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.

I exhaled through my teeth and picked up the phone again. The group message thread had blown up while I was dealing with the fallout, and I hadn't even glanced at it. When I opened it, every message was from Chiara. She had been updating the Family's inner circle on her injury, picture after picture, message after message. My jaw tightened as I scrolled through the photos she had sent. They were carefully framed. Every single one featured her and me. I lingered on the worst of them: Chiara lying on the medical cot in the compound's infirmary, her face arranged in an expression of fragile suffering, while I stood over her looking every inch the concerned protector.

I ran a hand through my hair and dropped the phone face-down on the desk.

Everything seemed to be spiraling out of my control, but none of it was my doing. Chiara needed me. My father had sworn a blood oath to her dying mother. I could not simply abandon that debt because of the ceremony. Neve should have understood how sacred the obligations of this Family were. She knew the life. She had always known the life.

Still, the guilt gnawed at me like a rat behind the walls. I had canceled our wedding. Our blood-bound union. For Chiara. And now Neve was furious, and the silence on the other end of that phone call had been the kind of silence that preceded war.

Maybe I could have handled it better. I should have called her first, spoken to her directly, asked for her understanding before making the decision. Or at the very least, I should have explained my reasons face to face instead of sending a message as if the union meant nothing. As if she meant nothing.

But what was done was done, and I had to deal with the fallout.

A knock on the study door pulled me from the spiral.

"Come in."

Ivo stepped through the heavy oak door with his usual measured calm, the kind of composure that had made him invaluable to me since we were boys running through the corridors of this very compound. He closed the door behind him without a sound, lowered himself into the chair across from my desk, and studied me with those sharp, patient eyes. If there was anyone in this world I could count on to help me make sense of this wreckage, it was him. My underboss. My brother in everything but blood.

"Dominic." His voice was low, almost gentle. "I heard what happened."

I leaned forward and pressed my knuckles against my temples.

"Yeah. Neve's furious."

Ivo raised an eyebrow, settling deeper into his chair, one ankle crossing over his knee with the ease of a man who had never lost a moment's sleep in his life.

"Furious at you for fulfilling your obligation?"

His words made me drag a hand down my face.

"I canceled the wedding, Ivo. The blood-bound union. She has every right to be upset."

He shook his head slowly, as though Neve's reaction was something he genuinely could not fathom.

"She might be upset, but you did what you had to do. Chiara was hurt. You're the Don. Your first responsibility is to the Family. That means ensuring every person under this roof is safe, especially when they're injured. Especially when they carry the weight of your father's oath."

"I know that." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "But Neve doesn't see it that way. She thinks I'm choosing Chiara over her."

Ivo's expression softened. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

"Dominic. You didn't choose Chiara over Neve. You chose the Family over everything. That is what being the Boss means. Neve knows that deep down, even if anger is blinding her right now."

I clenched my fists on the desk, the signet ring biting into my finger. Frustration coiled inside my chest like smoke with nowhere to go.

"I know she does. But it feels like I'm losing her, Ivo. I've been so consumed with the Family lately, with Chiara, with every crisis that walks through that door, that I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone be with her."

"You're not neglecting her." Ivo's tone was firm, certain. "You carry responsibilities that most people will never understand. Neve is upset, sure. But she'll come around. You have always been there for her, and she knows that."

I didn't respond. I turned my head toward the window, where the city lights of Manhattan bled through the bulletproof glass like distant fires. A part of me knew Ivo was right. Neve had always stood by me. Through the wars, through the funerals, through every blood-soaked night that came with this throne. But lately, something between us had shifted. I could feel the distance growing, a silence that had nothing to do with loyalty and everything to do with loneliness.

Ivo must have sensed the turmoil behind my silence, because he pressed on.

"You're doing the right thing, Dominic. Chiara is part of this Family. Your father's oath binds you to protect her. That is sacred. That is debito d'onore. Neve will understand once the anger has passed and she can think clearly."

I turned back to him, doubt still heavy in my chest.

"You really believe that?"

"I'm certain of it." A note of quiet confidence threaded through his voice. "Don't let this consume you. It's nothing. Neve is hurt right now, but she will realize you were fulfilling your duty. Nothing more."

I nodded slowly. I had been so tangled in guilt and frustration that doubt had started to poison everything, distorting my judgment about what this would mean for us. I was doing the right thing. I could not be in two places at once. What I did for Chiara was what any Don would have done. What my father would have expected me to do.

"I just don't want to lose Neve." The words came out barely above a whisper, and I hated how vulnerable they sounded in the stillness of that room.

"You won't." Ivo's voice carried the weight of absolute conviction. "Neve loves you. That's precisely why this is hitting her so hard. But she'll come around. The two of you have been bound together too long for this to be undone by a single incident."

I let out a long breath, and some of the iron tension in my chest began to loosen. Ivo was right. He was always right about these things.

"Thanks, Ivo. I needed to hear that."

He smiled, and there was a glint in his eyes that caught the lamplight.

"Anytime. That's what I'm here for."

I pushed myself up from the chair, feeling lighter than I had since the moment Neve's voice had gone cold on the other end of that call. The conversation with Ivo had helped, but I still had a great deal of damage to repair. The fracture between Neve and me was real, and no amount of reassurance from my underboss could mend it. Only I could do that. But at least now, the guilt was no longer drowning me.

"I'll talk to her later tonight. Give her time to cool down first."

"Smart. Neve has a soft spot for you, Dominic. Always has. Use that to your advantage."

We walked to the study door together, and for the first time in hours, I felt prepared to face whatever came next.

Ivo clapped a hand on my shoulder, his grip firm and familiar.

"You've got this. Just remember you're not alone in this."

"Thanks, Ivo."

He left, and the weight on my shoulders had lifted enough that I could breathe again. But now came the harder part. I had to find a way to make things right with Neve.

I drove across the city to the apartment Neve and I shared. It was our private space, separate from the compound, the one place where we were not the Don and his betrothed but simply two people who had chosen each other. Or so I had believed.

When I opened the door, the apartment was dark. The kind of dark that had nothing to do with the hour and everything to do with absence.

"Neve?"

My voice echoed off the marble floors and died against the walls. No answer. I moved through the rooms, checking the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom. Everything was in its place. Everything except the things that mattered.

Instinct seized me, cold and sudden, and I walked to the closet. I pulled the doors open.

Empty. Every hanger bare. Every shelf cleared. Her shoes, her coats, the small leather case where she kept her grandmother's rosary. All of it, gone.

Neve had left me.

My legs gave out, and I sank to the floor of the closet, surrounded by nothing but the faint ghost of her perfume and the hollow click of empty hangers swaying in the draft. The silence pressed in from every side, absolute and merciless, and for the first time since I had become the Don of the Valente Family, I felt completely and utterly powerless.