Valentina seized the opening without hesitation. She leaned forward, her gaze soft and devoted as it settled on Dante, as if the entire room had disappeared and only the two of them remained.

"If Adriana weren't here," she asked gently, "would you marry me?"

As she spoke, she reached behind her and pulled out a black duffel bag. With a smooth motion, she unzipped it, revealing stacks of neatly arranged hundred-dollar bills inside.

"There's two hundred thousand dollars in here," she said lightly. "It's not a dowry. Just consider it a gift."

The room fell into stunned silence. Made men, capos' wives, associates who had witnessed blood oaths and betrayals without flinching. None of them moved. The only sound was the low hum of the estate's ventilation pushing conditioned air through a room that had suddenly gone cold.

Dante froze for a brief second, clearly surprised. But it didn't take long for him to recover. His expression softened, and something like emotion flickered in his eyes.

Under the shocked gazes of everyone present, he slowly nodded.

"I would."

The words landed heavily, echoing in the quiet room. A capo near the bar set his glass down without drinking from it. Someone's wife looked at the floor.

All eyes turned to me again, waiting for my reaction.

I stood up from the bed, smoothing out my clothes as I did. I hid the faint amusement in my expression and began clapping, the sound crisp and steady.

"Let's congratulate the couple for finally getting together," I said, my tone sincere and composed. "May you have many children."

Though I meant every word, no one believed me. To them, it must have sounded like suppressed anger, like a sarcastic outburst barely held together. In this world, where every sentence carried a second meaning, sincerity was the most suspicious thing a woman could offer.

Dante frowned deeply, clearly displeased.

"Adriana, how many times have I told you? It's just a stupid game!" he snapped. "What's with this nonsense? Are you crazy?"

"It's our wedding day," he continued, his voice rising. "What do you mean by saying that? Are you trying to call off the wedding?"

Listening to him, I found the entire situation almost laughable. The heir to the Moretti Family, the man who would sit at the head of the table one day, standing in front of a roomful of his own people and telling me that I was the problem.

"Who exactly doesn't want to get married?" I asked calmly.

He didn't hesitate. "We're not even married yet, and your possessiveness is already out of control. I hate being tied down. You'd better fix this disgusting habit today."

As he finished speaking, he turned and slammed the door behind him, the sound echoing sharply through the corridor where two of his soldiers stood pretending to hear nothing.

"You just stay in here," he added coldly from outside. "Narrow-minded and jealous as you are. We can't enjoy ourselves with you around."

Valentina's smug expression lingered as she wrapped her arm around his, leaning into him deliberately. She pressed her tongue once against her canine before the smile came.

"Don't worry," she said sweetly, her eyes still on me. "You stay here. We'll call you when the game's over."

And just like that, on my own wedding day, I was shut out of the room by my husband-to-be. Left alone, I could only imagine him laughing, drinking, and acting intimately with another woman, while the guests outside whispered and gossiped, still holding their envelopes of tribute.

The thought alone made me feel both pathetic and absurd.

Yet to everyone else, this seemed perfectly normal.

No one questioned Dante and Valentina's behavior. No one thought it crossed a line. In a family where the men made the rules and the women upheld them, my humiliation was treated as something expected, as if my role in all of this was simply to endure it quietly.

In the past, I would have lost control. I would have flipped the table, shouted, and demanded an explanation.

And it would have ended the same way every time. Dante would insist that he and Valentina were just friends, that I was the one with a dirty mind. He would accuse me of ruining everything, of not trusting him.

No matter how I argued, he would respond with cold silence. Worse, he would deliberately spend more time with Valentina, just to provoke me, to make me jealous. The underboss who could command a room full of killers into stillness would use that same terrifying patience on me, withholding a word, a glance, a touch, until I broke.

In the end, I would always be the one to give in. I would apologize, lower myself, and beg for his forgiveness like a stray dog. Only then would he interrogate me, forcing me to admit that I was overly possessive, irrational, and that I needed to trust him without question.

Year after year, under that constant manipulation, I had slowly lost myself. I had become someone who followed his words blindly, someone who doubted her own instincts at every turn. The life-debt my family owed the Morettis had become the chain he never had to mention, because I carried its weight for him.

Even now, on our wedding day, I still caught myself wondering if I was overreacting, if I was the one in the wrong. My thumb found the worn edge of the St. Christopher medal at my throat, the one he had given me years ago when I still believed protection and love were the same thing.

But deep down, beneath all that conditioning, I knew the truth.

The ones who were wrong had never been me.

The door shut with a sharp sound, completely cutting off the scene outside. What remained was only the muffled noise of laughter, cheering, and chaos drifting in from beyond, as if the world on the other side of that heavy oak had nothing to do with me anymore.

I leaned quietly against the window, my gaze falling on the lively crowd below. The courtyard of the Moretti estate was bright and festive, strung with lights that caught the crystal stemware of capos and their wives, full of joy and excitement, but it felt distant, like something I was no longer part of.

My friends gathered behind me, their anger impossible to hide. One of them clenched her fists and snapped, "This is going too far! If this wedding doesn't happen, then so be it. Who even cares anymore?"

But as soon as the words left her mouth, she glanced at my expression and swallowed the rest of what she wanted to say. The room fell into an awkward silence, no one daring to push further.

In everyone's eyes, this wedding had never been Dante's idea. They all believed it was something I had chased after, something I had begged for. The alliance bride so grateful to the Family that she'd accept any terms, any humiliation, just to stay close to him.

Not long ago, though, it was Dante who had brought up marriage first. He had said he wanted to marry me, and without hesitation, I agreed.

Back then, I had believed it so completely. I thought that after eight years of waiting, enduring, and loving him, I was finally about to step into my long-awaited happy ending.

But everything that happened today felt like a bucket of ice-cold water poured over my head, shocking me awake from a dream I didn't even realize I was still clinging to.

Elena, my best friend, who had already stood up for me earlier, was so frustrated that she could barely contain herself. Her eyes were filled with anger and disbelief.

"You've been humiliated like this, right in front of everyone, and you still want to marry him?" she demanded.

I turned my head and looked at her quietly. Then, in a calm and steady voice, I said, "Then I won't."

As the words left my lips, I raised my hands and began removing the golden hairpins from my hair one by one, along with the jewelry I had so carefully put on for this day. Each piece clinked faintly against the vanity, small sounds that carried more finality than anything I could have said.

Elena froze for a second before quickly stepping forward to stop me, her expression full of shock. "Are you out of your mind?" she blurted out.

She studied my face carefully, as if trying to find a trace of impulsiveness or breakdown. But all she saw was calm, a kind of unsettling calm that made her sigh softly in the end.

"Forget it," she murmured, her voice turning gentler. "As long as you're happy. Maybe… maybe after the wedding, he'll settle down."

Elena had known me since we were children. She had watched every step of my relationship with Dante unfold, from the very beginning until now.

Back in college, Dante was the kind of person everyone noticed immediately. The Moretti heir, handsome, confident, surrounded by admirers wherever he went. Men stepped aside when he crossed a room. Women lingered at the edges, hoping he'd look their way. And me? I was just a quiet, bespectacled girl, struggling to get by, trying to survive each day.

To make things worse, I was dealing with depression.

The day I graduated from high school, my father passed away. Not long after, my mother remarried and left me behind, giving me only two hundred dollars as if that was enough to cut all ties and send me into the world alone.

When my results came out, I received both good news and bad news at the same time. I had been accepted into a top university, something I had worked so hard for. But I had no way to afford the tuition.

Even if I applied for loans, the cost of living alone felt overwhelming. Every day was a struggle just to keep going. There was no family name behind me, no one to call, no protection of any kind.

The pressure from both life and studies drained me completely. I felt small, weak, and inferior. People around me mocked me, excluded me, and treated me like I didn't belong.

I kept my head down and stayed silent most of the time, avoiding interactions as much as possible. The only person who stayed by my side was Elena.

With my withdrawn nature and fragile mental state, I became an easy target. My dorm mates and classmates isolated me, and some of them even took pleasure in bullying me.

There were many nights when I found myself sitting alone on the rooftop of the tenement, staring down at the street far below, wondering what it would feel like to just let go.

More than once, I stood there, on the edge, thinking about jumping.

And then there was Dante.

He would sit beside me, quietly, without saying much at first. Sometimes he brought pastries from the bakery on Mulberry Street, sometimes just his presence. We would listen to music together, and he would let me pour out everything I had been holding inside.

He knew about my financial struggles, about how I worked double shifts at the restaurant just to survive. Without making a big deal out of it, he stayed by my side, walking with me through those difficult days.

When he found out I was being targeted by the neighborhood girls who resented any outsider near the Moretti orbit, he didn't care about the looks or whispers. He took my hand in front of everyone at the social club, making it clear that I wasn't alone.

I still remember that one gathering vividly.

A girl who had always liked Dante deliberately targeted me, putting me on the spot. She dared me to kiss him in front of everyone, her tone full of mockery.

I was so flustered that I didn't know what to do. The laughter and jeers around me only made my heart race faster, my insecurity swelling until it felt suffocating.

But Dante simply smiled, calm and unbothered. He waved at me gently and said, "It's okay. Go ahead. Kiss me. I like you too."

At that moment, the breeze lifted the strands of hair from his forehead. He looked so unreal, almost like someone out of reach.

Without knowing why, as if guided by something beyond me, I stepped forward and took his hand tightly.

In the countless nights that followed, I would often think back to that moment. It felt like I had reached out and grasped the hand of a god, someone who had pulled me out of darkness.

Eventually, we truly became a couple.

But even then, no one believed in us. People either envied or mocked me, whispering that someone like Dante being with me was like a beautiful flower growing out of a pile of dirt. The Moretti women looked through me. The associates' wives smiled to my face and cut me apart the moment I turned my back.

His admirers never took me seriously. To them, I was just a passing amusement, someone he would eventually discard.

Because of that, I was always anxious. I lived in constant fear that someone else would take him away, or that one day, he would simply leave me behind.

So I did everything I could for him. I poured all my effort, my time, my emotions into the relationship, like a devout believer offering everything at the feet of their faith.

In return, he gave me affection, attention, and a sense of security that I clung to desperately.

But everything began to change the moment Valentina returned from overseas.

Dante's attitude toward me gradually became colder, more dismissive. At the same time, his closeness with Valentina grew more and more excessive, crossing lines that should never have been crossed. She had old blood ties to the allied families, a father who had served the Morettis for decades. She belonged in a way I never would.

What they had was no longer something that could be explained as simple friendship.

Even so, I refused to give up. I stayed by his side willingly, convincing myself again and again that things would get better.

I was even afraid to imagine a life without him. The thought alone felt unbearable. Outside his protection, I had no name, no standing, no safety.

I kept telling myself that people weren't made of stone. That if I kept trying, kept loving him, one day he would respond, one day he would come back to me.

But now, standing here, I felt nothing but cold.

I couldn't warm him anymore, and more importantly, I no longer wanted to try.

My thumb found the edge of the St. Christopher medal at my throat. For once, I didn't rub it. I just held it there, feeling its weight, and then let my hand fall.

"Maybe," I murmured softly, going along with Elena's earlier words.

Then, without hesitation, I turned and walked out of the room.

Outside, the atmosphere was even more lively. Dante had his arm wrapped around Valentina, holding her close as the capos and their wives cheered and laughed around them. Crystal clinked. Someone was telling a story about the old days. No one looked at the doorway.

When Valentina saw me step out, she immediately lowered her head shyly, snuggling even deeper into his embrace, as if trying to provoke me in the most subtle way.

Dante's expression darkened the moment he noticed me.

"Who told you to come out?" he snapped, his tone sharp and displeased.

He scolded me without hesitation, while I stood there quietly, not reacting, not moving.