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.

This was the man who had sent for me from the convent. The man who'd made sure I got hot food every day.

I should have been grateful to him.

But five years was enough.

And Bianca was back now.

"Don," I said, "I want a divorce. Bianca's home now."

He was pouring himself a whiskey. His hand stilled when I spoke. A few drops splashed onto the desk.

"Dario isn't well. You know how difficult he is. Do you really think a girl like Bianca can take care of him?"

"And where would you go, leaving the Vellari Famiglia?"

"The Salvatores won't take you in. You're not their daughter." His tone was flat. "Back to the convent? You think they'd have you? They'd just sell you again. To someone older than Dario. Madder. Uglier."

I opened my mouth to speak.

He waved a hand at me, the way you wave at a fly.

"You have no use outside of taking care of Dario." His eyes held nothing extra in them. "Even if he never loves you in this life — don't think you're walking out that door. This is your fate. And besides — even if you wanted out, you'd never survive the Famiglia tribunal." He paused. "In families like ours, divorce isn't one person's decision."

I stood at the edge of his enormous desk for a long time.

The old Don said nothing more. He turned to the papers on his desk and pretended I wasn't there.

I walked out of his study.

Outside, the sun was harsh. The stone steps were hot to the touch. The air was thick and heavy.

Like the five years that had trapped me here.

I would leave.

I made the promise to myself.

—

Dario spent every day with Bianca now. Days had passed. No one mentioned when she would go. The household had quietly begun to treat her like the lady of the house.

And yet — out of habit, maybe — Dario still wouldn't let me out of his sight.

Once, I just went to the garden to clip rosemary for soup. Dario couldn't find me in the house. He came outside with a gun in his hand.

There was a flat cruelty under his cold expression.

"Next time I — can't see you, I'll just shoot."

But too close was wrong, too.

Once, I lost my balance and fell against him. He immediately said I smelled. That the sight of me disgusted him.

Then there was the day his gun went off by accident. I hadn't moved away in time.

A scalding pain shot through my upper right arm. Blood ran down my elbow.

I froze. I didn't scream. I didn't move.

Dario shot up from the couch, hurried to me, his face urgent. "How did you — get hit? Who told you to stand there?"

His hands shook so badly opening the first-aid kit that he couldn't get the latches the first few tries. Once it was open, he wrapped the gauze around my arm too tightly and too fast. I sucked in a sharp breath at the pain.

He must have noticed. His hands gentled.

"How are you — this useless?" His voice was shaking too. "You can't do anything right. You make a mess of my life. I hate you."

"Dario," I said softly. "If I left — would you be a little happier?"

He froze.

A long silence.

Then: "Of course I would. Too bad you can't leave. You're going to be a parasite on the Vellari Famiglia for the rest of your life."

The family physician arrived and cleaned the wound.

Dario looked visibly relieved. But what came out of his mouth was: "Good thing it didn't ruin my dinner with Bianca. That place won't even hold a reservation for me."

It really was time for us to be over.

I watched him walk away. I went numbly back to my room and lay on the bed, scrolling through my phone. Then I saw it: a Catholic boarding school in Naples was hiring.

I opened my email and started a new résumé. In the box for the name, I didn't write Sophie. I wrote the name I had almost forgotten.

Lia.

It was the name I had before the convent.

By the time the résumé was done, the sky outside was completely dark. I checked it once. Then I sent it.

Application review took seven days.

I closed my eyes.

Seven days.

Almost.

A new life. Coming.

I couldn't sleep that night. I lay in bed and watched the ceiling until morning.

Dario had wrapped my arm clumsily. The gauze was wound too tight. My fingertips had gone numb.

I didn't unwrap it.

It was one of the few things he had ever given me.

While I waited for the offer letter, I decided to go out for a few days. With Bianca there, Dario wouldn't notice I was gone.

I pulled out an old cloth bundle and packed the things that were mine.

There were only four.

The handkerchief the convent's mother superior had given me. At fifteen, I'd pressed it to Dario's bleeding palm. I'd washed it many times since, but never thrown it away.

The white dress I'd worn the first time I met Dario. I couldn't fit into it anymore.

The melted, blackened fragments of the pocket watch I had quietly retrieved from the fireplace.

And one old photograph from when I was seven, just brought to the Salvatore house — empty-eyed.

Dario was right. This wasn't my house. The things that belonged to me had always been few.

As I left my room, I ran into him.

He glanced at the bundle in my hands and frowned. "Trash. Throwing it out?"

I shook my head. "No."

His eyes went over me, lingered on the plain, old coat I was wearing.

"Ugly."

I didn't want to take a single thing from the Vellari or Salvatore houses with me. So I was wearing the clothes I'd bought myself, with the money I'd earned at fifteen.

He said: "I have money. You can — buy nice things."

After he'd shot me, his manner had gotten markedly softer.

It was almost like before Bianca came back. Like nothing had happened.

But I wasn't going to look back anymore.

I didn't answer. I kept walking.

"Take Bianca — with you," he said.

A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

So in his mind, I was still less than her.

She had been cruel to me my whole life. Why would I go to her?

I kept walking.

He started getting frustrated.

"You'll embarrass me — again."

My step finally stopped.

I turned, gave him a thin, mocking smile. "I won't."

I'm never coming back.

"You'd better not," Dario said.

Then he turned and walked away.

When I walked out of the Vellari estate, I took a long breath.

The nuns used to tell me — when I was small — that life would get better. That I'd save up enough one day to go and see the sea.

But growing up only meant moving from one cage into another. Dario couldn't be left alone. Even with money, I couldn't go far. The way I lit up planning a trip — that was exactly how flat I went when it had to be canceled.

At the airport, I was still moving in a daze. The third time the woman at the counter asked, "Miss, where are you flying to?" — I finally said:

"Amalfi."

It was the last place I'd been before the convent.

When I was still Lia, and still mine.

—

My first day in Amalfi, I rented a small motorbike and rode the coast road slowly.

The wind in my face was wonderful.

I sat on the cliffs at Positano for a whole day.

I thought about nothing. I did nothing. No alarm, no list of reminders, no medications, no Dario looking at me with disgust.

I wandered. In a lemon grove in Ravello, a kind-faced old woman pressed a freshly picked lemon into my hand.

"Bambina, perché sei sola?" (Child, why are you alone?)

I went still for a moment.

It had been a long time since anyone had called me child.

Or rather — a long time since anyone had loved me well.

On the third evening, I was sitting on a cliffside terrace, eating tiramisu, finally calm enough to switch on my phone.

Dozens of missed calls flooded in.

I didn't read any of them. I sent a message to the old Don of the Vellari Famiglia.

"Don, the seat I held for Bianca — it's hers now. I'm not coming back."

I tossed the phone aside, stretched my arms behind my head, and let myself sink back.

The owner asked me, in the local dialect, "Signora, you on holiday?"

I shook my head.

In the same dialect she'd used, I answered, "No. I'm free."

When the wind blew across my face, I realized it was wet.

I didn't know when the tears had started.

I hadn't cried clawing my way through the Salvatore house. I hadn't cried when Dario shoved me, when he locked me out of rooms.

But it turns out — when you're free — you do cry.

The next day, the old Don of the Vellari Famiglia arrived at my door in person.