His lips curved into a smile, and without a second thought, he turned and disappeared into his study. The door closed with the soft, definitive click of a man entering the only room in the house where he actually wanted to be.

Once he was out of sight, I opened up my private account and scrolled through his feed. Sure enough, there was a new post, visible to everyone but me. He had blocked me from seeing it. The Don of one of the most powerful syndicates on the Eastern Seaboard, and he was hiding social media posts from the woman who shared his bed like a teenager with a secret.

It was an apology letter.

I shouldn't have let the cutest aide in the world down. Promised her dinner after the sit-down, but business got in the way, and I made her wait a whole ten minutes. Totally my fault. I'll do better from now on, be a good boss.

I liked the post. Let him see that. Let him wonder how I found it and what I thought and whether he should come out of his study and say something. Let the wondering sit in his chest the way seven years of silence had sat in mine.

In the same breath, I received a notification from Salvatore: the arrangement, laid out in terms that any family lawyer would recognize. My skills, my knowledge, my loyalty, transferred to the Mancini operation in exchange for protection, compensation, and a life that didn't require me to bleed on a sidewalk while the man I loved drove past.

I clicked the link and signed without hesitation.

My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger. The bare skin where a ring had never been. Seven years, and he had never once offered. I pulled my hand away and set the phone down.

The next morning, Dominic woke up early and brought back bagels and pastries from a well-known bakery in Midtown. The kind of place where made men took their families on Sunday mornings, where the owner knew which orders went to which houses and never asked questions.

Just as I was about to open the bag with chocolate croissants, he slapped my hand away.

"You like peanut butter bagels, right? I got one just for you."

I froze for a second before realizing. The chocolate croissants weren't for me. They were for his aide. For Penelope Vitale.

I couldn't hold back anymore. "We've been together for seven years, and you still don't know I'm allergic to peanuts?"

His expression darkened, and he stood abruptly, snapping, "Stop making a fuss. Eat or don't. I don't care."

The Don's voice. The one that ended conversations in sit-downs, that made capos twice his age look at the floor. He used it on me the way he used it on everyone. As if I were just another person in the room who needed to stop talking.

As he prepared to leave, I walked into the bedroom and came back with a bag.

"When you see Penelope later, do me a favor and return this to her."

His brows knitted together before taking the bag. When he looked inside and saw the lace bra, a look of surprise flashed in his eyes. He opened his mouth like he was about to explain something, but when he saw my calm, indifferent face, he only said, "I'll tell her to stop being so careless."

"Yeah," I replied with a quiet tone.

The lighter was in his hand now. I hadn't seen him pick it up, but there it was, rolling between his thumb and forefinger in that slow, absent rhythm. Penny's lighter. The dead sister's keepsake, turning and turning while he stood in our kitchen holding another woman's underwear and deciding how little he needed to say.

Sensing my low mood, Dominic offered, "I can give you a ride to work today."

Seven years together, and not once had he driven me to work, no matter how bad the weather was. He always kept Family business and personal life separate. Those were his words. His rule. The line he drew so cleanly that I spent years believing it was principle instead of what it actually was: a way to keep me at a distance he could manage.

But Penelope? On her first day as his personal aide, she was already getting chauffeured by the Don of the Sloane family. The black armored sedan. The soldier holding the door. The whole performance of protection that I had never once been offered.

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger again. The bare skin. The absence.

"No need," I said. "I'll manage."

As I sat there turning over the difference between how Dominic treated his aide and the woman who had shared his bed for seven years, my fork slipped from my fingers and clattered against the tile floor. My hands were trembling when I bent to retrieve it.

By the time I straightened up, Dominic was already standing at the entrance of the kitchen, jacket on, keys in hand. He didn't look back.

"Something came up at the club. I'll give you a ride next time," he said, and the front door closed behind him before the sentence had fully settled in the room.

The two soldiers stationed outside the townhouse didn't acknowledge me when I left thirty minutes later. They never did. I was the Don's woman in name, which meant I existed in a category no one knew how to handle: not family, not civilian, not quite anything that had a protocol.

I limped into the back office of the Sloane import-export front on Mulberry Street. My desk sat in the narrow room behind the legitimate operation, where the real books lived. For some reason, every associate I passed that morning looked at me with something between pity and discomfort, the way men look at someone who's already dead but hasn't been told yet.

Later, while filling my mug in the small kitchen off the hallway, I overheard two of the women from the front office whispering to each other through the half-open door.

"So it's true? The Don really passed over Olivia for that girl? The Vitale girl?"

"You should have seen it this morning. Penelope came in with some little stain on her dress, and he picked her up. Right there in the back room, in front of everyone at the sit-down. Carried her like she was made of glass."

My hand slipped. The mug hit the edge of the counter and shattered on the floor, and the whispering stopped like someone had cut a wire.

I crouched down and gathered the pieces one by one, placing each shard carefully into the trash can without saying a word. Neither woman came around the corner. Neither woman said my name.

I ended up working late. The books for the Mancini transition needed to be clean before I left, and I owed the operation that much, even if I owed Dominic nothing. It was past ten o'clock when I felt a weight settle across my shoulders.

"Olivia." Dominic's voice was low, close to my ear. He draped his coat over me. "Why didn't you respond to my messages?"

I didn't turn around. Instead, I reached for my phone and checked the screen. One message from him: What flavor of milkshake do you usually like?

Three years ago, during the first real heat of summer, I had asked him for a milkshake. Just that. Something cold and sweet on a day that felt endless. He'd looked at me the way he looked at associates who brought him problems instead of solutions. Pure disdain.

"Milkshake? You want me to order a milkshake for you? Olivia, you're almost 30. Don't make me sick with this childish crap."

Those exact words. I'd memorized them the way you memorize the location of a bruise so you stop pressing on it by accident.

But now, behind me, there he was. Bringing me a milkshake.

I kept my eyes fixed on the computer screen and ignored the sweating cup he'd set beside my keyboard. The sweetness of it reached me anyway, faint and artificial.

I could feel his expression shifting. The silence had a texture to it, the particular quality of Dominic Sloane realizing something wasn't going the way he expected.

"You used to beg me for this," he said. Confused. As if I were the one who had changed the rules.

"It's past ten. If I drink it now, I won't be able to sleep," I said, and my voice came out flat. Emptied of everything I used to pour into it when I spoke to him.

A pause. The kind of pause that, in the old days, would have sent me scrambling to soften whatever I'd said, to smooth the crease forming between his brows.

Then, cold: "I'm going to the bathroom. We'll go home together after."

He set his phone on the edge of my desk as he left. Barely thirty seconds passed before the screen lit up.

I didn't reach for it. I didn't have to. The message was right there, bright against the dark surface of my desk.

Penelope Vitale: You silly! Who sends dozens of milkshakes all at once? You're not trying to turn me into a little piggy, are you?

Dozens.

He'd sent her dozens.

And he'd brought me one. One milkshake, three years too late, flavor unknown because he'd had to ask.

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger, held it there until the pressure became a point of focus, and then I shifted my eyes back to the computer screen. My expression didn't change. I organized the files on my desk with steady hands and waited for him to come back so we could leave.

We got home a little after eleven. The soldiers at the townhouse door stepped aside without a word. As soon as I was inside, I walked straight into the bedroom and started packing my things. Quietly. Methodically. The way you dismantle a life when you've already grieved it.

When Dominic walked in from the shower, towel around his neck, he paused near the vanity. His eyes moved across the surface. Emptier than usual. The small things missing. He frowned but didn't seem to mind it, or didn't want to examine what it meant.

"I've got business in Paris next month. Meeting with the Corsican outfit." He said it casually, the way he said everything that wasn't about Penelope. "If you want anything, make a list. I'll bring it back."

I didn't hesitate. "No. I don't want anything. Thanks anyway."

After all, I would be gone in a few days. What was the point of a gift from a city I'd never see with him?

Something shifted. He threw the towel onto the bed with a sharp flick of his wrist, and when I looked up, his eyes were cold. The Don's eyes. The ones that made soldiers lower their gaze and associates reconsider their words.

"So, what? You're upset because I bought you the wrong breakfast? Is that what this is about?"

I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn't angry. That anger would have required me to still believe this was something worth fighting for. But he let out a scoff before the first word left my lips.

"You know I can't stand women being dramatic. Olivia, you're being out of line." The disgust in his voice was real. The dismay, too. He genuinely believed I was the unreasonable one. Seven years, and he had never once considered that my silence might be something other than compliance.

He stormed into his study. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame, and the sound echoed through the empty hallway of a house that had never once felt like a home.

In our seven years together, he was always the first to give the silent treatment. Always. And every single time, I had humbled myself. Knocked on that study door. Apologized for sins I hadn't committed. Made it up to him with patience and softness and the quiet erosion of my own dignity, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left to erode.

But this time, I just raised an eyebrow in the dark and turned off the bedside lamp.

He stayed in the study all night.

For the first time, he didn't hear a single knock on the door.

The next morning, I made breakfast for both of us, the way I always had. Eggs the way he liked them. Coffee strong enough to strip paint, the way every man in this world seemed to need it. I finished eating my portion and was reaching for my coat when he came out of the study.

He was on his phone. He didn't look up. His silver lighter sat motionless in his free hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, not rolling. Just still.

"Take the day off," he said, in the voice he used to issue orders to his Capos. "By five o'clock, I need you to make me an identical fondant cake."