The engine turned over. The headlights swept across the wet lot. And as the car began to pull away, Cara rolled down the passenger window. Rain spattered against the glass. Through the opening, her eyes found mine across the dark, wet distance.
She had known I was there.
She had known, and she had kissed him anyway.
Cara Valente held my gaze, and her lips curved into a smug, taunting look, and she said, loud enough to carry over the rain:
"Olivia, you've lost."
The car rolled forward. The window stayed down for another beat, long enough for her to see my face, long enough for her to collect whatever satisfaction she'd come for. Then the glass slid up, and the black sedan turned toward the parking lot exit.
I stood in the rain and watched the taillights blur.
And something happened that I did not expect. A strange calm washed over me. Not numbness. Not shock. Something quieter and more deliberate than either. The kind of calm that arrives when you stop fighting the current and let it carry you somewhere new.
I smiled and shook my head.
"It's okay, Olivia," I said to myself. My voice was steady. The rain ran down my face and I let it.
Then, I whispered, "He's just a man, nothing more."
Just a man. A Capo in the Moretti crime family, yes. A man whose name made other men lower their eyes. A man who carried a gun beneath his jacket and the Don's trust in his pocket. But underneath all of it, underneath the rank and the territory and the blood-bound oaths, he was just a man. And a man who could stand in the rain kissing another woman while his pregnant wife watched from thirty feet away was not a man worth keeping.
The sedan turned the corner. The taillights disappeared.
I raised my hand and waved at the empty road.
"Dante, I don't want you anymore. You're hers."
My voice didn't break. My hand didn't tremble. I said it the way you say something that has already been decided, something that only needed the words to make it real.
In that decisive moment, standing under the hospital awning with the rain hammering the concrete around me, I took out my phone. The screen glowed in the dark. My fingers were wet, and I had to wipe them on my coat before the touchscreen would respond. I opened my messages and began composing.