Therapy sessions with specialists flown in from Milan. Experimental treatments that cost more than most men earned in a lifetime. Comfort food prepared by my own hands in the massive kitchen while the cook watched in bewilderment. I dragged him to shows and performances, anything to crack that frozen exterior. I laughed until my sides ached at a comedy club downtown, tears streaming down my face.
He sat beside me, rigid and silent as a tombstone.
It wasn't until the night he proposed that he seemed to summon every ounce of willpower he possessed—just to force two words past his lips.
"Marry me."
The joy I felt then was equal to the devastation I felt now.
Of course I couldn't cure Nico's mutism. I was never the cure. I was the bandage slapped over a wound that belonged to someone else.
Bitterness pooled in my chest like poison, followed by a creeping dread that wrapped around my throat: his cure had returned. Massima Gallo had crawled back from her European exile, and she had come to reclaim what she believed was hers.
So where did that leave me?
My hands clenched into fists, nails biting into my palms until I felt the sting of broken skin. A stubborn resolve rose within me, burning through the despair.
If Nico didn't love me, there was no reason to keep drowning in this blood-bound union.
He would never dissolve our marriage. In our world, such things simply weren't done. A blood oath was sacred, unbreakable—the foundation upon which empires were built and destroyed. No Volpe had ever broken a marriage bond. The shame would be unthinkable.
But what about me?
What about a Mancini woman who had already sacrificed everything?
Fine.
I would break the oath myself. I would file for dissolution of the blood bond—an almost unheard-of act of defiance—and set him free to be with his precious cure.
Once I made up my mind, something shifted inside me. The weight that had pressed against my chest for months lifted, just slightly. Three years ago, I had given up my place in the Family's underground medical network for him. I had been one of the most promising young surgeons in our world, trained to patch up soldiers and capos, to perform operations that could never see the light of legitimate hospitals.
I had walked away from all of it. For him.