Four Parting Gifts, Don Falcone

I was the Falcone family's top consigliere. Their brain. And today, I was walking away—handing over the books to every legitimate business I ran, severing my final tie.

My protégé couldn't understand. "You're the future of this family, Aurelia. You can't just leave."

I shook my head with a bitter smile.

They didn't know. I'd been secretly married to the Don, Vittorio Falcone, for three years.

I thought my looks, my mind, and everything I gave him would be enough to win all of his love.

A hit at the docks three months ago showed me the truth.

I took a bullet. Emergency. I needed the family surgeon—which required Vittorio's direct order.

I called him over a dozen times.

But when he finally answered, all I heard was a soft, breathless voice on his end.

"Vittorio, we haven't cut my birthday cake. Will you hold my hand and cut it with me?"

That voice. My best friend. The woman Vittorio once had a crush on. Carina.

In the safe house, weak from blood loss, I dug the bullet out myself and had one of my men rush me to a family clinic.

Right before they wheeled me into the OR, Vittorio burst in—carrying Carina. Twisted ankle. Needed a doctor. Now.

My surgeon was dragged away.

The antibiotics came too late. The wound got infected. I fought for my life for a week.

When I woke up, I stared at my phone. Not a single message. The tears finally came.

I understood. I was just the woman he'd been forced to marry after he was drugged and slept with me. A scandal averted.

All he cared about was my value and his reputation.

And me? The secret princess of the Rossi family, who gave up everything to build his empire. All for nothing.

So I prepared four parting gifts. A celebration of our mutual destruction.

Then he'd never see me again.

When I found out my secret husband, Don Vittorio, was sleeping with my best friend, Carina, I decided to leave him.

I pushed open the door to his study, divorce papers clutched in my hand. Vittorio was there, gently polishing a Padparadscha sapphire.

The tenderness in his eyes was a look he’d never once given me.

It was hard to breathe.

Vittorio was never the romantic type. Two years ago, at an auction, he’d mocked some tech billionaire for bidding on a diamond necklace for his wife.

"Stones like this are assets," he'd scoffed. "A currency. But a gift for a woman? Pointless."

Now, he was treating that stone like the most precious thing in the world.

What really choked me was a memory. Carina’s latest Instagram post: Whoever gives me a Padparadscha sapphire, I’ll marry him without a second thought.

It was a punch to the gut.

Three years. He’d never bought me so much as a cheap trinket. I’d even bought our wedding rings myself. In secret.

Seeing me, Vittorio stood up, placing the gem gently on a velvet cloth.

"About three months ago..." Vittorio finally turned to me, his tone infuriatingly casual. "I didn't know how bad it was. Carina... she's fragile. She was crying. I panicked."

My fingers started to tremble.

"Besides, you always handle yourself," he added with a shrug. "You're tough. A girl from the slums is used to a little blood."

The slums.

The bitterness was a taste in my mouth.

What if he knew I was a princess of the Rossi family, the oldest outfit in Chicago? What if he knew the status, the safety, the honor I gave up for him? Would he still talk to me like this?

But he would never know.

He never cared about my past, my feelings, or anything about me. He believed what I told him because I wasn't worth the effort to learn more.

"Hey, check out this design." Vittorio pushed a sketch in front of me, his voice full of pride. "I’ve been working with a jeweler. This is his masterpiece."

I looked down. The world went silent.

To my sweetest Carina.

Her name was written in elegant script at the top. Every letter mocked my foolishness.

So this is what love looked like.

Careful. Full of anticipation. He even had to approve the design himself.

And me?

In three years, he couldn't even remember my birthday.

A splitting pain shot through my head. The aftershocks from the gunshot.

I stumbled back, lost my balance, and slammed hard against the corner of the desk. The barely-healed wound on my side ripped open. A sharp, searing pain made my face go white.

"Dammit!" Vittorio took a step toward me, a flash of real panic in his eyes.

But his gaze was immediately drawn to the design sketch sliding off the desk. He spun around and snatched it from the air just before it hit the floor.

He checked it frantically, then let out a long breath. "Thank God, it's fine..."

Only after placing the sketch safely back on the desk did he turn to me, his brow furrowed. His voice was impatient, covering his brief moment of panic. "Why can't you be more careful? You knocked over my coffee."

I just stood there, watching him, feeling my heart die piece by piece.

Blood was seeping from my wound, staining the rug. But he was worried about a piece of paper.

This was the man I gave up everything for.

"Sign it." I pulled a stack of papers from my folder and put them in front of him. On top were urgent shipping approvals for the docks.

Vittorio frowned, as if he finally sensed something was wrong. "That gunshot was pretty bad. You can take a break. You don't have to focus so much on family business."

His words sounded like concern, but they were cold. Like a routine question to a wounded soldier.

He bent down to look at the papers, but his phone rang.

Cara Mia.

The name on the screen twisted the knife in my heart.

I knew my contact name in his phone. "Consigliere." Cold. Professional. Nothing personal.

"Vittorio?" Carina's soft voice purred through the phone, a playful tremor in it. "When are you coming over? I want you to see me try on the necklace..."

"Soon, baby. I'm on my way." Vittorio's voice was so gentle it was like honey.

He listened, absently flipping through the stack of documents. He saw my familiar handwriting, the usual formatting. Without a second thought, he scrawled his signature at the bottom of each page.

Including the divorce papers I'd slipped in the middle.

"I won't be home for dinner tonight," he said, finishing the last signature and heading for the door.

He paused at the doorway, looking back at me, still standing there. He sounded annoyed. "Is there anything else?"

"No," I heard myself say, my voice hollow, like an echo. "From now on... there will be nothing else."

Vittorio frowned, clearly thinking I was being strange. "Fine. While you're in here, organize my files. The classified ledgers. You're the only one I trust with them."

The door clicked shut.

I stood alone in the empty room, listening to the sound of my own heart breaking.

That was the only time I felt "special." When I was handling his secrets.

What a pathetic kind of special.

I walked to his safe and entered the combination. My fingers trembled, but I forced myself to be steady.

Inside, there was supposed to be a photo of us, taken in secret after we got married. A drunken night when I’d found the courage to ask him to keep it here. I thought it would secure a place in his heart. I thought one day, he would love me.

But the photo was gone.

In its place was a solo picture of Carina. She was in a white dress, smiling like an angel. Like the eternal light of his life.

I found our photo shoved in a dark corner, the edges bent and yellowed.

Three years of marriage, tossed in a corner.

I tore the photo in two, then into pieces.

The scraps fluttered down, like the shattered pieces of my heart.

Back in my bedroom, I dialed an encrypted number.

"I never thought the little princess of the Rossi family would call me herself." On the other end, Don Orion's voice was low and dangerous, but I could hear the concern underneath. "What happened?"

I looked at myself in the mirror. Bloodstains bloomed like dark flowers on my white shirt. My face was as pale as a ghost.

"You once told me you wanted to marry me, Orion. My divorce is final in thirty days. The offer is yours."