[Isabella's POV]

There was a long bout of breathing on the other end of the line. Then, Alexander Marino's low voice sounded.

"The Marino family is moving out in half a month. I'll come and pick you up then."

I was stunned momentarily, but I quickly recovered and chuckled out loud. I hadn't even told him a thing, and yet, he was already so sure that I wanted to leave. Still, he was right.

"Okay."

I knew that with Alexander's abilities, Vincenzo wouldn't be able to find me again—even if he went to the ends of the earth—by the time I was gone in half a month.

…

That day, my phone kept buzzing with text messages from Vincenzo, but I never responded to any of them.

Vincenzo started to panic. I didn't know where he got the news from, but he suddenly barged into the house in the middle of the night one day and saw me watching TV in the living room.

"Isabella? Why did you come back earlier than before?"

Vincenzo rushed up to me, exclaiming, "I sent you so many text messages too!"

He then pulled me into his arms, rubbing his chin affectionately against the top of my head. "I'm so glad that nothing terrible happened to you. I was so scared… Isabella, I could never live without you."

The loving look in his eyes didn't look fake. I knew that he was sincerely in love with me. However, I knew for a fact that I wasn't the sole receiver of his love.

I struggled away from his embrace and said in a calm voice, "The deal got postponed, and I turned my phone off. I didn't see your texts."

Vincenzo smiled and gently touched the tip of my nose. "It's okay if you didn't see my text messages. It's not like I'd ever blame you for it."

He then shook the car keys in his hand and asked, "Are you hungry? I made a reservation at the restaurant you've been dying to go to for ages. Let's go, Princess. You can order anything you want tonight."

He then reached out toward me with his palm facing up.

I looked at his outstretched hand and suddenly fell into a daze.

I was 18 years old back then, and Vincenzo had also reached his hand out to me like this with a smile even wider than the one he was wearing now. "Let's go, Princess. You can order anything you want tonight. My treat!"

The Vincenzo back then had only loved me and me alone.

Still, I didn't want to stay hungry, so I went with him to the restaurant.

He was his same old self. He was a mafia don and never had to serve anyone else—and yet, he would roll up his sleeves like it was the most natural thing to do and serve me. He'd cut my steak, pour my wine, and also let me have the first bite of his food.

My plate was filled to the brim with food when his phone suddenly rang, and I snapped back to the present.

"Answer it," I said, looking down at the food on my plate.

Vincenzo glanced quickly at his phone, apologized, and got up to take the call outside the restaurant. When he came back afterward, he looked anxious and apologetic.

"Isabella, I suddenly have an important meeting to attend, and I need to hurry over. I'm sorry that I won't be able to finish dinner with you. I'll take the day off tomorrow and accompany you the whole day instead."

I'd already caught sight of the caller ID on his phone screen earlier. It had been a call from Claudia.

I nodded and said, "Okay. Go."

After getting my permission, Vincenzo didn't waste another second and turned immediately, leaving the restaurant. I stared at the empty space opposite me and felt as though there was a needle stabbing into my chest. The pain was numbing.

I had only just managed to pull myself together and pick up my fork again when I suddenly got a video call request from Claudia.

She smiled innocently at the camera and said, "Say, Bella, you must still be having dinner! That's what I thought. I wondered why a certain someone smelled like steak after coming home today."

She made sure to emphasize the word "home" in the call, and I could tell that she was challenging me on that.

My expression turned icy. "You're too childish, Claudia. Have you forgotten who's the one legally married to him now? And who do you think Vincenzo will ask to stay if I forward to him all the messages you've sent me?"

Claudia's eyes glinted momentarily. A split second later, she smiled again and said, "But that wouldn't be any fun now, would it, Bella? By the way, don't you want to know whether Vincenzo loves me or you more?"

I thought about the question for a while and didn't end the call.

A while later, the video background changed, and Vincenzo appeared on the screen.

Claudia immediately turned around and lay on his lap, making sure that he couldn't see the screen on her phone.

"Vincenzo, are you still mad at me for running away with someone else back then? If I hadn't left you, you wouldn't have found Bella, right? You would've married me, right?"

Vincenzo frowned. "What's with all these 'what ifs'?"

"I was just asking for fun," Claudia said, her eyes turning red. She then asked in a softer voice, "I didn't mean anything bad…"

A few seconds of silence later, I saw Vincenzo open his mouth, his voice dry and hoarse. "Yes."

A single "yes" from him was more than enough to hollow out my chest.

So, I hadn't been the only one in his heart from the very start.

I suddenly recalled the day of our wedding.

Vincenzo had held my hand while facing the rest of our wedding guests. Then, he swore on his title as Don that he would only love me for the rest of my life.

I had cried so hard back then, thinking that I'd finally found true love.

But as it turned out, the vows he said at our wedding had been a lie too. I had never been his only love. Not before, not now, and not ever.

I had just been a convenient distraction while he and Claudia were at odds with each other. He was probably just reluctant to let me go because we'd been together for a while, and he'd finally started harboring some feelings for me. That was all.

At that thought, an ugly grin graced my lips. I began to laugh, but I also felt tears falling down my face uncontrollably.

I thought that I had at least possessed some of Vincenzo's love and affection for a short period of time, but I never had. Instead, I was a thief who took what had never been mine.

I lowered my head and tugged at the clothes around my chest, trying to catch my breath. However, I couldn't stop the lump in my throat from getting worse. Eventually, I just let my tears flow and drip onto the table.

That night, Vincenzo never came home.

Yet, I received a photo of him sleeping soundly in bed. Claudia sent it to me.

I stared at his face on the screen for a very long time. Finally, sometime around dawn, my heart went numb, and I finally managed to calm down.

I called my friend, Sophia Tanner, who was a divorce attorney.

"Sophia, I need your help to draft out a divorce agreement."

[Isabella's POV]

The house was still empty when I woke up.

There was a text message from Vincenzo. "Babe, I'm a little too busy today and can't take the day off. But don't be mad. I'll come home and accompany you tomorrow no matter how busy it gets. I also got you a present. Just wait for me to come home, alright?"

Right under his text message notification was another one from Claudia. She had sent a photo an hour ago. It was a selfie of them both at the hot springs, looking like they were having the time of their life. The smiles on their faces were exceptionally eye-piercing.

I gripped my phone harder, almost unable to stop myself from calling him right then and there and asking him if he was busy closing a business deal or having fun with his "adoptive sister".

However, when I thought about my plan, I suppressed the anger and replied to him with an "Okay."

It was fine that he wasn't coming back today. I could start packing up without worrying about him.

I packed up all the clothes Vincenzo had ever given me and put them into a box, ready to donate them to a shelter.

I removed our portraits from the wall and fed them into the paper shredder. I had once written him a hundred well-wishes too, and I took them all out and burned them in a fire on the balcony.

The next day, Vincenzo finally came home.

As soon as he caught sight of me, he immediately set down the cake in his hands and threw his arms wide open as he hurried toward me. "I'm so tired, Isabella! Can I recharge with a hug?"

I took a step back, neatly avoiding his hug.

Vincenzo cocked an eyebrow. "Are you still mad at me? Don't be mad. Come, I prepared a surprise for you."

He then pulled me into the car without waiting for me to respond. He drove us all the way to the race car track. Just as I was trying to figure out why, he yanked me out of the car.

"Like it?" he asked, pointing at the car before us.

It was a fully customized Ferrari, covered from top to bottom in sparkling pink diamonds. It was so dazzling that my eyes hurt after a while.

A group of people was standing right next to the car, looking at it with envy in their eyes.

"I heard that this car's customization cost nearly 100 million dollars! That's quite a lot to spend on a car!"

"What do you even know about how expensive it is? Don't you know that Mr. Cursley hand-glued every single pink diamond onto the car body by himself? He nearly went cross-eyed from it!"

"Mrs. Cursley! Come on and try out the car for yourself! And then, can we have a go at it afterward? Don Cursley really loves you and spoils you so much!"

The corners of my lips tugged upward in a self-deprecating chuckle.

Everyone knew Vincenzo as someone who loved spoiling his wife to the moon and back, but nobody knew who he was really treating as his "wife". It was true that he wore his heart on his sleeve, but that love had never been solely just for me.

Finally, there was a way for me to release all the pent-up emotions I'd been suppressing for the past few days. I got into the driver's seat and floored the gas pedal at once. The pink Ferrari immediately shot forward like a launched missile.

I went lap after lap on the race track, speeding like a maniac. I channeled all of my anger, sadness, and frustration into the pedal.

Vincenzo stood at the observation podium and watched me race with a smile on his face. His eyes never left me for a bit.

On my 40th lap, I saw him gesturing a finger heart toward me. I was so shocked that I suddenly lost control of the steering wheel, and the Ferrari crashed straight into the guardrail.

Pain shot through my toes at once. I hadn't even snapped out of it when Vincenzo ran up to the car, yanked the door open, and picked me up before rushing me to the observation room.

"Does it hurt?" Vincenzo asked, carefully holding up my injured foot and dabbing at the cut with some iodine. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have let you race for such a long time."

He treated my leg carefully as if I were made of glass. The pitying look in his eyes looked genuine too. However, I only felt shivers all over my body, and I felt the urge to throw up.

I never thought that he could make it seem as though he really loved me for real.

Seeing that I was a little out of it, Vincenzo grabbed me by the hand and leaned down to kiss me.

Just then, the door was suddenly thrown wide open.

Vincenzo didn't even look up. He grabbed a bottle from the table and immediately threw it at the door.

"Get out!"

I turned to look and saw Claudia standing at the door.

It was only then that Vincenzo realized it was her. His expression changed. "Claudia? What are you doing here?"

She held a hand to the red mark on her forehead and bit her lip, looking like a pitiful creature. There was also some mud on her clothes, and she looked rather disheveled as well.

"I came to grab a car seat for the baby, but I felt tired and thought of having a quick rest… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you!"

She then turned and ran off with a sob.

Vincenzo went quiet for a few seconds. Then, he quickly pecked me on the cheek and said, "I'll go and take a look at her injury and be back in a few minutes. We'll just be at the door. Call me if you need anything."

He then grabbed the first-aid kit and ran out the door, not even bothering to leave me with a band-aid.

A few minutes later, I slowly opened the door. It was empty. They certainly weren't "at the door" as he had claimed.

I suddenly felt a flash of disappointment. However, I quickly suppressed the feeling as soon as I realized it. I should have expected it anyway.

I held on to the wall, slowly limping out to the track where the pink Ferrari still was. I really liked it a lot. And since it looked like it was about to rain, I thought that I should bring it into the garage to avoid it getting wet.

However, just as I reached the car, I suddenly stopped in my tracks.

I could hear faint voices coming from the car where the windows hadn't been tightly shut.

I then caught sight of two overlapping figures from the window of the car. Vincenzo was frowning as he carefully treated Claudia's wound.

The car then shook a little, and I saw that Claudia had climbed onto his lap.

Vincenzo stopped her wandering hands and said patiently, "Don't even think about it, Claudia. You just gave birth a while ago. Also, this car belongs to Isabella—"

"It's fine. I've already fully recovered. It's been two months since then… Don't you want to know how I feel down there now?"

A short while later, Vincenzo's breathing became shallow and erratic. Their hums and moans kept drifting out from the car. I stood frozen to the ground, my blood curdling on the spot.

The keys in my hand fell to the ground with a clang.

I immediately snapped out of it and wanted to make a run for it. However, I quickly realized that nobody inside the car had even heard a thing.

I laughed. I laughed so hard that I began to cry.

The car continued shaking. I bent down to pick up the keys and threw them into the drain.

When Vincenzo finally pushed open the door to the observation room again, I was still sitting in my seat in the exact same position where he had left me.

He sighed in relief and straightened his collar before coming up to me. "Let's go, Isabella. We're going home."

I caught sight of the fresh bite mark on the side of his neck. Surprisingly, I didn't feel anything in my chest this time.

I refused to let him carry me on his back and limped all the way to the car. When I pulled the door to the front passenger seat open, though, I saw that Claudia was in the driver's seat.

Vincenzo hurriedly explained, "Claudia wants to go back with us. She just got her driver's license, so she could use some practice. You're a lot better at driving than she is, so you can help navigate the road. Alright?"

Before I could protest, Vincenzo had already pushed me into the front passenger seat.

If I had known then that Claudia's license was fake, I would never have gotten into the car in the first place.

[Isabella's POV]

The car suddenly shot forward in a zigzag pattern, swerving left and right. My heart immediately leaped into my throat.

I reached out to grab control of the steering wheel, but Claudia immediately shoved me aside.

"Let go if you don't want us to die!" I yelled at her.

Claudia didn't let go. On the contrary, she pressed down harder on the gas pedal until it hit the floor.

The massive crash sounded at the exact same time I heard Vincenzo's scream.

"Isabella!"

I endured the excruciating pain in my legs and tried my best to call out to him, "Vincenzo… I-I'm here…"

There was a loud scuffling sound, and everything sounded like noise. However, nobody came to save me even after a long while. I tried my best to open my eyes. My vision was blurry from the blood in my eyes, but I could still see that my car was empty, save for myself.

The person who had screamed my name earlier hadn't come to save me.

As my consciousness gradually faded away, I found myself falling into a dream.

I dreamed about the time when Vincenzo flew all the way to Caraville while he was still pursuing me.

Back then, my motorsports club refused to release me from the team, and he got so anxious that he made a bet with my manager, demanding that I be allowed to go home with him if he won the race.

I sat in the front passenger seat as his navigator, but we still ran into an accident. He lost control of the speed while making a sharp turn, and the car broke through the guardrail and rolled all the way down the hill.

In the catastrophe, Vincenzo threw his arms around me and kept me safe in his hold as we were thrown around in the car, not caring that he was covered in bloody scrapes and cuts. The car ultimately rolled to a stop at the edge of the cliff, nearly falling off.

Then, he used whatever strength he had left and threw me out of the car.

However, he slid halfway out of the wrecked car with the other half of his body dangling off the cliff. He had nearly fallen to his death.

When the rescue team finally hauled him back up, he lay in my arms weakly, mumbling in his half-conscious state that he was bringing me home no matter what.

"Isabella… They're only trying to squeeze out every penny they can from you… I just want you to be safe… I will always… protect you… Come back with me, please…"

I was just about to agree to him when the scene suddenly began to warp out of shape.

I woke up with a start and opened my eyes, realizing that I was now at the hospital.

The person next to my bed immediately grasped my hand. "Isabella! You're awake!"

The nurse, who was in the midst of changing my bandages, smiled as well. "You're finally awake. Mr. Cursley here has been keeping you company all day and night, and he nearly cried his eyes out. We all think that you're so lucky to be his little sister."

I was confused. "Little sister?"

"Yeah. Aren't you Mr. Cursley's younger sister?" the nurse asked as she put the old bandages away. "Mrs. Cursley even came to visit you this afternoon, and she cried so hard the entire time. She also told us to inform her immediately as soon as you woke up."

The glass in Vincenzo's hand suddenly shattered with a loud clink. He then shot the nurse a glare.

The nurse got a huge shock and immediately shut up. Then, she left.

I also jumped at the sudden sharp sound. The fragmented memories from just before I passed out fell into place.

Vincenzo had carried Claudia out of the car and walked away, leaving me behind as I cried for his help. He had abandoned me just like that.

I looked up at Vincenzo. He couldn't hide the panic in his eyes.

The corners of my lips lifted slightly. Then, I said in a hoarse voice, "Care to explain?"

Vincenzo went still for a second. Then, he grabbed my hands in a fluster. "It's not like that, Isabella. It's just a misunderstanding. Claudia was in very bad shape then. That's why I—"

"Okay. I believe you," I said, interrupting him. However, my voice was completely void of emotion.

The rest of his words died in his throat.

Vincenzo thought that I would cry and scream or make a huge fuss, demanding to know why he chose to save Claudia before saving me and why he allowed other people to think that I was his sister while Claudia was his wife.

However, I did none of that. I was as calm as a corpse.

He opened his mouth to say something. I could see that his eyes were filled with guilt.

Instead, I closed my eyes. "I'm tired."

He held my hand for a long time. Finally, he said, "Isabella, it's all my fault. I shouldn't have let her drive. I've already told her off for that. If you're still angry, then you can yell at me or hit me all you like. Don't keep it bottled up inside."

I withdrew my hand from his and said emotionlessly once more, "I'm really tired."

Vincenzo panicked. The elusive feeling of loss felt like a black hole that was sucking him in. Yet before he could apologize to me again, the attending doctor came in and politely asked him to leave. And so he did, though very reluctantly.

After he finally left, my eyes turned red. But this time, I had no more tears left to cry. Maybe my feelings for him had died from the moment I realized he'd been lying to me.

I wiped the corner of my eyes and decided to go back to sleep. I was going to leave him after I woke up.

Just as I had closed my eyes, however, there was a commotion from the ward next to mine.

"Why are you still crying?" a woman shouted. "The lady beside is a racecar driver who broke both her legs and can't even drive anymore, and yet, she didn't even cry a single tear! All you did was twist an ankle! So why are you even crying?"