Since discovering Dante's affair, I hadn't told a soul. Not my mother. Not a single friend. The secret felt like poison, slowly eating away at me from the inside. In the world I'd married into, silence was survival. Omertà wasn't just for the men. It was for the women too, the wives who smiled at Sunday dinners and pretended they didn't know where the money came from or where their husbands went at night. But the kindness of a stranger, a man with no Family connections, no angle, no loyalty owed to anyone, felt like a fresh breath of air, pulling me back from the abyss.
I gently closed the car door, offering him a small smile. "Don't worry, Sir. No one can hurt me anymore."
I rested my hand on my belly, where my daughter shifted and turned.
"Because I'm ready to throw the trash where it belongs."
I hid behind a pillar in the hospital lobby, watching my husband.