When I walked out of the office, I heard a commotion outside.

I walked over instinctively and saw Lorenzo in the middle of a fight with another middle-aged man while Fiore stood to the side, her eyes red and bloodshot and looking extremely pitiful.

I caught wind of the whispers and gossip from the colleagues around me.

"This is one of our old clients we've been working with for decades! All he did was just tease Fiore a little, and the Don ended up beating him to a pulp like this!"

"The Don also immediately brought video surveillance proof to save Fiore regarding the database issue just now. He really is so fond of her! Do you think they're going to be getting together soon?"

"Oh, my heart! This is so romantic! I'm shipping them both together!"

I stood away from the crowd, watching as Lorenzo kicked the middle-aged man to the ground, completely passed out.

Fiore then tugged on his arm and said tearfully, "But Don Caputo, he's our biggest business partner for the dock project!"

Lorenzo turned around and looked at her with such tender eyes I'd never seen before. It made him look like a complete stranger to me.

"He never should have touched on you. You're my bottom line. So what if the Famiglia loses a supply chain? Anything is worth it as long as it's for you."

My heart felt like it was being squeezed in my chest. It hurt so much that I couldn't even breathe anymore.

I recalled the last time I'd accidentally dripped a single drop of water onto a contract.

It hadn't caused any losses or issues in the end, and I'd even taken care of it as quickly as possible. However, Lorenzo lost his shit over that and yelled and berated me in front of the entire office for a whole hour.

I always thought that he was someone who always prioritized the Famiglia's profits over anything else, but as it turned out, it wasn't like that. He just never thought I meant anything to him after all.

I turned around to leave without looking back.

Lorenzo turned around to stare at me just then, as if by clockwork, but all he caught was my back silhouette leaving determinedly.

He didn't know why, but right at that moment, he felt a sudden ache in his chest as his heart thumped wildly for a second.

…

Over the next few days, I proceeded to hand over my job and duties and packed up, watching the entire company celebrate Fiore's promotion as if I were nothing but an outsider.

Vincenzo would always come home every night. He probably realized that something had changed about me and thus began putting in a little more effort to woo me.

He would ask me where I wanted to go on a trip and what I wanted to do. He even brought up the one time I casually mentioned I wanted to try pottery and try out some of the food trucks that had opened up in the alleys.

I had wanted to try pottery for a long time, but because Lorenzo found it dirty and disgusting, he refused to keep me company.

I had also wanted to try the food trucks for a long time, but Lorenzo said that the food was unsanitary and refused to even touch them.

But now, Vincenzo was telling me that he was willing to come with me.

I knew that these were just instructions from Lorenzo. After all, the official announcement for Fiore's promotion hadn't been made yet, so they were probably worried that I'd find out something fishy about it and cause a ruckus that would eventually harm Fiore.

That was the main reason why he told Vincenzo to keep my emotions in check to "stabilize" me.

Yet, for some reason, I still went along with it and followed Vincenzo out.

We spent the rest of the night taking pottery classes. He held my hands in his as we shaped the vases with the clay on the wheel.

We had some spicy food from the food trucks afterward. It was so spicy that I couldn't stop crying. He fumbled around trying to hand me some water and wipe the food stains from my mouth.

We even managed to catch a slow, artistic film in the cinema, with Vincenzo holding my hand throughout the movie without falling asleep impatiently like he used to last time.

Around dawn, while walking past a 24-hour convenience store, my gaze had simply lingered on the hot cocoa option for a short while, but Vincenzo noticed and immediately went in to queue up and buy it for me.

I stood at the side of the street, watching his tall, lean figure mingling in the crowd, looking just like a regular boyfriend.

I felt a dull ache in my chest.

It would have been great if only all of these were real.

It would have been great if I had never heard their conversation in the office the other day.

Just then, someone slung their greasy arm over my butt and breathed alcohol all over me.

"Hello, precious. Wanna come drinking with me?"

I screamed and tried to run away from him, but the drunk pervert grabbed me by my wrist and refused to let go.

He was so strong that I simply couldn't shake him off, no matter what I did.

The passers-by all turned to look at us in shock, but nobody stepped up to help me.

Just then, Vincenzo rushed up toward us, kicking the drunkard off and shielding me behind him, his eyes cold and fierce like a predator.

"Stay away from my darling!"

The drunkard then got into a huge fight with Vincenzo, but he was no match for him. However, the drunkard suddenly grabbed a brick from the roadside and struck Vincenzo in the head with it.

Blood gushed out immediately, and some of the warm, sticky blood even splatted onto my face.

Vincenzo fell to the ground at once.

"Vincenzo!"

I dashed over to hold him up. His arms hung limply by his side, and his eyes were tightly shut.

I immediately hugged him in my arms and screamed at the crowd of onlookers around us.

"Call the ambulance! Call the ambulance at once!"

By the time the ambulance arrived, my clothes were already half soaked through with Vincenzo's blood.

I followed him into the ambulance, my arms shaking so hard the entire time that I couldn't even hold on to his hand.

I kept telling myself again and again that Vincenzo was a liar. He was the one who had put me in this predicament, and he wasn't worth my concern or my emotions.

However, I still couldn't stop myself from getting frightened. I was so frightened that he would just die on me like this.

…

The emergency room light was on for a long time. It stayed lit up for so long that I thought it would be morning soon, but then it finally went off.

The doctor said that Vincenzo was out of critical condition now, and he just needed to stay for a night for further observation.

I heaved a sigh of relief and felt my legs turning to jelly, nearly dropping to my knees.

I never slept that whole night. Instead, I sat next to his hospital bed and watched his peacefully sleeping face instead.

Vincenzo's face was a literal carbon copy of Lorenzo's. I'd been seeing Vincenzo for three years, but this was the very first time I had ever observed him so quietly like this.

He had thick eyebrows, long eyelashes, and chapped, dry lips because he'd lost too much blood.

I reached out, wanting to touch him on the cheek. However, just as my fingers were about to touch him, I suddenly drew them back.

I told myself that I would only let this go on for tonight.

I would just pretend tonight that this man, now lying in the hospital bed, was really Lorenzo, the same man I'd been loving for three years, and he also loved me back.

When it was almost dawn, I quietly made my way out of the ward, thinking of grabbing him some breakfast for when he woke up later from the shops downstairs.

Ten minutes later, I returned with some hot chicken noodle soup.

The ward door had been left ajar.

I could hear Vincenzo inside, chatting on the phone with a smile in his voice.

"Damn it, you don't have to worry about a thing, Lorenzo! I was the one who arranged for this to happen so that I could save her like a damsel in distress.

"I was the one who hired the drunkard. He's a professional stunt actor and knows just how hard to hit me so it looks convincing enough. I'm not going to die."

I froze at once, my feet refusing to take another step forward. The container of piping-hot chicken noodle soup immediately dropped to the ground, spilling soup everywhere, but I didn't even notice that it scalded my hands.

"I only did this because I don't know what the hell Eliana's gotten into these days. She just won't let me fuck her anymore. She should be all fixed after this incident now, don't you think?

"Honestly speaking, Lorenzo, she has a mole on her boobs in the exact same location as the one on Fiore's body. I won't get in between you and her, but I'll just have to satisfy myself with Eliana as her stand-in."

He continued speaking afterward, but I could no longer hear another word he said.

It was smack in the middle of summer here in Deyork, and the sun was shining down brightly on me. However, I felt so cold and chilly that I shivered and shuddered with every fiber of my body from the roots of my hair down to the toes of my feet.

So, even Vincenzo saving me from the drunk pervert was fake after all.

I didn't know how I got back to the apartment after that.

I sat down on the couch and stared at the sky outside the window as it got lighter and brighter as the sun rose without moving a single muscle.

The door then opened, and Vincenzo strode right in.

His head was still wrapped up in gauze. When he saw me, he came up to me with a smile and wanted to pull me into his arms and kiss me like he always used to.

"Darling… Won't you give me some? I'm hungry…"

I refused to move. Instead, I used up every ounce of strength in my body and shoved him off.

"Fuck off," I said in a cold, chilly voice.

Vincenzo staggered backward and nearly fell.

He was completely caught off guard as he stared at me. Then, his eyes lit up in fury.

"You fucking ingrate, Eliana Torre! I nearly got killed last night while saving your life! And this is how you repay me?"

He grabbed his coat from the couch and left, slamming the door loudly behind him.

I sat alone in the darkness and finally broke down in sobs.

I cried until my tears went dry and my voice went completely hoarse. I couldn't produce another drop of tears anymore.

I didn't want anything Lorenzo or Vincenzo owed me anymore. I just wanted to leave them forever.

There was a team-building dinner held at a three-star Kitchelin restaurant on the last day before I left, and Lorenzo was the one who'd be footing the bill.

Nadia tugged on my sleeve and looked at me with sparkly eyes. "Eliana! We should go together! This is going to be the last team-building dinner for us, and since the Don's the one paying for everything, it would only make sense for us to attend!"

I looked at Nadia's excited face and ultimately nodded, agreeing to go.

This was going to be the final time I would ever see these people in this city anyway.

That night, I walked into the luxuriously decorated Kitchelin restaurant and immediately caught sight of Fiore in the center of attention, with Lorenzo next to her.

I froze in my tracks at once, suddenly wanting to turn and leave.

However, my other colleagues had already begun to surround both Lorenzo and Fiore, bombarding them with curious questions and asking if there would be any good news from them very soon.

Fiore was surrounded by the colleagues' questions, blushing hard as she shook her head in denial, yet the delight in her eyes was unmistakable.

I sat alone on the couch like an outsider, watching as Lorenzo escorted Fiore to her seat and began cutting up her steak for her.

I watched him drape his coat over her exposed legs and switch out her whisky for apple juice so that she wouldn't be obliged to drink.

I recalled how, over the past three years—whenever I accompanied him to such drinking parties or events—he wouldn't even bat an eye, no matter how much I was coerced to drink by the others.

He never even offered me a glass of water, telling me instead to get used to it for the good of the Famiglia.

I had put up with it for three years. But now, I only found out that it wasn't that he couldn't switch out my drink for me—he just didn't want to do it.

After dinner, someone decided to liven up the atmosphere with a game of Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare.

The first person the bottle landed on was Fiore.

Someone immediately shouted, "Make her do a dare! A dare! I dare you to kiss someone of the opposite gender in this restaurant!"

Fiore stood there like a deer caught in headlights. She then turned to look at Lorenzo, her eyes red-rimmed.

Lorenzo immediately got to his feet and said, "If you don't mind, Ms. Marotta, you can go ahead and kiss me."

Then, they both kissed with everyone else clapping and cheering them on.

They even deepened their kiss, pressing desperately against each other's lips as if they didn't want to let the other go.

I lowered my head and gripped the glass in my hand until my knuckles turned white.

My secret boyfriend was kissing the woman he loved, with everyone from the company witnessing them.

Meanwhile, I could do nothing but stay in the corner and pretend that none of this had anything to do with me.

Just then, a waitress appeared with a scalding hot cup of caramelized onion soup. While walking past me, she suddenly slipped, and the entire bowl of soup came crashing toward me.

I shut my eyes on instinct. However, the scalding pain didn't happen.

Instead, I heard Fiore's blood-curdling scream.

I opened my eyes and saw that the waitress had spilled the whole bowl of soup all over Fiore's thigh. Her skin turned bright red at once and began to blister.

Everyone was completely taken aback.

Loreanzo was the first one to react. He immediately picked her up and rushed out of the restaurant, comforting her.

"Don't be afraid, I'm right here. I'll bring you to the hospital at once. I won't let you scar!"

He didn't even bother to look back at me, who was originally supposed to be the victim of this harrowing accident.

I stood rooted to the ground, still shocked out of my wits.

I had caught the waitress' movements clearly just now. She had abruptly changed the direction in which the soup was spilling at the last possible moment.

In other words, that hadn't been an accident—she had done that on purpose.

This accident was something that Fiore had staged herself so that she could make herself out to be the pitiful victim instead.

However, I was just too exhausted to think about anything of the sort anymore.

I bid my colleagues goodbye and went back to the apartment. After washing up, I'd only just lay down in bed when the bedroom door was suddenly kicked wide open with a bang.

Lorenzo stood at the door, his eyes bloodshot, his furious aura nearly burning me alive.

I was able to tell that it was Lorenzo, and not Vincenzo.

"What is it?" I asked him calmly.

He stormed up to me and grabbed me so firmly by my wrist that I thought he was going to crush my bones.

He growled through gritted teeth, "How could you be such a vicious, jealous bitch, Eliana Torre!

"How dare you bribe the waitress into throwing that soup all over Fiore just because she lost a game and I volunteered to kiss her to get her out of the awkward situation?

"Do you even know how badly injured she is? The doctor said that she would need a massive skin graft at once!"

I laughed so hard until tears streamed down my face.

As expected, he didn't even bother finding out the truth before concluding that I was the one who did it.

After all, I was indeed such an evil and vicious woman who would do something exactly like that.

"It wasn't me!" I said, struggling against his grip. "I was in the VIP room the whole time. I never had any opportunity to do anything of the sort!"

However, Lorenzo wouldn't listen to me. He continued dragging me out of bed and out of the apartment.

"Fiore cares the most about her appearance! And skin grafting requires her head to be shaved so that the doctors can get the scalp for transplant. But since you're the one who did this to her, then you're going to be the one suffering instead!"

I was then forcefully dragged to the hospital and pinned to the cold operating table. Two nurses held me down, with Lorenzo standing beside the operating table, looking down on me as I wept. His eyes were completely devoid of all emotion.

The razor blade glided across my scalp, and just like that, the long hair I'd grown out for three years fell to the floor in tufts.

He used to tell me that he liked it when I had long, shiny hair draped across my shoulders like a silk scarf. But now, he was the one who had cut it off with his own hands.

There was only one thought in my mind as I began drifting into unconsciousness.

My hair was all gone, and so was the pathetic, pitiful bit of fate that connected us together.

There was no going back anymore.