He walked me through the darkness. He married me in a quiet ceremony with no witnesses and no celebration. I thought, perhaps, that this was enough. That loyalty, even cold loyalty, could be enough.
But he was ice after the wedding. Distant. Cruel in his silence. I told myself he regretted the union. I told myself the absence of an heir weighed on him, that the empty nursery in the Monreale estate was the wound between us.
Until the night of the ambush.
A car bomb meant for both of us detonated on the Via Oscura. I was thrown into the wreckage, my ribs shattered, my blood pooling on the cobblestones. Rosalia had been in the trailing car. She suffered a scratch on her forearm. Nothing more.
Salvatore stepped over my dying body to reach her.
I bled out on the street, and as my soul drifted, untethered and howling, I learned the truth. My entire life had been a game. A cruel, coordinated performance staged by three players who had written their scripts long before I ever learned the rules. Giancarlo. Salvatore. Rosalia. They had already drafted their wills, every cent of their combined empires left to her. Every territory. Every safe house. Every laundered dollar.