Five years passed in a blink.

We never became husband and wife in any real sense, but we got along, in our way.

When he needed to be alone, I retreated to another room without a word. When he glared at me, I told him it was alright, that I'd always be there.

Slowly, Dario began to tolerate me.

He'd let me carry milk into his room and drink it in front of me. When he played with his guns in the garden, he let me sit nearby. When I was sick, he'd say — stiffly, looking at the wall — that I should go rest.

But he was still so far away.

So there was one more thing I wanted to do.

The Vellari Famiglia held a family dinner that night. The timing was right — every member of the family at the table, the mood easy, Dario calm. No outburst all evening.

I gripped the box. My palms were already damp.

I had been working on this gift for a long time. It was something Dario had wanted. He would love it. I was sure.

"Dario," I said, my eyes bright with nerves and excitement, "I have something for you."

A few people at the table looked curious. Others traded glances I couldn't read.

Dario glanced at me, his eyes skimming the surface of the box, and reached out.

Then his whole body went still.

In front of more than twenty people, he picked up the pocket watch from inside the box, walked to the fireplace, threw it in — and turned back toward me.

"Who do you think — you are. The real Donna. Of our — Vellari Famiglia?"

Each word came out through clenched teeth.

"A stand-in. That's all. Don't do — things that aren't yours to do. It's disgusting."

His hand shot out. Fingers closed around my throat.

"Get out." His voice rasped. "Gift. Trash. Beneath me — like you. I don't want it. Not — ever."

The pressure built. I didn't fight him. I just looked at him, holding the tears back.

A second later, arms came in from behind us, prying him off me by force.

Dario was held back, but his eyes never left mine. He was looking at me like I was the person he hated most in the world.

I curved my mouth into something like a smile. "Understood, Don."

It was the first time I had ever called him that.

Maybe that was what we had always been to each other.

The five years felt like a dream now.

He shot me one last look, kicked a chair hard enough to topple it, and walked out, his face like stone.

I bent down, set the chair upright, turned, and made myself smile.

"My husband has a temper." My voice was a little hoarse, but level. "I'm sorry he frightened everyone. Please — go on with dinner."

No one picked up a fork.

Someone broke the silence with a sneer. "What a useless Donna. Five years and she still can't hold her own husband's heart."

Then Dario walked back in with a woman beside him.

She wore a pale yellow dress. Her hair was longer now, swept loose at the nape, exposing a stretch of luminous white throat. She was beautiful. Refined.

Every eye in the room went to her.

She gave a bright smile. "Everyone — I'm Bianca Salvatore. I'm here on behalf of the Salvatore Famiglia. Forgive me for arriving so late."

Bianca turned to Dario. Her gaze lingered on him.

"I kept you waiting. I've finished my degree."

"I came back for you."

The light in Dario's eyes lit up at her words.

Bianca was smiling like the brightest star in the sky.

"What's yours is yours. I'd come back, no matter how long it took."

The hall went quiet for a moment.

Everyone there understood. The betrothal had been hers and his. I had only been a stand-in, set on the table when she didn't want her seat.

A Vellari capo even sighed aloud: "Now this — this is what the Donna of our Famiglia should look like."

Dario stood frozen for a few seconds.

Then his face softened. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if uncertain how to make the shape, but in the end he managed it. The smile wasn't pretty. It was awkward — like a man who hadn't smiled in so long he was trying to remember which muscles to use.

But he smiled.

He had never smiled at me like that. Not once.

I stood there holding a cup of tea, unaware that the heat had scalded my fingertips.

Dario seated Bianca beside him himself — in the place that should have been mine.

She talked to him in a low, easy tone, saying things about psychology, throwing around terms — "hypervigilance," "intrusive memories," "the neural mechanisms of avoidance behavior."

"Do you understand — what she's saying?" Dario said suddenly, turning to look at me.

I shook my head.

She had a master's in psychology. The words were too technical. I didn't understand.

He gave a small smile — a more natural one than the one he'd offered the room.

"She gets me," he said.

Those three words landed on me heavier than every cruel thing he'd said in five years.

I made it through the rest of the dinner. I made it back to my room before I let myself collapse.

Dario said I didn't understand him.

That wasn't true.

I had tried. Desperately. But no one in the house would speak about him.

It took five years of watching me pour myself into him before old Marco, the butler, was finally moved enough to say a few words.

"The young Don wasn't always like this. As a boy, he laughed. He greeted every servant warmly."

"Then his little brother died — not the lady's son, but the young Don loved him dearly."

I'd heard the rumors. People said Mrs. Vellari had killed the bastard child to protect her son's claim.

"After that, there was a soldato of his, name of Luca. Took a bullet meant for him. The young Don has never let anyone close since."

"He shattered the pocket watch Luca left him. Spent three months trying to find every piece. Never managed to put it back together."

Something twisted hard in my chest.

I went to enormous trouble to track down Luca's mother in Sicily and beg a photograph of the watch.

I made three trips to Florence to find the best clockmaker. The Latin engraving on the back, every letter — exact.

I had thought Dario would be glad.

I wiped my eyes, wrapped my arms around my knees, and tried to talk myself down.

Sophie. He didn't mean to lash out at you. He cherishes those memories too much. You shouldn't have touched what he holds most sacred. He's a sick man. Anyone in his place would have reacted the same way. He just didn't see what you meant by it.

I repeated it like a prayer, over and over.

But when I thought of his face as his fingers closed around my throat — the tears wouldn't stop.

The next morning, I came downstairs and there she was. Bianca.

She hadn't gone home.

She saw me and smiled. "Sophie, since I'm basically your older sister, I thought I'd stay a few days — and help with Dario's recovery while I'm here. You don't mind, do you?"

Before I could answer, Dario cut in fast. "Stay. Anytime. Don't — worry about her." He added: "This isn't her house. The one who was supposed to marry me — wasn't her. She can't do anything right."

It was like a slap.

Bianca used to say the same things to me when we were small.

"This isn't your house. Get out."

But the convent hadn't been my house either.

What did a home even look like? I couldn't remember.

Maybe it was time I went and found my own.

Dario put Bianca in the best guest room in the main house — the one next to his bedroom. South-facing, with a view of the entire garden. My room was tucked into the easternmost corner. From my window I looked out at a patch of empty ground.

I sat in front of the dressing table, staring at the ring on my left hand.

After all these years, the band had left a faint white mark at the base of my finger, like a small scar.

I slid the ring off and pushed it to the back of the dresser drawer, where I kept the things I no longer used.

I curved my mouth into a small, tired smile.

It was never my place to begin with.

Maybe it really was time to go.

How many five-year stretches does a person get?

After Bianca moved in, she carried a cup of coffee into Dario's study every day, smiling.

That study had always been forbidden to me.

Once, I lingered at the door for a few seconds too long. Dario came charging out and knocked the hot tea straight out of my hand.

He watched me cry out from the burn and only said: "Don't stand here. Don't look in."

He even said the place was "filthy now," and made the staff scrub the spot where I'd been standing — over and over.

After that, I took the long way around rather than pass that door.

But there she was, standing right in the middle of his study, holding something I knew well.

A photograph.

The photograph of Dario and Luca.

Five years ago, not long after the wedding, I'd helped tidy Dario's bedroom. Things were piled everywhere. I gathered the loose photographs and slid them into frames. That photo was one of them.

When Dario walked in and saw the frame, he stared at me. His voice came out shaking with rage. "Don't touch his things. I'll kill you. I really — will kill you."

I never touched anything of his again. Not when I brought his medicine. Not when I straightened the room. I learned how to move around him without leaving a trace.

And now Bianca was holding that photograph in her hand like it was nothing. She tilted her head, studied it, said something — and Dario actually nodded. The corner of his mouth lifted.

I stood at the door with the medicine tray and felt nailed to the floor.

The pills were Dario's. Three p.m., every afternoon — two white tablets and one capsule. I'd set an alarm for it five years ago. I had never missed a single day.

Dario looked up. He saw me.

He frowned.

"Come in."

My heart skipped. He was finally letting me inside?

I walked in carefully, slowly, the tray balanced in my hands.

I stopped in front of him and held out the medicine.

He didn't take it.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a key, and — in front of me — slipped it around Bianca's neck.

"From now on, she comes and goes from this room as she pleases."

Bianca looked down at the key, then up at me. She gave me a small, satisfied smile.

"Why?" I heard myself ask. "Why her? Why not me? I'm your wife."

Dario's face went cold.

"She's not — like you. She understands the field. She understands Luca. She understands me. You don't understand any of it. You'd only — dirty the place."

A flicker of something — almost panic — crossed his eyes as he glanced at Bianca.

"I haven't — I never — thought of her as my wife."

Just like that, we were back at zero.

How absurd.

All because I'd put time and love into a gift for him.

I set the cup of medicine on the edge of his desk and walked out.

As I turned, I heard Bianca's voice behind me.

"What would a stray from a convent know? It's enough that I do."

"The young Don of the Vellari Famiglia deserves the best Donna at his side."

Dario gave a low, scornful sound.

"She's exhausting. She'll never — leave. Not in this lifetime."

My step caught for half a second, but I didn't stop.

I went to find the old Don of the Vellari Famiglia. Dario's grandfather.