My hands clenched tightly at my sides, nails digging into my palms. Dante said it so easily. Dissolution. As if it were nothing more than a casual decision. As if the ten years we had spent together, the years I had given him, the years I had built my life around him, meant absolutely nothing. As if the blood-bound marriage sanctioned before Salvatore and the Family could simply be waved away for a woman who smoothed her thumbnail across her lower lip and waited for him to crumble.
I didn't stay to hear anything more.
There was nothing left worth hearing.
He had never once called me by a nickname, not even in private moments when the world outside didn't matter. Always "Adriana." Polite. Distant. Formal to the point of coldness. Even in bed, he treated it like an obligation, something to be completed efficiently rather than shared. There was never warmth, never closeness.
I had always been the one reaching out.
The one trying.
The one convincing myself that if I just held on a little longer, he would eventually meet me halfway.
For ten years, that was the story of us.