Love Is Wrong, Only Letting Go Is Right

I went back to pack my stuff.

The Luciano estate was quieter than it had any right to be at midday. The soldiers who usually flanked the foyer had been pulled to the back of the house, either on Don Luciano's orders or because someone had decided my departure should happen without witnesses. The hallway still smelled of the morning's espresso and the faint undertone of cedar that clung to every room, seeping out of the old furniture like a memory that refused to leave even when the people did.

Looking around the luxurious bedroom, it seemed untouched by my departure, unchanged. The heavy curtains, the Carrara marble nightstand, the crucifix above the headboard that Elena Luciano had hung the week I moved in, a blessing or a warning, I was never sure which. Nothing in this room had bent to accommodate me, and nothing bent now that I was leaving.

Our wedding photo was still hanging on the wall.

Looking at it now, his smile frozen in the frame seemed a bit forced. I could see it clearly for the first time, the stiffness in his jaw, the way his hand rested on my waist like it was holding a door open for someone who would arrive later. Viviana had been at the reception. I remembered that now. She had worn white too, a slip dress the color of cream, and no one had said a word.

Everything felt like it had circled back to that afternoon after I was brought before the Family. My aunt, Bellandi Bellandi, had arranged it. She had lined up her holy cards on the kitchen table, straightened every edge until the saints looked like soldiers at attention, and then told me the Lucianos would take me in, that it was the safest place for a girl with no parents and a sick Blackwood and debts that no honest job could touch. I had been suddenly thrust into this lavish estate, where I felt completely out of place, a charity case dressed in someone else's clothes, sitting at a table where the silverware had more history than I did.

Dante had just returned from a ski trip abroad with Viviana. He looked at me then like I was a sideshow attraction, something curious and vaguely inconvenient that his father had dragged home. He had not changed. He had only gotten better at hiding the look.

Now, nearing thirty, I found myself single again.

I folded the last of my clothes into the suitcase, left the wedding bracelet on the nightstand beside the lamp, and walked out without looking back. The front door closed behind me with a sound that was quieter than it should have been, as though the house itself was relieved.

That night, I ended up at a bar downtown, a narrow place on neutral ground between the Luciano and Valente territories, the kind of establishment where no crew ran tabs and the bartender forgot faces on purpose. I drank until I was utterly wasted, glass after glass of something amber and burning that I never bothered to name.

Nina set down her glass, tapped a pen twice against her knuckle, a habit she carried even off the clock, and then patted my shoulder with the frankness of an outsider who had earned the right to be blunt.

"Honestly, Dante never had a place for you in his heart. If you ask me, this severance was long overdue. But I really have to congratulate you. You've got a whole new life ahead now."

I raised my glass and downed it in one go, silently echoing her words: protect your sanity, steer clear of toxic men. The liquor hit the back of my throat like a small fire, and for one merciful second, it was the only thing I felt.

I walked away from the Luciano Family's front operations, saying goodbye to Don Luciano, who had always treated me like his own daughter. He received me in his study, rosary threaded through his fingers, and he did not try to change my mind, but his silence carried the particular weight of a man who understood that his son had wasted something valuable. He offered me a generous share, fifty percent of the shell stakes tied to the family's legitimate business holdings, as compensation.

I declined.

Who would've thought I'd run into Dante as soon as I stepped out of the study, the door barely closed behind me, his shadow already filling the corridor like something I was never meant to outrun.