The Weekends He Never Gave Me Chapter 01

The Weekends He Never Gave Me Chapter 01

The night Dario Bellandi and I became official, he proposed a “5-plus-2 relationship rule.”

We both worked at Bellandi Holdings. He was the son of the Bellandi Family’s current Underboss and one of the Family’s youngest Capos. I, on the other hand, was just an ordinary analyst in the group’s strategy division.

To avoid gossip, we barely acknowledged each other at the office.

Yet Dario laid it down like it was the law: “Monday through Friday, I’m yours. Saturdays and Sundays belong only to me.”

I let out a sharp, amused huff. “We can’t even spare each other a glance around the office without people talking, and you call that being mine?”

He leaned against my desk and grabbed my coffee, taking a sip.

“Livia, we spend at least ten hours a day here. We drive in together in the morning, eat lunch side by side, work overtime across from each other.”

“There are a hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. Subtract sleep, and I already spend most of my waking hours looking at you.”

“If we cling any tighter, we’ll hit the seven-year itch before we even get married.”

He smiled and pinched my cheek. “A man needs private ground no one else can trespass on.”

He’d grown up in a Family that lived and breathed territory, loyalty and boundaries. So back then, I’d even thought his mindset made sense.

For years afterward, I never once laid claim to his weekends. Even when my birthday fell on a Saturday, we celebrated early on Friday.

One night my fever spiked to 104, and I called him late Friday.

Dario fell silent for two beats. “Order something from the pharmacy. If it gets worse, I’ll have the Family doctor come to your place.”

Curled up under my covers, I whispered, “What about you?”

He let out a short laugh. “If I come over, I’d be breaking the rules.”

Before hanging up, his tone stayed light. “Don’t sound so miserable. Your boyfriend gets handed back to you bright and early Monday morning.”

I’d truly convinced myself he was simply someone who guarded his boundaries fiercely. That was, until one Monday morning, when Giada Corvelli walked into the building clutching a ceramic mug.

Her father was a long-time associate of the Bellandi Family, so she’d landed a job at Bellandi Holdings straight out of college.

Dario had mentored her for a while. She always called him Dario, and half-jokingly called him Boss in front of others.

That day, she was showing off a plain white ceramic mug to anyone nearby. “My boyfriend spent four whole weekends with me at pottery class, and we finally finished this matching set.”

She tilted her phone toward them.

Her lock screen displayed Dario, head bowed, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, long fingers dusted with clay as he adjusted the rim of her cup.

I stared at it for a long time.

For years I’d honored that invisible line. Even burning up at 104, I’d never dared to cross it.

Turns out Giada hadn’t needed to fight for anything. She’d been standing on the other side all along.

…

I gazed at that lock screen for a few seconds.

Giada had already wandered over to another desk, still grinning. “Isn’t it gorgeous? He’s all thumbs at this. The first one cracked in the kiln, the second came out lopsided. I told him to stop, but he insisted on starting over.”

Someone teased her. “That’s a whole lot of patience.”

Giada stroked the mug’s rim gently. “He’s always been this good to me.”

I stopped listening.

At ten a.m., Dario stepped out of the conference room and tapped my desk casually. “A new bakery opened downstairs. I grabbed you a low-salt croissant.”

I lifted my head.

He held a deep navy ceramic mug in his right hand, its rim slightly warped. It matched Giada’s perfectly.

He followed my line of sight and glanced down. “What?”

“Did you make that yourself?” I asked.

Dario paused for a split second. Then he smiled. “Did Giada let it slip?”

I met his eyes. “She said her boyfriend made them with her over the weekends.”

He shrugged, laid-back and unconcerned. “That girl can’t keep her mouth shut.”

I frowned. “Aren’t you worried about office gossip?”

Dario brushed it off. “She can explain later. No one’s going to take it seriously.”

He tore open the paper bag and held out the croissant toward me. “Have a bite, it’s fresh out of the oven.”

I didn’t move.

Dario raised an eyebrow. “You’re actually mad?”

“You spent your weekends with her. What am I supposed to make of that?”

He leaned back against the edge of my desk and lowered his voice. “Her family’s been trying to set her up with someone from the Marchetti Family. She’s just using my name to fend them off. She signed up for pottery classes but was too nervous to go alone, so I sat in on a few sessions.”

I kept my gaze steady on him. “A handful of weekends with her is fine, but I can’t have a single one?”

The amusement faded a little from Dario’s face. “Livia, don’t mix two different things up.”

“How are they different?”

“You’re my girlfriend.”

When those words landed, I almost laughed out loud.

He reached over and squeezed the nape of my neck. “It’s precisely because you’re my girlfriend that I set rules with you. Why would I draw lines for people who don’t matter?”

He spoke as though I’d been granted some rare privilege.

I fell quiet for a long while. “So only the people who matter are expected to be understanding?”

Dario’s brows drew together. “You’re overthinking this again.”

He pressed the pastry bag into my hands. “I’ll take you to that Sicilian restaurant you’ve been dying to try—tonight, to make it up to you. Alright?”

I dropped my eyes.

There was a sticky note on the bag: Low salt, bake one extra minute, sensitive stomach.

Dario’s handwriting. My heart softened, just a fraction.

Then Giada poked her head around the cubicle wall. “Dario, where’s my strawberry bagel?”

Dario nodded toward the break room. “In the fridge. I picked up two for you.”

Giada tilted her head. “How’d you remember my favorite spot?”

“You mentioned it last week, didn’t you?”

Giada’s eyes crinkled into a bright smile.

Suddenly, I lost my appetite.

After work, Dario really did take me to that Sicilian restaurant.

It was an old establishment that kept a private booth reserved permanently for the Bellandi Family.

The manager spotted Dario and skipped the reservation check entirely, leading us straight to the back room.

Dario cut up the grilled octopus for me, picked out every last olive—he knew I hated them, and slid the final piece of pistachio tiramisu across the table toward me.

Mid-meal, his phone lit up. Giada sent a photo: her white ceramic mug sat right next to his navy one.

[Matching mugs are supposed to stay together. Don’t secretly replace yours.]

Dario glanced once and flipped the phone face-down on the table. “She’s just messing around.”

“Are you planning to get a new one?” I asked.

His fork froze mid-air. Then he looked over with a smile. “It’s just a mug. Are you really hung up on this?”

There it was again.

Just a mug. Just a weekend.

It always sounded as if every hurt I felt had to be weighed and measured—and found too small to bother him.

That night back home, for the first time, I didn’t keep my weekends open waiting for him.

I booked two tickets for an Off-Broadway play. One for my friend Noemi Sorrentino. One for myself.