The Gift I Bought Him Had Another Woman’s Name

Their playful, almost flirty exchange twisted my stomach, leaving me queasy. Every note of easy intimacy between them was a blade drawn slowly across something I was still pretending was whole.

Noticing my discomfort, Serena quickly explained, "Oh, I'm sorry! Don't get the wrong idea. Dominic and I have been friends forever. This is just how we are."

"If anything were going to happen between us, we'd have been married years ago," she added with an exaggerated grin.

I turned to Dominic, hoping he'd have the same playful expression as Serena, but instead his face showed a hint of something like regret—a flicker so brief it might have been a trick of the morning light sliding off the windshield. Just as quickly, his expression turned stern, his jaw tightening the way it did before he gave an order he expected obeyed without repetition.

"Can't figure out the back seat?" he snapped. "Get in. We don't have all day."

As I slid into the back, Dominic barely glanced in the rearview mirror, his face hardening into an expression I barely recognized. Serena settled comfortably in the passenger seat, one hand resting on the center console as though she belonged there—as though the arrangement between our Families was an inconvenient detail she had long ago decided not to take seriously. I closed my eyes, brushing off the unease weighing me down, and pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger until the pressure stung.

Then my favorite love song from decades past started playing through the speakers—a melody that had been popular long before I was born, one I'd often heard drifting through the windows at community festivals along the waterfront, and even at weddings held in the small stone church near my father's villa.

"Oh my God, you listen to this?" Serena scoffed, reaching for the console and killing the music with a sharp tap. She cast a look of undisguised disgust toward Dominic. "Only people from nowhere listen to this kind of thing. We're supposed to have taste. This is the opposite of taste. Ever thought about something from this century? Anything?"

Dominic chuckled. "Bianca picked everything in there," he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. "She's a coastal girl, anyway. Doubt she'd know what passes for taste in the city."

My nails dug into my palms. Yes, I was a coastal girl, raised in the simplicity of salt air and fishing boats and a father who kept honest books for powerful men. I didn't have a grasp on the rituals of the main city territory, its private clubs and velvet-rope restaurants and the particular cruelty of people who had been rich long enough to make elegance feel like a weapon. I remembered how people had laughed at me during the university dinner hosted by the Bellandi network when I used a spoon to eat my salad. Dominic had taken it from me quietly, replaced it with a fork, and told me not to care what people thought. He'd said that the way a person eats has nothing to do with character. That night, I'd learned just how cruel the world could be. But I hadn't cared back then, because I believed I could be myself around him.

Now I was being myself, and the words coastal girl rolled off his tongue like an accusation. I didn't blame him for feeling differently. I only resented how time could twist things so easily. His protection had once felt real, and now, so did his betrayal.

Maybe I'd stayed silent for too long.

Dominic's lips pressed together in irritation. He caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, and for one instant the glass held both our reflections—his hardening, mine already hollow. "What's with the attitude? You're mad again just because of a song?"