When The Mafia Marriage Contract Expires

Aria's POV

My father's hand is cold.

I hold it anyway, pressing his thick, calloused fingers between my palms as if I can push warmth back into his body. The heart monitor above his bed screams a single, endless note. That sound-that flat, unwavering tone-drives into my skull like a rusted nail.

I was too late.

The nurse reaches past me and silences the machine. The sudden quiet is worse. Much worse.

My mother collapses into the plastic chair by the window, her sobs muffled behind trembling hands. I should go to her. I should cry. I should do something other than stare at my father's wedding band catching the harsh fluorescent light.

But I can't move. I can't cry. I can only replay the last hour in my head, searching for the moment I should have been faster.

I called Zane from the hospital hallway. My fingers were shaking so hard I misdialed twice.

He picked up on the second ring. Loud music pulsed in the background. That same damnable waltz from the gala.

"Zane, my father is dying. I need a car. I need to go to the hospital right now. Please."

"I am in the middle of entertaining our southern allies, Aria." His voice was ice. Impatient. Like I'd interrupted him during a business meeting to complain about the weather. "Stop being dramatic. Call Rocco."

The line went dead.

Through the receiver, in the split second before he hung up, I heard a woman's laugh. High and bright and unmistakably Vivianna's.

He was dancing with her. While my father's lungs filled with blood, my husband was waltzing with his mistress.

I called Rocco. He drove me to the hospital at ninety miles an hour. Still not fast enough.

Now I sit holding a dead man's hand, and the only thing I can feel is the cold, hard weight of absolute clarity settling into my bones.

Three years. Three years of cooking his meals and warming his bed and smiling at his business associates. Three years of convincing myself that if I was just patient enough, good enough, invisible enough, he would eventually see me.

He was never going to see me. I was never his wife. I was a signed contract in a designer dress.

Zane does not come to the hospital that night. He does not call.

The following evening, I'm sitting on the living room sofa in the dark when the front door opens. He walks in, still in his tailored suit from whatever meeting he deemed more important than my father's death. He turns on the lights.

"Why did you not follow protocol and inform me through the proper channels?"

His voice is cold. Annoyed. Like I'm an employee who misfiled a report.

I look up at him. My throat is raw, my voice barely a rasp. "I called you, Zane. I told you he was dying."

He dismisses this with a wave of his hand-a gesture so casual, so utterly devoid of empathy, that something inside me finally goes quiet.

"I was in the middle of securing a critical alliance on the dance floor. You cannot interrupt syndicate business for family matters."

He doesn't offer condolences. Doesn't ask how I'm holding up. "My men will handle the funeral expenses," he says, already turning away. "I expect you to be presentable."

The funeral is held two days later under a sky the color of bruised steel.

Rain hammers the black umbrellas of the gathered mourners. Armed guards ring the cemetery, their faces carved from stone. I stand beside my mother, gripping her arm to keep her upright, feeling the tremors running through her frail body.

Zane stands beside me. A dark, towering presence casting a shadow even in this gloom. He hasn't touched me once. Hasn't looked at me.

Thirty minutes into the service, his phone vibrates.

He pulls it out. I see the screen. Vivianna's name. A photo of her-the one she uses for her contact image, all pouting lips and bedroom eyes.

Zane steps back from my father's grave.

"I have to go," he says to Rocco, not to me. "Secure the perimeter until they are done here."

He turns and walks away. His broad back disappears into the black SUV. The taillights bleed red through the downpour, and then they're gone.

He left his grieving wife at her father's funeral to answer a call from another woman.

My mother's sobs fade into the background. The rain blurs the headstones. And all I can hear, clear as a bell, is a voice in my head repeating four words: You deserve better than this.

I don't go straight home after the funeral. I have Rocco drop me at the Plaza Hotel.

The Annual Syndicate Gala is in full swing when I walk through the grand ballroom doors. Nobody notices me at first-I'm still in my funeral black, my hair damp from the rain, my eyes hollow from two days without sleep.

But then I see them.

Zane is dancing with Vivianna. His hand rests on the bare skin of her lower back. She's wearing a backless red gown that clings to every curve, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders. They move together like they've done this a thousand times. Like they belong together.

The room watches. The soldiers. The wives. Their eyes flick between the dancing couple and me-the little wife in her funeral dress, standing alone by the marble pillars.

"Look at the Donna."

"She's just a debt payment."

"Vivianna is the real queen of this syndicate."

The words drift through the crowd like smoke. But they don't hurt anymore. The part of me that could be hurt by them is gone.

I watch Zane's hand slide lower on Vivianna's back. I watch her laugh at something he whispers in her ear. I watch my husband publicly humiliate me on the same day I buried my father.

And I feel nothing.

No. That's not quite true. I feel something new-something cold and clean and terrifyingly calm. It settles over my skin like a second layer of ice.

I think about the seventeen-year-old girl who used to dream about Zane Falcone. About the naive hope I held onto for three years. About the birthday dinners and anniversary dinners and all the empty chairs across all the empty tables.

That girl is dead. She died in a hospital room, holding her father's cold hand, while her husband waltzed with his mistress.

A switch flips inside my chest. I don't cry. I don't scream. I simply turn around, walk out of the ballroom, and step into the cold New York night.

I know what I have to do.