A Second Chance Without My Cruel Husband

I was sitting in the dark when my phone buzzed with a live broadcast from five years ago. On the screen, my younger self was about to accept a marriage proposal from Dante Russo.

Right next to that broadcast, a new message popped up from my husband. It was a video of him sleeping with his latest mistress, and this time, the woman moaning on our bed was my closest confidante.

For four years, Dante had systematically stripped my world away. He framed me, destroyed my independent design studio, and used my father's life-saving dialysis medication to chain me to his side as a prisoner.

When my father discovered the truth about my suffering, he made an unbearable sacrifice to set me free.

Even then, Dante just sneered and rejected my divorce, warning me not to throw a childish tantrum because he was confident I had nowhere else to go.

I looked at my radiant past self on the screen, completely ignorant of the nightmare that awaited her. I couldn't understand how the boy who once swore to protect me with his life had become the monster who dragged me to hell.

I didn't cry, and I didn't throw my phone. Instead, I accepted the video call from my past self and showed her the horrific future.

"Leave him now, while there is still time."

This time, I would make sure we severed the chain and never walked into his trap.

Chapter 1

Siena POV

A dull, insistent buzzing began in my palm, the metal edge of the telephone digging into the bone of my finger. On its screen, two images now occupy the same space: the first, a new video from my husband and his latest mistress; the second, a live broadcast from five years in the past, where a younger version of myself is about to accept a marriage proposal from that very same man.

The device's cold, blue light cuts a sharp rectangle across the gloom of my bedchamber, illuminating nothing but dust motes dancing in the still air.

There is no accounting for the phantom broadcast, this tear in the fabric of time that has somehow manifested on my telephone.

I only know that the girl on the screen, squinting into the Sicilian sun, is a ghost of myself from a past I no longer recognize.

The heat of the island has brought a high colour to her cheeks.

She holds up her left hand to the camera, angling it so the light catches the stone, her mouth parted in a smile of profound, unblemished certainty.

A blood-oath ring, heavy as a manacle, sits upon her fourth finger-the sigil of the Russo Famiglia.

Her words come in a rush, telling the viewers that Dante Russo has just made her his.

She describes how he had taken her aside on the balcony, his gaze fixed upon her with an intensity that left no room for air, a stare that devoured all else in its path.

She repeats the vow he made as if it were scripture: a promise to shield her from the very syndicate that gave him his power.

She speaks his name as if he were a guardian, a bulwark against the tide.

I sit in the dark, the muscles at the corners of my mouth pulling into a tight, bloodless line that bears no resemblance to a smile.

Dante Russo is no guardian.

He is the man who can, with a single signature, halt the delivery of my father's dialysis medication. He is the architect of my isolation, the man who spent four years systematically stripping my world away until it consisted of nothing but these four walls.

The telephone gives a sudden, jarring shudder in my hand, the motion causing the live stream to stutter and vanish.

In its place, a new message from Dante occupies the screen.

My thumb moves with a mechanical steadiness to open the message.

The recording is a cacophony of wet, percussive sounds-of flesh striking flesh-punctuated by the thin, breathless cries of a woman I do not know.

Dante's face is obscured as he presses it to the woman's, his hands clamped to her waist, pinning her to a bed framed by a gaudy, gilded headboard.

For a single, calculated second, he turns his head, his gaze finding the lens. His eyes are flat, devoid of heat, a clear and deliberate acknowledgment that this performance is for me.

It is a weekly ritual, this calculated campaign of humiliation. Each video is a fresh chisel, meant to chip away at the bedrock of my composure until nothing remains.

I do not shed a single tear.

I do not throw the phone across the room.

Instead, I close the video. The capacity for feeling such betrayals has long since been cauterized. My thumb finds the icon to restore the live broadcast.

The girl on the screen is still smiling, ignorant of the four years of sleepless nights, of the sound of a key in the lock that will soon make her stomach clench with acid.

The chat box is a blur of text, a river of congratulations from syndicate men and civilian acquaintances alike, all wishing the future bride a lifetime of felicity.

They speak of us as if we were figures from a storybook, the childhood sweethearts destined for a throne.

I look at my past self, and when I lift my hand to the keyboard, the muscles in my thumb spasm, striking the wrong key twice before I can steady it.

A cold weight settles in my chest as I compose two lines in the public chat.

The first line reads: "You and Dante Russo-loving him to the end is nothing but a death sentence."

The second line reads: "Leave him now, while there is still time."

I press the send key and hold the air in my lungs, watching the warning materialize on her screen amidst the torrent of good wishes.