I discovered that they were frequently seen entering and leaving members-only elite clubs late at night. They even checked in and out of the presidential suite at the Four Seasons together.

Back then, I turned the entire Falcone family upside down.

During that time, all the socialite wives who did business with the family—the women living inside their own gilded cages—came to persuade me.

"Sofia, men are men. Especially men with Dante’s status. A little fun on the side is normal."

"As long as he comes home every night, as long as you’re still the legitimate Donna, you need to learn to look the other way."

"Dr. Ricci is one of us. Dante’s dealings with her are for the family’s business."

"Making a scene like this only makes you look like you don’t understand the rules."

Nonetheless, I hated him. I hated that Dante had betrayed the vows he swore before God.

Until the day TMZ and Page Six splashed photos of the two of them stumbling out of the Ritz-Carlton late at night, their clothes disheveled.

To protect Olivia’s reputation and to stabilize Falcone Pharmaceutical’s stock price on NASDAQ, Dante publicly admitted their relationship in a Forbes interview.

To the outside world, he claimed that he and I had been separated for two years and that our marriage had long existed in name only. He said Olivia was the soulmate he met during his "emotional hiatus".

It was a complete lie.

At the time, Twitter’s trending topics were flooded with praise for the fairy-tale love story between a pharmaceutical tycoon and a genius doctor. Netizens celebrated them as a power couple.

I lost my mind.

I stormed into Falcone Pharmaceutical’s headquarters and charged straight into the boardroom filled with the family’s senior leadership.

Dante was presiding over the board meeting. I burst in and hurled the coffee cup in my hand straight at him, in front of everyone.

Blood ran down from his temple. Even the mob elders—men who normally wouldn’t blink at killing—froze in shock.

Security rushed in to drag me away.

In the end, Dante finally tore off his gentleman’s mask. He shouted coldly, "Yes! I slept with her! And yes, I like her! If you can’t take it, then get out! The divorce papers are ready whenever you want to sign them, Sofia!"

The boardroom fell into a deathly silence.

I stared at this stranger and screamed back hysterically, "Why should I divorce you?! Why should I make it easy for you and that hypocritical bitch?!

"Dante, I want you and her to carry the stigma of adultery for the rest of your lives! You will never be forgiven in the eyes of God!"

After that, we were completely severed.

Dante almost never returned to the house that was once called home.

The only window I had into his life was Olivia’s Instagram.

She often posted photos of hospital rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital, her captions filled with words like "mercy" and "healing" which were meaningless platitudes. In the background, Dante was always there. Sometimes it was his silhouette, sometimes just his hand, sometimes the Patek Philippe watch I had given him.

The comments underneath were always the same.

"This is truly God’s perfect arrangement!"

"Dante and Olivia are the epitome of true love!"

"Bless you both!"

Every time I saw them, it felt like a knife twisting in my heart. Under the weight of blow after blow, I decided to go down in flames with them.

I uploaded our marriage certificate and the evidence of Dante’s affair to the internet. Along with it, I attached irrefutable proof that Olivia had stolen my notes on cancer gene therapy, including timestamps, experimental data, and even the original spelling errors; all of it was identical.

That wasn’t all.

I also discovered that Olivia had hacked into my private cloud server and downloaded a massive amount of raw data.

I was ready to rip the veil off completely, but I had underestimated the Falcones.

Dante struck harder than I ever imagined.

He bribed Dr. Matthew Caldwell, my mother’s attending physician and cardiac specialist the family had paid heavily to recruit from a top East Coast medical institution. Dr. Caldwell suddenly claimed he needed to return to the coast and halted my mother’s treatment.

My mother, Elena Rossi, suffered from severe heart failure. Without Dr. Caldwell's proprietary treatment, she could die at any moment.

Dante called me. His voice was as cold as January in Boston.

"Sofia, post a clarification video immediately. Say the marriage certificate was photoshopped. Say the academic fraud was something you fabricated. Otherwise, your mother’s oxygen supply at the hospital might be ‘accidentally’ cut off."

The moment I heard that, my phone slipped from my hand.

I collapsed to my knees and screamed into the line, "Dante, that’s a human life! She once paid for your education! How can you be this ruthless?!"

Dante did not waver.

I could even hear the sound of whiskey being poured on his end.

"Sofia, don’t expect mercy for enemies. Since you chose to stand against the family, you bear the consequences. Go clarify. Don’t destroy Olivia. She’s the family’s future cash cow."

In that moment, I finally understood that the man I loved was already dead.

Or perhaps, he had never existed at all.