He hadn't even called. Hadn't had the rispetto to let me hear his voice, to offer an explanation, an apology, anything that might have softened the blow. He had typed out a message the way a man might cancel a dinner reservation. Brief. Dismissive. As if the most important day of my life was an inconvenience he could pencil in for a later date.

Five years. Five years of loyalty. Five years of standing beside him at sit-downs and Sunday dinners, of pressing my lips shut when the whispers followed me through the halls of the compound. She's not good enough for a Valente. She's just a Serafini girl. Her father was a soldier, not a boss. What does the Don see in her? Five years of being his rock, his confidante, the woman who waited up for him on the nights he came home smelling of gunpowder and rain, who never asked questions she knew he couldn't answer. Five years of Omertà kept not out of obligation but out of love.

And now, this.

I did not respond. What was there to say? My fingers trembled over the screen. I wanted to call him and scream until my throat was raw, to demand he explain why he chose her, again, always her, over the woman he was supposed to bind his blood to. But instead, I swallowed the rage like a mouthful of broken glass and hurled the phone onto the bed.

It bounced once against the duvet and lay still, its screen dark.

I paced. The bedroom was enormous, one of the finest rooms in the Valente compound, with its vaulted ceilings and its windows overlooking the estate's private gardens. Dominic and I had built a life together in these rooms. His suits hung beside my dresses in the walk-in closet. His cologne lingered on the pillows. His reading glasses sat on the nightstand beside a dog-eared copy of The Prince. But lately, this place had begun to feel less like a home and more like a gilded cage. I lived in his shadow, surrounded by his name, his legacy, his obligations, and I was alone almost all the time.

A knock broke through the silence. Three sharp raps, unhesitant, the knock of someone who did not need permission.

I opened the door. Nonna Lolita Valente stood in the hallway, her small frame wrapped in black lace, her silver hair pulled back in a severe chignon. She was eighty-three years old. She had buried two husbands, survived three assassination attempts, and outlasted every enemy who had ever underestimated her. Her face was a map of decades spent navigating the treacherous waters of La Cosa Nostra, and her dark eyes, still sharp as stiletto blades, held a sympathy that nearly undid me.

"I heard what happened, child," she said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. She never waited. In the Valente household, Nonna Lolita went where she pleased.

She settled herself into the armchair by the window as though she owned it. Which, in a sense, she did.

"You deserve better than this."

I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted copper. I would not cry. Not yet. But Nonna had always seen through every mask I wore. She was the sharpest person in the Family, sharper than the Consigliere, sharper even than Dominic himself, though she would never say so aloud. There was no hiding pain from a woman who had spent a lifetime reading the faces of killers and liars.

"I thought today would be different." My voice came out smaller than I intended. I sank into the chair across from her, my knees suddenly too weak to hold me. "I thought he'd finally choose me over her."

Nonna's eyes darkened. The sympathy did not leave her face, but something harder settled beneath it. Something cold and knowing.

"Dominic is a fool. He cannot see what he is losing." She paused, her gnarled fingers laced together in her lap. "But I know that Chiara Mancuso is not the innocent little lamb she pretends to be."

I stared at her. My pulse quickened. Everyone in the Family adored Chiara. The sweet orphan. The tragic ward.

The girl who smiled so prettily and spoke so softly and always, always found a reason to be near Dominic. The soldiers doted on her. The household staff cooked her favorite meals without being asked. Even the Consigliere spoke of her with a gentleness he reserved for no one else. She had wrapped the entire Valente empire around her delicate finger.

But Nonna, like me, had never trusted her. Not once. Not from the very first day Chiara had been brought through the compound gates as a frightened twelve-year-old, clutching a rosary and weeping for her dead mother.

"That injury is a fake." Nonna's voice was flat, certain, the voice of a woman stating a fact as plain as the weather. "Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?"

My heart hammered against my ribs. It was not just me. I was not paranoid. I was not the jealous, bitter woman the whispers in the hallways made me out to be.

"You think she did this on purpose?"

Nonna scoffed. The sound was quiet, almost elegant, but it carried the weight of absolute contempt.

"Oh, child. Of course she did. She has been playing this game for years, pulling Dominic closer every chance she gets. Every scraped knee. Every tearful confession. Every little crisis that requires the Don's personal attention. You think she is helpless?" Nonna leaned forward, and her dark eyes burned. "I see right through her. I have seen women like Chiara Mancuso my entire life. They are the most dangerous kind. The kind who smile while they slip the knife between your ribs."

I clenched my fists in my lap. My nails bit into my palms.

"Then how come Dominic doesn't see it?"

"Because that boy has been blinded since the day she arrived. His father's dying oath, the debt of honor to Rosaria Mancuso, it clouds everything. He confuses obligation with affection, and Chiara knows exactly how to keep the confusion alive." Nonna's mouth thinned. "But you know the truth. So you must be strong enough to face it."

I nodded. The motion felt mechanical, hollow. My stomach churned. I did not want to be strong. I wanted Dominic to walk through that door, take my face in his hands, and tell me he was sorry. I wanted him to make it right. I wanted him to choose me.

"I'm sure you'll think of something. I know you are strong and wise, Neve." Nonna rose from the chair with a grace that defied her years. She crossed the room and pulled me into a hug. Her arms were thin but firm, and she smelled of rosewater and old lace. "Do not let this Family break you. You are worth more than they know."

She released me, smoothed the front of her dress, and left without another word. The door clicked shut behind her.

Silence filled the room like floodwater.

My phone vibrated against the duvet, and I flinched. I crossed to the bed and picked it up. A message from Ivo Valente, the Underboss. My childhood friend. The man who had grown up beside Dominic and me, who had stood at Dominic's right hand since the day the old Don was buried.

"Neve, I heard the news. Don't be too disappointed. Dominic had to do this. It's his obligation as the head of the Family. He needs to ensure the safety of everyone under his protection."

"Yeah, right!" The words tore out of me, loud and raw in the empty room. I tossed the phone back onto the bed without typing a reply. Ivo and his endless excuses. Ivo, who always found a way to make Dominic's choices sound reasonable, who always smoothed the edges until the blade didn't look like a blade anymore.

Two minutes later, the group chat buzzed again. I picked up the phone against my better judgment. Chiara had posted more photographs. Dominic sitting at her bedside, spooning broth into her mouth as though she were an invalid. Dominic pressing the back of his hand to her forehead to check her temperature. Dominic adjusting the bandage on her ankle with the careful, focused attention of a man tending to something precious and breakable.

As if she were his wife. As if she were the woman he was supposed to marry today.

Beneath the photos, Chiara's message glowed on the screen:

"Everyone, I am so sorry for any trouble, especially to Neve and Dominic. I didn't mean to ruin the most important day of your lives. Dominic, thank you for being the best Don I could ever ask for. You always make me feel like the most important person in the world."

The reactions piled up beneath her words. Hearts. Prayers. Adoring replies from soldiers and household staff alike. And then the bolder ones, the ones that twisted the knife.

"You two look so good together."

"If fate had willed it differently, you would make such a beautiful pair."

"God works in mysterious ways."

Chiara, Chiara. It was always Chiara that everyone favored. Chiara, the saint. Chiara, the angel. Chiara, the poor little orphan who could do no wrong.

Tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them. They fell onto the screen of my phone, blurring Chiara's smiling face into a watercolor smear. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, but more followed, hot and relentless.

Five years. I had waited five years, and all I had to show for it was the slow, sickening realization that I had been making a mistake this entire time. Loving Dominic Valente had cost me my pride, my peace, and very nearly my sanity.

It was time to correct it. It was time to choose myself.

I opened a new message to Dominic. My fingers were steady now. The tears still fell, but something inside me had gone very quiet, very cold, the way a lake freezes over in the dead of winter.

"Call me."

I sent it. I knew he would not call unless I asked. Even then, there was no guarantee.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. The clock on the nightstand ticked. Outside the window, the late morning sun cast long shadows across the compound's manicured grounds, where the chapel still stood draped in ivory silk and red roses that no one would see.

Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

Nothing. No call. No reply. Not even the three pulsing dots that would have told me he was typing.

I was about to stand, to do what I did not yet know, when the phone finally rang. His name filled the screen. I answered.

"Anything happen, Neve?" Dominic's voice was clipped. Distracted. Irritated, as though I had pulled him away from something far more important.

"Is that all you have to say?"

The hurt in my own voice surprised me. I had meant to sound cold, controlled, the way the women in this world were supposed to sound. Instead, I sounded exactly like what I was: a woman whose heart was breaking.

"Sorry." He exhaled. The sound was heavy, tired, the exhale of a man carrying the weight of an empire on his shoulders. "I can't think clearly right now. Chiara got hurt. I needed to make sure she'd be okay."

"Right. As expected from Don Valente."

A beat of silence. When he spoke again, his voice had an edge.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I closed my eyes. The tears had stopped. The cold, frozen thing inside me held firm.

"It means we're over. The betrothal is severed."

I ended the call before he could draw another breath.

After Neve hung up on me, the room felt like a sealed coffin. She had never done that before. Not once in all the years I had known her, in all the years she had been promised to me. The silence that followed the dead line was louder than any gunshot I had ever heard.

I set the phone down on the mahogany desk, slow and deliberate, the way a man sets down a weapon he is trying not to use. Then I leaned back in the leather chair and stared at the ceiling of my study, at the hand-painted fresco my grandfather had commissioned decades ago. Angels and serpents, tangled together. He'd always said that was the truest portrait of our family ever made.

Her words had cut deeper than I wanted to admit. After everything we had been through, after all the years bound together by our fathers' blood oath, how had it come to this?

But what else could I have done? Chiara had been hurt during combat training, and as the Don, I had an obligation. The Family always came first. That was the weight I accepted the day they placed my father's signet ring on my finger and every man in the room kissed my hand. I thought Neve, of all people, understood this. She was my betrothed. She was supposed to stand beside me as Donna of this Family.