I could still feel where my body had emptied itself three days ago. I could still feel the absence. And here was my husband, the man who had built his entire empire on the name I gave him, wrapped around the woman who had put me on that floor.
I spun around and ran out of the hospital. I grabbed the tree by the entrance and threw up until there was nothing left. My knees buckled against the trunk and I stayed there, bent over, my forehead pressed against the bark, breathing in gasps that tasted like bile and cold air. A black sedan idled at the curb. Rossetti plates. The driver glanced at me without recognition and went back to his phone.
I never imagined the man I'd loved all these years could be this person.
The moment I got home, I went straight for my documents. The marriage certificate. The formal alliance papers. Every piece of evidence that bound the Valente name to the Rossetti Family.
I was going to end this. Formally. Irrevocably. A severance of the blood-alliance so complete that every territory, every arrangement, every ounce of protection the Valente name had ever extended to Tomasso Rossetti would be withdrawn in a single stroke.
When my parents had returned to Monaco, I'd stayed behind for Tomasso. I had chosen him over the Family. Over the compound. Over my mother's steepled fingers and my father's single tap of his signet ring that meant the conversation was over.
Now it was time to go.
