The photographs came next. Framed moments of a life curated for appearances—overseas trips disguised as business, birthdays celebrated behind guarded doors, mornings spent tangled in sheets while the city slept below us. In every picture, we smiled. We looked invincible. Looking at them now turned my stomach. Each image was proof of how much I’d ignored, how many warning signs I’d explained away in the name of love.
It stopped mattering after that. Rocco didn’t come back. Days turned into weeks, and his absence became routine. I drowned myself in work—designing gowns for powerful women who married into crime families, preparing for my own bond ceremony like it was just another contract to be finalized. During the day, I functioned. At night, I returned to the penthouse and continued erasing us, item by item, until the grief hollowed me out and left nothing but numbness behind.
Eventually, even that pain dulled.