On Christmas Eve, I rode five hours by train into Dario Moretti's territory, wanting to surprise the man my family had promised me to.

What I didn't expect was that the man who was supposed to be minding his crew's business had a house full of people, loud and warm with the kind of laughter that carries wine in it.

Through the clear glass of the front window, I saw him and an unfamiliar girl at the center of the room, everyone pressed in close around them.

The girl had been dealt some truth to tell. The others were egging her on, teasing until her face went red.

Dario Moretti stepped in front of her, offhand and easy, the way a man moves when he owns the room.

"Same rules as always. I'll trade something about Bianca Falcone. That work for you?"

My hand, already reaching for the door, froze in midair.

His light, careless voice drilled straight into my ears.

"A long, long time ago, someone laid hands on her."

...

A ringing filled my head.

But inside, the mood erupted all at once.

"Whoa, now that's a piece of gossip."

"Don't they say a girl who's been through something like that turns quiet, closed off? Bianca's always painted up, showing herself off. You'd never guess it."

Someone snickered, running his mouth on a guess.

"Maybe she was loose from the start. Didn't Dario say last time even her underthings are all lace?"

"If she were sweet as Vanessa here, a thing like that never would've touched her."

Vanessa. Vanessa Ricci.

I'd heard that name before.

She was Dario's personal courier.

Whenever Dario and I spoke, he'd let it slip without a second thought.

Out of trust, I never once questioned it.

Hearing all this, Vanessa spoke up, soft and delicate.

"Don't talk like that. Maybe Bianca just cares a little more about looking pretty, that's all."

She tilted her head and let the smile hold a fraction too long.

"Vanessa, you're too innocent. Not everyone's like you. Some women get up to all kinds of things behind closed doors."

"What do you say, Dario?"

Dario took a sip of his drink and said nothing to the contrary.

I stood there and let the filth wash over me like a tide coming in off the docks.

My hand on the suitcase handle wouldn't stop trembling.

Dario had brought me into this circle of his once, these men sworn close to him.

Back then they'd gathered around me the same way, calling me "your wife" this and "your wife" that to him, one after another, respect in every word.

Now they carried the worst kind of cruelty, slandering me, spinning whatever story pleased them.

"All right. That's enough."

I saw Dario frown, as if he couldn't quite stomach it.

Even with my heart breaking, I couldn't help the thin thread of hope that rose in me.

Hope that he'd stop them. That he'd tell them, righteously, firmly, that I wasn't that kind of woman.

But the next second, a bucket of cold water came down over my head.

"She's still my girl for now. If this talk gets out, how bad does that make me look? That's the end of it tonight."

So it wasn't a defense at all. He was only afraid of losing face in front of his own men.

"She's already like that, and you still mean to make her your wife?"

Vanessa leaned against Dario, tugging at his arm with a note of displeasure.

"Then what am I supposed to do? I won't be kept in the shadows like some mistress."

"If you don't give me an answer, we're through."

"How could I ever let that happen!"

Dario's panic was plain to see.

His fingers tightened without his meaning to, and the ring on his hand caught the light as he turned it.

He had never lost his composure like that for me.

"Something this dirty, why should I be the one who takes another man's leavings?"

"If my mother and father hadn't kept pressing me to look after her, honor the pact, I'd have called off the whole alliance ages ago."

As he spoke, a coldness and disgust settled over Dario's face without his noticing it.

I couldn't believe it. My hand dropped limply to my side.

So he found me this repulsive.

Then why hadn't he told me sooner?

All these years bound between our two houses, the gentleness and patience he'd shown me before, had all of it been a performance?

"After the holiday, I'll go home and lay it all out for them."

Dario turned and kissed Vanessa, his voice gone tender.

"By then, I'll bring you before my family myself."

The room erupted in cheers, every glass lifted in the warm gold light.

"Then let's raise a toast to Dario and his bride, ahead of the wedding!"

Inside, the gathering blazed with noise and heat, the sound of a family already celebrating a union that had nothing to do with me.

I felt like I'd been dropped into a block of ice.

I don't know how long I stood there in the cold outside the glass. When I came back to myself, everything in front of me had blurred.

My fingers were stiff with cold. I typed it out, one letter at a time.

【Let's call off the alliance.】

Inside, a message tone chimed.

Dario picked up his phone, glanced at it, and sent back a voice message.

"Ma, Pa, I've got business to close out here that can't wait. I really can't make it home today."

"Yeah, yeah, once I've got my return date settled I'll send word."

He set the phone down and did nothing else.

It took a moment for it to sink in.

Not only was I not pinned to the top of his messages, he'd buried me under Do Not Disturb.

A thousand miles of contested ground between us, and he'd often let a whole day pass before answering me.

I'd always told myself he was just buried in the work of building his own crew.

I never imagined the truth was simpler than that. He just couldn't be bothered to deal with me.

Tears dropped onto the screen, one after another.

I couldn't let it go. I dialed his number.

This time Dario looked at the phone.

He only silenced it, then tossed it back onto the table like something that meant nothing.

He pretended he hadn't seen a thing, pulling out a deck of cards and dealing them around the table.

"Who was that?"

"Bianca. Calls me every single day. Drives me out of my mind." He laughed a half-beat too early at his own words, his thumb turning the ring on his finger.

Someone asked, puzzled:

"Then why not just cut her off?"

Dario's hands never stopped moving over the cards, his tone careless.

"Cut her off and she'll bury my phone in messages. I'll leave her hanging, then tell her later I was too tied up with business to notice."

"Ha, that's our Dario. Got the Falcone girl wrapped around his finger, blood pact and all."

I couldn't listen to another word.

I stumbled away from the window, the laughter of the Moretti house fading behind me.

The New Year was almost here, and the streets of the old neighborhood were alive with celebration.

Twos and threes, clusters of families everywhere, warm windows on every block.

I dragged my suitcase along with no destination, like something that didn't belong to any house at all.

A young couple passed me, carrying big bags of groceries.

One long scarf wound around them both, binding them close together.

The girl looked a little worried.

"It's just the two of us tonight. Can we really pull off a proper dinner?"

The boy patted her head.

"If not, we'll send out for something. As long as we're together, it doesn't matter what we eat."

Before I drove all those hours to get here, the picture in my head had looked exactly like that.

I truly couldn't understand it.

Why Dario would treat me this way.

Not so long ago, the two of us had been so good together. So good.

I'm twenty-eight this year, and we've known each other for twenty-eight years, two bloodlines meant to be joined since before either of us could walk.

At four, our first day at school, he grabbed my hand.

"Bianca, when we play house, I only want you to be my wife."

At twelve, too young to understand love, he'd rush to my side the second the bell rang.

An age when nothing mattered more than saving face in front of the other boys, and yet he let their teasing roll right off him.

At fifteen, deep in puberty, his face broke out, his grades at the bottom of the class, his father the old boss ashamed of him, and he sank into doubt and self-loathing.

"Bianca, what do I do? Do I even have a future in this life?"

I held his hand and, pretending it was nothing, told him the thing I'd buried at the bottom of my heart.

"Back then, I really wanted to die."

"But once I got through it, I realized it wasn't the end of the world. You have to keep fighting too."

The shock and heartbreak in Dario's eyes, and the way he pulled me in and sobbed his heart out once it hit him. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

On my eighteenth birthday, the moment the clock passed midnight, he made his promise to me.

"Bianca, I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

Later, we both went up to the Capital.

He took the South Side, I took the North Side.

A four-hour trip each way through territory that wasn't always safe, and week after week he made it, never once complaining, just to lay eyes on me.

Right up until we came of age in the life, we were still good. He stayed in the Capital to build his own crew; I went back home to the Falcone house.

This year, our two families had already sat down to talk of sealing the alliance, the wedding that would bind Moretti blood to Falcone.

I'd stepped back from my own duties before the Christmas gathering on purpose, just waiting for the new year so I could come to the Capital and earn my place, so the two of us would never have to be apart again.

Now all of it had come to nothing.

Dario had another girl he wanted to bring before his parents.

He'd even started to despise me.

The words I'd once torn open my own scars to share, to comfort him, he was now trading around as a joke, entertainment for the men in his crew.

The sky darkened, and the crowds in the street slowly thinned.

I found some random hotel near the docks.

I'd just gotten settled when my phone lit up.

It was a message from Mamma.

【Bianca, sweetie, have you two eaten yet? We've laid out such a feast over here!】

A photo of the Christmas Eve table followed right after.

The family were all gathered around it, laughing without a care, the old ones at the head, wine poured deep.

A draft slipped through the hotel window into my sleeve, and the cold made me shiver.

I pressed down the ache rising in my throat and made my voice sound easy.

"The food's all ready, we'll be eating any minute. Don't you worry."

I didn't dare tell the truth. I couldn't have Mamma and my father fretting over me during the holy days. A Falcone daughter did not bleed where the family could see it.

I found some random photo of a holiday table online and sent it to them.

Then, without thinking, I glanced at Dario's message thread.

Empty and silent, the way it always was.

In the middle of the night, firecrackers cracked outside the window, sharp enough to sound like something else.

The noise was so festive I couldn't sleep.

Like I was punishing myself, I tapped into Dario's feed, trying to hunt for any trace of when he'd first broken the pact between us.

He'd hidden it well, kept her covered so tight not a drop leaked through. Omertà, even in his sins.

I scrolled back and forth, over and over.

At last, in one screenshot passed around from his crew's private thread, I caught Vanessa's handle.

A very distinctive name.

Something clicked, and I searched that name across every platform.

Among all the accounts sharing that name, I spotted her at a glance.

The profile picture was painfully familiar. It was Dario's half of a couple's icon.

Back when Dario changed his picture, I'd happily gone and found the matching half to put up as mine.

He hadn't looked pleased at the time.

He'd said he just grabbed some random image and didn't want to be flaunting the alliance in front of family and the men who watched everything.

In the end he'd half forced me to change mine back.

Vanessa's account had only a scattered handful of followers.

Hundreds of posts, carrying the whole history of her and Dario.

It had started showing back in May last year.

【My capo is so pitiful, stuck holed up running his end of things for a whole month, eating takeout every single day. Today at lunch I brought him some brodo I made myself, and he actually cried drinking it. No idea what kind of woman he's even promised to.】

At that time, Salvatore Moretti had broken his leg.

So Dario could keep his focus on the crew without worrying, none of us told him.

I took a month away from my own duties, running around caring for his father, getting the old man home from the doctor's.

Later, my own people struck my name off the list for the end of the operation I'd been rising to run.

【My capo pushed back so many jobs and took me along on runs, all so I could travel on the family's dime. Being someone's favorite really is the best feeling.】

That day was our tenth anniversary. It was also my birthday.

I'd worked through the night to close out my end of things and scraped together three days, hoping to spend them with him.

He told me he had business he genuinely couldn't step away from, a matter for the family.

【My capo gave me a bag! But this pendant that came with it as a set is way too ugly. I'll just leave this one for him.】

I froze and looked at the pendant at my own throat.

My hand rose to it without my telling it to, closed around it. There it was, the exact match. It was the birthday gift Dario had given me later, to make up for things.

I'd treasured it for so long, even sealed it under a film to keep it whole.

It took me two hours to get through everything on Vanessa's account.

My heart went cold all the way through.

Not one of the photos in the posts had caught Dario's face straight on.