Chapter 7

By noon, the video was inescapable.

My phone vibrated against the tile, a relentless, buzzing indictment. I sat huddled on the floor of the bathroom, my gaze fixed upon it.

The title read: Mafia Wife Fakes Illness After Husband's Affair Exposed.

The comments were vicious, a venomous torrent that scrolled past too quickly to be read in full.

Look at her, she looks like a zombie.

She deserves it for trapping Dante.

Team Sofia.

Gold digger.

When he was poor, she dumped him. Now that he's rich, she married him.

Then, a notification popped up at the crest of the screen, arresting the feed.

A statement from the Outfit. From Dante.

My heart gave a painful thud against the cage of my ribs.

I clicked it, my fingers betraying a slight tremor.

It wasn't an apology. It wasn't a declaration of love.

It was a declaration not of affection, but of ownership.

Elena Vitiello is my wife. Anyone who harasses her answers to me. The press is barred from the premises. Trespassers will be dealt with.

That was it.

He didn't deny the affair. He didn't care about my health.

He just didn't want his property damaged by strangers.

I turned off the phone and let it fall, its clatter echoing on the tiles. I leaned my head against the cold porcelain of the bathtub, allowing the cold to leech the warmth from my skull.

My mind drifted back through the fog of my present misery.

Ten years ago.

The doctor's office was redolent of bleach and a lingering fear.

My mother was sitting on the exam table.

She was so thin, her frame as delicate as a bird's beneath the thin paper gown.

That year, she was diagnosed with a terminal illness. The doctor said the hereditary probability was very high.

Not only could I fall seriously ill at any time, but if I married and had children, they wouldn't be spared either.

"Mom," I had said, my own voice unsteady. "I'm going to tell Dante. He loves me. He'll help us."

My mother grabbed my hand. "No, Elena."

"Why?"

"Because your father knows," she whispered, her eyes wide with a primal terror.

"He knows you're seeing that soldier," she said. "He told me last night. If you stay with Dante, your father will kill him."

I felt the blood drain from my face, chilling me to the bone. "He wouldn't."

"He would. He wants you to marry a Made Man from New York. He needs the alliance far more than he values your happiness. He said if Dante comes near you again, he'll put a bullet in his head."

I started to cry, hot tears coursing down my cheeks. "Mom, I love him. And he loves me."

"Then save him," she said, her voice acquiring an edge of steel. She looked me square in the eye. "Break his heart, Elena. Make him hate you. It's the only way he'll stay away."

"It's the only way he'll live long enough to become something."

I remembered the look on Dante's face when I told him he was too poor for me, that his station was beneath my own.

I remembered the light dying in his eyes, extinguished as if by a sudden, violent gust. I remembered watching him walk away in the rain, his shoulders hunched beneath the weight of my calculated betrayal.

I had saved his life.

And in return, he was killing mine.

I had done my job too well. He had lived. He had become the King.

And now he was burying the girl who saved him, one shovel of dirt at a time.