Chapter 5

It was the ultimate betrayal.

Omertà-the sacred code of silence-was the bedrock of our existence.

Wives didn't dial 911.

We bled in private. We died in silence.

But the canary was already dead.

I wasn't a Mafia wife anymore. I was a liability.

A victim.

The operator's voice crackled through the line, a beacon from a world I was forbidden to touch.

"911, what is your emergency?"

I opened my mouth to speak, to shatter the code.

A hand slammed down on the receiver, severing the connection with a violence that rattled the base.

I looked up.

Ethan loomed over me.

His face was a mask of cold, unadulterated fury.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" he hissed, his voice low and dangerous.

"I'm calling the police, Ethan. Your mistress tried to kill me."

"She isn't my mistress."

"She pushed me down the stairs!"

"She said you fell."

"And you believe her?" I asked, my voice rising, cracking under the weight of his betrayal. "You deleted the footage, Ethan. I heard you. You wiped the servers before you even checked if I was still breathing."

"I did what I had to do to protect the Family," he said, the capitalization audible in his tone.

The Family.

Always the Family.

"If the cops get involved, they will dig into everything, Aurora. The business. The offshore accounts. You would bring down the entire empire over a domestic accident."

Domestic accident.

That's what I was to him now.

An inconvenience. A loose end.

"Give me the phone, Ethan."

He didn't hand it over. Instead, he yanked the cord out of the wall, plaster dust falling to the floor.

"You are hysterical. It's the concussion talking."

He shoved the disconnected phone into his pocket.

I stared at him, trying to find the man I married.

This man had killed for me before.

He had once broken a man's fingers just for looking at me the wrong way in a club.

But when the threat came from inside his own house, born of his own sins, he was paralyzed.

"You are my husband," I whispered, the word tasting like ash. "You swore to protect me."

"I am protecting you," he said, his voice flat, devoid of warmth. "I have guards posted outside the door. No one gets in."

"Except you," I said.

A muscle feathered in his jaw. He flinched, just barely.

"I need to go," he said, straightening his jacket, adjusting his cuffs as if this were a business transaction. "The Commission is asking questions about the ambulance dispatch. I have to spin this before it gets out of hand."

He turned and walked to the door.

"Ethan."

He stopped, his hand hovering over the brass knob.

"If you walk out that door, don't come back."

He didn't turn around.

"Rest, Aurora. We will talk when you are rational."

The door clicked shut.

The silence that followed was heavier than the plaster cast on my leg. It was suffocating.

He chose her.

Again.

And in that crushing silence, the last flickering ember of love I held for Ethan Bruce finally sputtered and died.

I didn't cry.

Soldiers don't weep on the battlefield.

And I was at war.