He Traded My Pain for Another Woman’s Smile

The room erupted in cheers, every glass lifted in the warm gold light.

"Then let's raise a toast to Dario and his bride, ahead of the wedding!"

Inside, the gathering blazed with noise and heat, the sound of a family already celebrating a union that had nothing to do with me.

I felt like I'd been dropped into a block of ice.

I don't know how long I stood there in the cold outside the glass. When I came back to myself, everything in front of me had blurred.

My fingers were stiff with cold. I typed it out, one letter at a time.

【Let's call off the alliance.】

Inside, a message tone chimed.

Dario picked up his phone, glanced at it, and sent back a voice message.

"Ma, Pa, I've got business to close out here that can't wait. I really can't make it home today."

"Yeah, yeah, once I've got my return date settled I'll send word."

He set the phone down and did nothing else.

It took a moment for it to sink in.

Not only was I not pinned to the top of his messages, he'd buried me under Do Not Disturb.

A thousand miles of contested ground between us, and he'd often let a whole day pass before answering me.

I'd always told myself he was just buried in the work of building his own crew.

I never imagined the truth was simpler than that. He just couldn't be bothered to deal with me.

Tears dropped onto the screen, one after another.

I couldn't let it go. I dialed his number.

This time Dario looked at the phone.

He only silenced it, then tossed it back onto the table like something that meant nothing.

He pretended he hadn't seen a thing, pulling out a deck of cards and dealing them around the table.

"Who was that?"

"Bianca. Calls me every single day. Drives me out of my mind." He laughed a half-beat too early at his own words, his thumb turning the ring on his finger.

Someone asked, puzzled:

"Then why not just cut her off?"

Dario's hands never stopped moving over the cards, his tone careless.

"Cut her off and she'll bury my phone in messages. I'll leave her hanging, then tell her later I was too tied up with business to notice."

"Ha, that's our Dario. Got the Falcone girl wrapped around his finger, blood pact and all."

I couldn't listen to another word.

I stumbled away from the window, the laughter of the Moretti house fading behind me.

The New Year was almost here, and the streets of the old neighborhood were alive with celebration.

Twos and threes, clusters of families everywhere, warm windows on every block.

I dragged my suitcase along with no destination, like something that didn't belong to any house at all.

A young couple passed me, carrying big bags of groceries.

One long scarf wound around them both, binding them close together.

The girl looked a little worried.

"It's just the two of us tonight. Can we really pull off a proper dinner?"

The boy patted her head.

"If not, we'll send out for something. As long as we're together, it doesn't matter what we eat."

Before I drove all those hours to get here, the picture in my head had looked exactly like that.

I truly couldn't understand it.

Why Dario would treat me this way.

Not so long ago, the two of us had been so good together. So good.

I'm twenty-eight this year, and we've known each other for twenty-eight years, two bloodlines meant to be joined since before either of us could walk.

At four, our first day at school, he grabbed my hand.

"Bianca, when we play house, I only want you to be my wife."

At twelve, too young to understand love, he'd rush to my side the second the bell rang.

An age when nothing mattered more than saving face in front of the other boys, and yet he let their teasing roll right off him.

At fifteen, deep in puberty, his face broke out, his grades at the bottom of the class, his father the old boss ashamed of him, and he sank into doubt and self-loathing.

"Bianca, what do I do? Do I even have a future in this life?"

I held his hand and, pretending it was nothing, told him the thing I'd buried at the bottom of my heart.

"Back then, I really wanted to die."

"But once I got through it, I realized it wasn't the end of the world. You have to keep fighting too."

The shock and heartbreak in Dario's eyes, and the way he pulled me in and sobbed his heart out once it hit him. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

On my eighteenth birthday, the moment the clock passed midnight, he made his promise to me.

"Bianca, I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

Later, we both went up to the Capital.

He took the South Side, I took the North Side.

A four-hour trip each way through territory that wasn't always safe, and week after week he made it, never once complaining, just to lay eyes on me.