He thought I was finally learning. I was finally leaving. Chapter 09
It wasn’t as if I had never fought with Adriano over things like that.
I had. More than once. But every time, he answered the same way-calm, dismissive, certain he was the reasonable one.
“Serafina, don’t be petty. It’s only a drink.”
“She works for me. If I reward her, that’s my business.”
“You’re my wife. Act like it.”
Back then, I swallowed every slight because he always wrapped it in the same excuse: this is for your
own good. For a long time, remembering it made me angry. Now it only made me tired. I could hardly
believe I had once been so easy to control.
After I told him I hated bergamot, Adriano went still.
Then panic flickered across his face. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I remembered wrong. Then tell me what you like.”
I checked the files on the desk and said without looking up, “There’s no need.”
But Adriano didn’t know how to stop once he decided he wanted something back.
After that morning, Adriano kept sending gifts.
First came a pearl-grip Beretta in a lacquered case, the kind of thing meant to look elegant and dangerous at the same time. Then a bottle of black orchid extrait so dense it sat in my throat like smoke. A few days later, an ivory crocodile evening clutch arrived, all gold hardware and sharp corners, beautiful in the way expensive things often are when no one has asked whether they should exist.
Every few days there was something new, always costly, always carefully packaged, and never once
anything I would have chosen for myself.
I found myself wondering how a man could run an empire and still fail at the simplest act of listening.
I got my answer at the end of the week.
We were packing the last of the files when Adriano stepped in front of me holding a velvet box, looking
almost pleased with himself.
“This one,” he said, “you’ll like.”
He started to open it, but I stopped him.
“It’s the rose-gold watch from Laurent Veyne’s winter collection, isn’t it?”
He blinked, then smiled in surprise. “See? We do know each other. How did you guess?”
“Because Viviana posted it on her private account two months ago and called it the one thing she still
wanted before the end of the year.”
His smile faltered.
“Just like the pistol,” I said. “The perfume that turned my stomach. The clutch I would never carry.”
The color drained from his face.
Only then, I think, did he realize what he had been doing. He had been trying to win me back with another woman’s taste so naturally it had never even occurred to him to question it.
I looked at him for a moment, then said, “You know what she likes without thinking. So why not let me go and give her the place she’s been standing in all along?”
His answer came too quickly.
“Because she has nothing real to offer me,” he said. “She wants access, status, proximity. That’s all. How
could I ever build a life with someone like that?”
Something in me went cold.
In that instant, I understood him better than I ever had. Viviana was useful to him. I had been necessary. And in his mind, that distinction was supposed to mean something noble.
“So that’s what you thought,” I said. “That I stayed because I loved you too much to leave. That when I refused your gifts, I was only trying to make you chase me harder.”
Panic began to show in his face.
“You’re wrong, Adriano.”
I stepped closer.
“I didn’t marry you for love alone. I married you because your name opened doors no one else could. Your doctors, your clinics, your money-those were the things I thought would keep me safe.”
His breathing changed.
“That was the bargain, whether you admitted it or not. I gave you loyalty and silence. You gave me
protection.”
I held his eyes.
“The child is gone now. So is any reason for me to stay.”
His face went white.
“Serafina-”
“I don’t need your gifts,” I said. “I don’t need your name. And I don’t love you anymore.”