I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn't angry. That anger would have required me to still believe this was something worth fighting for. But he let out a scoff before the first word left my lips.
"You know I can't stand women being dramatic. Olivia, you're being out of line." The disgust in his voice was real. The dismay, too. He genuinely believed I was the unreasonable one. Seven years, and he had never once considered that my silence might be something other than compliance.
He stormed into his study. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame, and the sound echoed through the empty hallway of a house that had never once felt like a home.
In our seven years together, he was always the first to give the silent treatment. Always. And every single time, I had humbled myself. Knocked on that study door. Apologized for sins I hadn't committed. Made it up to him with patience and softness and the quiet erosion of my own dignity, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left to erode.
But this time, I just raised an eyebrow in the dark and turned off the bedside lamp.
He stayed in the study all night.
For the first time, he didn't hear a single knock on the door.
The next morning, I made breakfast for both of us, the way I always had. Eggs the way he liked them. Coffee strong enough to strip paint, the way every man in this world seemed to need it. I finished eating my portion and was reaching for my coat when he came out of the study.
He was on his phone. He didn't look up. His silver lighter sat motionless in his free hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, not rolling. Just still.
"Take the day off," he said, in the voice he used to issue orders to his Capos. "By five o'clock, I need you to make me an identical fondant cake."
Every year since Dominic Sloane had taken me into his world, I'd baked his birthday cake by hand. Seven years of flour-dusted countertops and buttercream under my nails, seven years of fondant smoothed with fingers that knew his preferences better than he did.
When I glanced at the screen of his phone, I knew right then who it was for again.
That little cartoon avatar. Penelope Vitale's profile picture, bright and girlish against the cold glass of a phone that rarely lit up for me.