The Day He Left Me in the Snow, My Love Died

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Dante snapped. "Have you ever heard of privacy?"

Privacy.

The word was so absurd that it almost made me laugh again. Privacy, from the man whose soldiers swept the house for listening devices every Tuesday. Privacy, in a marriage that had been negotiated between two Families over a Sunday dinner neither bride nor groom had been invited to.

I struggled to push myself up from the floor, my voice shaking with anger.

"Privacy? What about boundaries?" I shot back. "You're letting Serafina's son call you Dad. Then what is our baby supposed to be?"

Dante's face remained cold.

"Oh, come on. It's just a godfather thing. Why do you have to turn everything into a problem?"

He stood there, looking down at me.

He didn't reach out.

He didn't ask if I was hurt.

He didn't even glance at my stomach.

There was only impatience in his eyes, as if I were some unreasonable burden he had been forced to deal with.

"It's not like I'm leaving you to marry Serafina," he said. "Isn't that enough for you?"

His words hit me harder than the shove.

Enough?

So I was supposed to be grateful that he hadn't abandoned me completely. I was supposed to accept that my husband could answer another woman's every call, let her child call him Dad, change his cipher to the date she returned, and still expect me to stay quiet because he had not officially severed our alliance marriage yet.

For a second, my mind drifted back to three years ago.

Back then, when Dante proposed to me at the Bellandi estate garden with my father's ring still warm from his handshake, his eyes had been full of warmth. He had looked at me like I was the only person he could see. Every word he spoke had been tender enough to make me believe in a lifetime.

But now, he looked at me with nothing but disdain.

As if I were something troublesome.

As if I were something he wished he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe.

I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, his phone rang again.

I glanced at the screen.

Serafina.

No.

Not Serafina.

He had saved her contact under an unbearably intimate nickname.

Fina mia.

The sight of it made my chest tighten.

Dante picked up without hesitation, completely unbothered by the fact that I was still sitting on the floor.

Serafina's soft, delicate voice came through the phone.

"Hey, Dante. Sorry to bother you again, but Matteo's been fussy all night. He says he misses his Daddy Dante and wants you to come read him a bedtime story."

The anger on Dante's face disappeared instantly.

His eyes softened.

His expression lit up like a child who had just received the gift he wanted most.

"Aww, isn't he a cute boy?" he said, his voice full of affection. "How can I let him down?"

He was already turning toward the closet.

"Alright, I'll be right there. Wait for me, Matteo. Daddy's on the way."

Daddy.

The word made my stomach twist.

"Dante!"

My voice trembled as I called out to him.

He paused at the door, impatiently looking back.

I swallowed the bitterness in my throat and said, almost pleading, "Please don't go. Stay with me tonight. When you pushed me just now, I sprained my ankle."

It was true.

My ankle throbbed with every tiny movement, the pain shooting up my leg like needles. My stomach still ached faintly too, and fear sat heavy in my chest. My thumb drifted to my left ring finger, pressing the band against the bone as if the pressure could hold something together.

But Dante only glanced at me with disgust.