But for weeks, Dominic had hardly made time for me. He came and went from the apartment at hours that served his schedule, not mine, and the few evenings he spent under the same roof he spent looking through me as if I were another piece of furniture the Family had placed for appearance. When I got home that night, he was engrossed in his video game, laughing with his gaming partner through the headset, completely oblivious to my presence. The glow of the screen painted his face in shifting blues and whites, and the signet ring on his hand caught the light every time he moved the controller.

"Dominic, you let me lose all day! I sent you the link for the lingerie. We had a deal—loser pays!" his friend chimed in, the voice tinny through the speakers.

He switched to a shopping app on his phone, magnifying the image with his thumb. "This lingerie looks nice. I wonder how it would look on you. Kinda want to…" He didn't finish the thought, abruptly shutting off his phone and looking at me with annoyance. "Geez, can you not sneak around? You scared the life out of me!"

I turned away, retreating to my room. The hallway was narrow, lined with framed photographs from events I barely recognized, Bellandi fundraisers and charity galas where I had stood at the edge of every frame. After a long shower, I emerged, steam swirling around me. To my surprise, Dominic was sitting on the edge of the bed with a hairdryer in hand, as though this single gesture could settle the accounts between us.

"Did your parents leave?" Dominic asked, his voice slow. "I rushed home as soon as I finished work. Can't believe I still missed them," he said, attempting to sound apologetic, but I didn't buy a word.

I had told him my parents' bus left at two, hoping he would come to see them off. My father had asked about him three times that morning, refolding his handkerchief into tighter and tighter squares, and each time I had made an excuse that tasted like ash. Dominic claimed he was busy with Family business, but his gaming account had been online since noon. He had left me hanging for weeks, only showing up after my parents were gone. When I didn't respond, his frustration mounted.

"Bianca, I've been busy!" He yelled. "I have piles of work waiting for me every day. I play games to unwind! Can't I do that?" He shot me a glare, and in that moment he looked like every man I had ever seen in the Bellandi inner circle, indignant at being questioned, certain that volume alone constituted an answer. "Besides, it's just seeing your parents off. It's not like your life depends on it. Stop making such a big deal out of everything!" His words cut deep, sharp and unyielding, piercing through the heart of my resolve. I had meant to tell him about my father's illness, but now the thought seemed too heavy to lift. The diagnosis sat in my chest like a stone, and I could not hand it to someone who would only set it down.

I turned my head slightly, feigning ignorance. "Huh? What was that? I can't hear with the noise."

Dominic's frustration faded into a palpable sense of defeat, as if he was the one who had been hit. The hairdryer hummed between us, filling the silence with a sound that meant nothing. Just then, his phone buzzed on the vanity, lighting up with a series of messages.

I caught a glimpse of the name: Serena.

Serena Valente. Dominic Bellandi. SV & DB.

That was when I recognized the initials engraved on the gift set. It should have been mine—BR, for Bianca Romano. Dominic had told me the jeweler made an error, swore he'd ordered the correct monogram. When I suggested calling the shop to hold them accountable, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, told me I shouldn't be so uptight about a couple of letters. I believed him. I believed him the way anyone raised inside the rules of an arrangement believes the man chosen for her—because the alternative was admitting the whole foundation was rotten. Until I pulled up the surveillance footage from the compound's hallway camera, the kind of tape nobody bothered to erase because nobody expected the promised bride to check. There she was: a girl with cropped dark hair, perched on Dominic's lap in the private study, snatching his phone from his hand to place the order herself. Her crimson nails caught the low light as she typed. In that moment I understood how foolish I had been—not naïve the way a sheltered girl is naïve, but willfully blind, the way a woman becomes when her father's illness has already swallowed every ounce of fight she has left.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice Dominic had already grabbed his overcoat and moved toward the door. The heavy fabric settled over his shoulders the way authority settled over a room when he walked in: effortlessly, as though the world had been cut to fit him.

"I won't be back tonight. I'm meeting your parents for dinner tomorrow. Send me the address," he said, the words tossed behind him the way a man flicks ash from a cigarette—nonchalant, already half gone. As if he had forgotten that tomorrow was supposed to be my day to try on wedding gowns. As if the alliance ceremony the two Families had spent months negotiating was just another line item in a schedule he kept loosely at best.

My thumb found the inside of my ring finger, pressing into the groove the betrothal ring had worn there, and I said nothing. The front door closed. The silence it left behind was louder than anything he'd said.

The next day, I decided to go to the bridal atelier alone. I had the address on a card Theo Bellandi's personal aide had sent weeks ago—an old-money establishment on the upper stretch of Via Seta, the kind of place where Mafia wives had been fitted for generations and where discretion was stitched into the curtains as tightly as the beading on the gowns. I stepped outside, and a sleek black BMW with tinted rear glass pulled up to the curb before I'd taken three steps.

Dominic rolled down the window. His gaze swept over my face, lingering on the careful makeup I had applied that morning—foundation to hide the sleepless bruising under my eyes, a muted lip color that the Bellandi matriarch would find acceptable. His brow furrowed. "What's with the makeup? You look weird." A chuckle of discontent, the kind that sat right on the edge of cruelty, and then a flick of his head toward the passenger side. "Get in. We're going together."

I kept my eyes on the ground, trying to avoid any confrontation. My fingers clenched tightly around the transit pass in my coat pocket—a small, provincial habit I hadn't shaken, because where I came from, in the coastal enclave where my father had run a quiet shipping front for allied Family interests, women still rode the local bus without apology. But as I started to open the passenger door, the window slid down, and there was Serena Valente.

She beamed, reaching her hand out enthusiastically. "Hey! You must be Bianca! I'm Serena, Dominic's friend," she said, the warmth in her voice almost aggressive in its brightness. "Hope you don't mind me tagging along! He's about to make the biggest decision of his life, and, well, knowing him since we were kids, he's got a knack for messing things up. I just don't want him to pick some ugly dress and ruin it for you." She laughed, leaning into Dominic and throwing her arm around his neck with the ease of someone who had been occupying that space for years. "If it weren't for this idiot sending me a last-minute invite with gifts, I wouldn't even be here. My father almost wouldn't let me come."

Instead of taking offense, Dominic grinned. "Oh, I could just send your father a tribute too. I know exactly what he likes. But you actually love going out with me, don't you, Miss Valente?"

Their playful, almost flirty exchange twisted my stomach, leaving me queasy. Every note of easy intimacy between them was a blade drawn slowly across something I was still pretending was whole.

Noticing my discomfort, Serena quickly explained, "Oh, I'm sorry! Don't get the wrong idea. Dominic and I have been friends forever. This is just how we are."

"If anything were going to happen between us, we'd have been married years ago," she added with an exaggerated grin.

I turned to Dominic, hoping he'd have the same playful expression as Serena, but instead his face showed a hint of something like regret—a flicker so brief it might have been a trick of the morning light sliding off the windshield. Just as quickly, his expression turned stern, his jaw tightening the way it did before he gave an order he expected obeyed without repetition.

"Can't figure out the back seat?" he snapped. "Get in. We don't have all day."

As I slid into the back, Dominic barely glanced in the rearview mirror, his face hardening into an expression I barely recognized. Serena settled comfortably in the passenger seat, one hand resting on the center console as though she belonged there—as though the arrangement between our Families was an inconvenient detail she had long ago decided not to take seriously. I closed my eyes, brushing off the unease weighing me down, and pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger until the pressure stung.

Then my favorite love song from decades past started playing through the speakers—a melody that had been popular long before I was born, one I'd often heard drifting through the windows at community festivals along the waterfront, and even at weddings held in the small stone church near my father's villa.

"Oh my God, you listen to this?" Serena scoffed, reaching for the console and killing the music with a sharp tap. She cast a look of undisguised disgust toward Dominic. "Only people from nowhere listen to this kind of thing. We're supposed to have taste. This is the opposite of taste. Ever thought about something from this century? Anything?"

Dominic chuckled. "Bianca picked everything in there," he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. "She's a coastal girl, anyway. Doubt she'd know what passes for taste in the city."

My nails dug into my palms. Yes, I was a coastal girl, raised in the simplicity of salt air and fishing boats and a father who kept honest books for powerful men. I didn't have a grasp on the rituals of the main city territory, its private clubs and velvet-rope restaurants and the particular cruelty of people who had been rich long enough to make elegance feel like a weapon. I remembered how people had laughed at me during the university dinner hosted by the Bellandi network when I used a spoon to eat my salad. Dominic had taken it from me quietly, replaced it with a fork, and told me not to care what people thought. He'd said that the way a person eats has nothing to do with character. That night, I'd learned just how cruel the world could be. But I hadn't cared back then, because I believed I could be myself around him.

Now I was being myself, and the words coastal girl rolled off his tongue like an accusation. I didn't blame him for feeling differently. I only resented how time could twist things so easily. His protection had once felt real, and now, so did his betrayal.

Maybe I'd stayed silent for too long.

Dominic's lips pressed together in irritation. He caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, and for one instant the glass held both our reflections—his hardening, mine already hollow. "What's with the attitude? You're mad again just because of a song?"