After Love Turned to Ashes, I Chose Myself

As I opened the door to the house, Dominic was calling me.

We stood there in the foyer, the marble cold beneath my shoes, the security panel blinking its green confirmation beside the doorframe. The hallway chandelier cast a muted amber glow that turned his face into something carved, all planes and shadow, and for a stretched, airless moment neither of us spoke. Then he frowned, the displeasure landing across his features like a door closing, and he hung up. He came toward me in large strides, his coat still on, the scent of night air and expensive tobacco arriving a half-step ahead of him.

He asked, "Where have you been? Do you know how dangerous it is to be out alone at night?" His voice held the edge of genuine authority, the kind that expected an answer shaped like compliance.

I replied, "I've been waiting for you at the club."

I stated it calmly, the way one states a coordinate on a map, and changed into my slippers. The sound of them against the marble was soft, domestic, absurdly ordinary for the weight of what hung between us.

Dominic was speechless.

He finally remembered that he had told me to wait for him at the club. But after hours, Adriana had insisted on dinner with him, something about a celebration for her new duties, her new elevation, her new proximity to everything I was being asked to leave behind, and he had forgotten about me. The realization moved through his face like weather, there and gone, controlled before it could become anything as vulnerable as guilt.

But the words "I'm sorry" were stuck in his throat. I watched them die there. In this world, an apology from the Don was a confession of weakness, and Dominic Falcone did not confess.

After a while, he said, "Next time I forget, just call me."

I asked, "If I call, will you come?"

As soon as I asked this, we both froze. The question hung in the foyer like smoke, unanswerable and true. His jaw tightened. My thumb found the inside of my wrist, pressed once, released.

I waved my hand dismissively. "I know you're busy, so I took a car home. Don't worry about it."

But Dominic was unimpressed. He studied me the way he studied a room before a sit-down, cataloguing exits, threats, the precise location of every weapon he couldn't see.

He said, "Bianca, you seem different."

"Yes," I replied softly, and afraid it wouldn't be convincing, I added, "People grow. Arguing only makes us tired. I understand that."

He looked at me for a long time. The signet ring was motionless on his hand, perfectly still, and I could not tell whether that stillness meant he was satisfied or whether something far more dangerous was taking shape behind his eyes. Finally he nodded in agreement. "It's good that you understand. Go wash up and sleep."

I took a shower and came out, only to find Dominic lying on the bed in the master bedroom. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, one arm behind his head, the posture of a man who owned every surface he rested on. The lamplight caught the edge of his jaw, the signet ring, the faint scar along his collarbone that he had never explained and I had long ago stopped asking about.

I took a deep breath and turned around. "I'll sleep in the guest room tonight."

"Come back," he said. The words were quiet, but they carried the weight of a command that had never once been disobeyed under this roof.

Seeing me standing still, Dominic rose from the bed and crossed the room and pulled me onto the mattress with one arm. His grip was certain, possessive, the hold of a man who did not distinguish between protecting something and owning it.

He said, "I won't do anything to you. What are you afraid of?"

"I don't want to hurt my wound," I explained. The excuse came out steady, clinical, a truth he could accept without suspecting the larger truth it concealed.

He finally relaxed a bit and settled behind me, his arm circling my waist, his breath warm against the back of my neck. "Sleep," he muttered.

I bit my lip, trying not to think about the fact that he had held Adriana like this. That these same arms had pulled someone else close, that this same voice had murmured instructions of intimacy to a woman whose tears were theater and whose loyalty was performance. The thought was a blade I pressed against my own ribs and held there, not because I wanted the pain but because I needed to remember it.

Only when his breathing deepened into the heavy, even rhythm of a man who slept without guilt did I crawl out of his embrace and let out a sigh of relief. I lay on my back on the far edge of the mattress and stared at the ceiling and felt the child shift once inside me, a small private movement that belonged to no one in this house but me.

I spent the entire next day wrapping up my work and handing it over to my successor. Eight years of meticulous records, laundering routes mapped in code only I understood, contact sheets for the accountants and lawyers and front managers who kept the Family's legitimate face presentable. I translated it all into clean files and placed them in the hands of the next person, a younger associate who accepted the folders with wide eyes and the cautious reverence of someone who had just been handed a loaded weapon.

All the items on my desk were given to the next manager. The calculator I'd used to balance two sets of books. The leather folio Dominic had given me the first year, when he still remembered that gifts could be given without occasion. The small brass paperweight shaped like a lion that I had bought for myself because no one else had thought to mark my fifth year of keeping his empire invisible.

As I left the social club for the last time, I paused in the lobby and announced to the associates and staff gathered there that I would treat everyone to dinner that evening. Faces broke into grins, hands clapped my shoulder, voices called out wishes for happiness. My colleagues were overjoyed and wished me and Dominic a happy future together.

Unfortunately, that might be a regret now.

Upon returning home, I packed my belongings. The unknown cosmetics Dominic had bought for me, brands I didn't use, scents I hadn't chosen, were all swept into the trash bin. I searched through every drawer and shelf and photo album but only found two pictures of us together. Two photographs in eight years. The math was devastating in its simplicity.

With a scoff, I burned them. The flame ate through our faces with a patience that felt like mercy.

That evening, I waited for a long time at the reserved restaurant. The table was set for a party, white linen, candles, the kind of arrangement that signaled celebration. But no one showed up. The waiter refilled my water glass twice and then stopped asking. The candles burned lower. The restaurant hummed around me with the laughter of other people's lives.

Just as I was beginning to think that my popularity was abysmal, I received a message from Gia, a former associate from my days at the Falcone social club.

Gia: Bianca, didn't the Don say everyone was coming to celebrate Adriana's elevation tonight? Why aren't you here?

In an instant, everything became clear. He had taken my farewell dinner and turned it into her promotion. The people I had invited were sitting at a different table, in a different room, raising glasses to the woman who had replaced me in every way that could be seen and none of the ways that mattered.

I didn't explain. I replied: It's fine, enjoy your meal and drinks. May everything go smoothly with you.

I signaled the waiter to bring me a serving of foie gras and a bottle of wine. The wine was a Barolo, heavy and dark, and I drank it slowly, letting each sip settle into the hollow place beneath my sternum where eight years of devotion had lived and now did not.

I stayed until the restaurant closed before slowly getting up to leave. The staff dimmed the lights around me with quiet efficiency, and the last candle on my table guttered and went out as I pushed back my chair.

This would be my farewell.

In the early hours of the morning, I dragged my suitcase through the silent streets to the airport. The city was asleep, the storefronts shuttered, the only movement the occasional sweep of headlights and the distant sound of a truck on the expressway. My heels clicked against the terminal floor, steady and measured, the rhythm of someone who had already made every decision that remained to be made.

Just before boarding the plane, I sent a message to Dominic.

Dominic, love has turned to ashes, so I don't want you anymore. We shall never meet again.

After sending the message, I turned off my phone and dropped it into the trash bin beside the gate. It landed with a small, definitive sound, plastic against metal, and then it was gone, and I walked through the doors and did not look back.