He Thought I'd Forgive,I Made Him Never Find Me

On the night of our fifth wedding anniversary, one of my husband's associates asked him in French with a laugh.

"So how does your little courier taste?"

My husband thoughtfully handed me a slice of honeydew melon, my favorite, before answering in the same language, casual as anything.

"Young. Tender."

"Just remember to keep this from my wife. If she ever found out, she'd leave me for sure."

The group burst into laughter, falling over each other with promises to keep his secret. Men in hand-tailored suits, each one carrying a gun beneath his jacket, swearing omertà over a goomah the way they'd swear it over a body.

I stood right there among them, my knuckles white around the stem of my wine glass.

They didn't know I spoke French.

And I had already discovered that my husband was keeping a goomah.

But I didn't confront him. I didn't scream or cry. I simply submitted my application to the Commission Strategic Intelligence Archive in silence.

In three days, I would do exactly what he said. I would leave him. Forever.

——

Dante noticed I hadn't touched the melon. His eyes clouded with concern as he switched to English.

"Hey, sweetheart. What's wrong?"

The way he looked at me, as if I were his whole world, made something twist in my chest. Not longing. Irony.

He had just been discussing his goomah with his associates, and now here he was, wearing that mask of perfect devotion without so much as a flicker of guilt.

I found myself almost curious. How far could his lies go?

"Nothing. What were you all talking about just now?"

Dante pinched my cheek with practiced ease, his smile dripping with affection.

"Just some business with the shipping routes. I know you hate shop talk, so we switched to French."

He must have been so lost in his affair lately that he'd forgotten I spent a semester in France as an exchange student in college.

The air around me thickened until I couldn't breathe. I pushed him away.

"Keep chatting. I'm going to step out for some air."

I didn't wait for his answer. I walked straight toward the ballroom doors. Two of his soldiers stepped aside as I passed, heads dipped, hands clasped in front of them. Even their deference felt like a cage.

All the way there, I could hear people whispering as I passed.

"That's the Don's wife. God, what a life. Their union was the talk of every Family between here and Sicily, and every single anniversary he throws her another feast night. Must be nice."

"Right? How come I never meet a man like that."

There was a time when hearing people envy what Dante and I had would have filled me with warmth. Now I felt nothing at all.

Nobody knew that Dante Romano, the man the world believed loved me more than life itself, had already betrayed me.

Just yesterday, I'd planned to give him his anniversary gift early. I snuck into his office at the back of the estate without telling anyone, wanting to surprise him.

I was dozing off inside the storage closet when the sounds of heavy breathing jolted me awake.

I opened my eyes and saw Dante, the man who had sworn I was the only woman he would ever love, pressing his courier Adriana Russo against the floor-to-ceiling window. Two bare bodies leaving streaks across the polished glass. Beyond them, the courtyard lights of the compound burned steady and indifferent, as though the Family's world would keep turning no matter what he destroyed inside it.

They spent three hours in that office before they finally dressed and left.

Those three hours. I couldn't tell you how I survived them.

All I remembered was the shift from devastation to numbness.

The moment I walked out of that building, I knew my blood-bound union with Dante Romano was over.

A ringtone pulled me out of the memory. My thumb drifted to the pale mark where my wedding band used to rest.

"Bianca Bellafiore, I've submitted your name to the Archive. They'll send someone to pick you up in three days."

"Use the time to say your goodbyes to your family."

The word family made my grip tighten around the phone.

After my parents died in an accident four years ago, the only family I had left was Dante.

And now that he had cheated, he wasn't my family anymore either.