Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 10

Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 10

He held my face in both hands and kissed my eyelids, carefully, as though they were something that

could be broken.

I knew they were happy tears.

One week later was our wedding.

That knowledge made everything else quieter.

When the past came up now, it had the texture of a very long dream. Dante’s name, Camilla’s name, catching them in passing conversation produced nothing in me but a faint, distant unreality.

No love. No hatred. Only the cleanest kind of peace.

Whatever those years had been, they would dissolve with time.

But I hadn’t anticipated the last piece of news about Dante.

His death.

I can’t claim I was completely unsurprised. I knew what his life had looked like since the split:

isolated, purposeless, the organization reduced to dust around him. But I hadn’t thought he would

die.

A mutual acquaintance sent me a news clip.

Raphael had kept Camilla under surveillance. It hadn’t been enough. She had slipped out of the slum, unrecognizable and hollowed out. The woman who had once filled every room she entered was gone. Her voice had gone hoarse and rough. When she found Dante, she had to say his name

three times before he registered who she was.

Someone on the street filmed it. It made the news.

Dante had been walking toward a departure gate. Camilla threw herself at him. He pushed her away,

the old fire briefly visible in him, and then the argument broke open.

Her voice, already cracked, pitching higher: “Why won’t you take me back? You were supposed to. I

was supposed to be the Donna. I was supposed to have everything-”

She had a knife. No one on camera saw where it came from.

She drove it into him.

The crowd scattered, screaming. The police arrived in time. The video ended.

A man in a suit knocked at my door not long after.

“Good afternoon. I’m Mr. Caruso’s attorney. He asked me to deliver his estate and a letter to you personally.”

I frowned. “I don’t want them.”

The attorney’s face fell. “I understand, and I’m deeply sorry to intrude. But Mr. Caruso was insistent. His final instructions, repeated more than once. After delivery, whatever you choose to do with them is entirely your prerogative.”

He hesitated. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Caruso was taken to the ICU. Every physician who treated him said he had every chance of survival, provided he cooperated with treatment.”

“He chose not to.”

“I’ve followed him for a long time. I’ve never seen him look the way he looked at the end.”

I said nothing.

When the attorney left, I read the letter.

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.

I know that by now you want nothing to do with anything connected to me, and you’re right. I’m

sorry.

These last weeks I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I resent Raphael for taking you from me. I resent Camilla for everything she was. But most of all I resent myself.

Elena, from beginning to end, you were the only person I ever loved.

And I owed you too much to count.

I wasted the best years of your life.

I owe Sunny a life.

I owe our unborn child more than I know how to calculate.

I owe you too many things to settle with a single life.

If we meet again in another life, let us do it right.

I’m sorry. I will always love you.

I read it once, to the end. Then I asked the attorney to donate Dante’s estate to charities around the world. Much of it had been built with my hands as much as his. But I wanted no part of it.

I carried the letter to the fireplace.

The paper caught quickly.

I closed my eyes and let the years move through me in quick succession, images and voices and

moments, until the letter had become ash and the memories had been given their final punctuation mark.

Even if there were another life, I wouldn’t want Dante in it.

Because I already had the person I wanted to spend every life with.

I turned.

Raphael was in the doorway, watching me. He opened his arms and I walked into them.

Our wedding, when it came, was exactly what it should have been. So extraordinary that a hundred years from now people would still talk about it. The photographer who shot it made his career that single afternoon.

Afterward, two arms closed around my waist from behind.

“My Donna.” Raphael’s voice was warm with teasing. “So many people are enchanted with you. I’m almost jealous.”

Пooked over my shoulder at him. “Almost?”

“Almost.” He kissed my cheek. “My Donna is extraordinary. Everyone should adore her.”

I smiled.

I adore myself too.

And that, more than anything, felt like the truest kind of happy ending.