Chapter 1

Seven years into our marriage, my mafia husband sat me down and admitted that he was emotionally cheating on me.

“Bianca is bright and full of life. I fell for her before I could stop myself.”

“But I’ve never wanted to sleep with her, and I’d never let her threaten your place as Mrs. De Santis.”

He lowered his eyes, looking wounded and sincere.

“I just want to figure out whether what I feel for her is just temporary excitement… or real love.”

“You know feelings are complicated. You can’t promise you’ll only ever love me for the rest of your life either, right, Elena? Can you understand that?”

I couldn’t.

So we fought until we trashed the entire house.

In the middle of the wreckage, I stood there crying numbly and asked for a divorce.

He held me like it broke his heart, and in the end, he compromised. He said he’d send her overseas and cut her off for good.

Adrian booked a flight for one month later and gave me the right to choose the destination.

From that day on, he stopped coming home.

Every charge on the bank card told me exactly how he and Bianca were spending their time—dating like the world was about to end.

The last day of that one-month deadline was my mother’s death anniversary.

I sat in front of her grave for a long time and called Adrian.

He still didn’t pick up.

I just smiled faintly, opened the airline website, and typed France into the destination box for that ticket.

Then I filled in the passenger name.

My own.

Every year on my birthday, Adrian would make time to go to that little custom cake shop and make me a strawberry cake himself.

He’d bring a bouquet of red roses and be home by eight.

Now it was already past ten, and there was still no sign of him.

I posted a birthday update on social media, dumped all the food on the table into the trash, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

At eleven that night, someone knocked on the door.

Then Adrian texted me.

“Bianca’s birthday is tomorrow. Her last wish is to spend midnight with me.”

“I’ll make it up to you next year.”

Adrian wasn’t like other cheating men.

He wasn’t sneaky about it.

He was brutally open.

So open that he laid out every bit of his love for Bianca right in front of me without hiding a thing.

If Bianca messed up the books, he’d sit with her and fix every line with her patiently. “She’s new. Someone has to teach her.”

If Bianca didn’t feel well, he’d go to her place, make brown sugar tea for her, and warm her stomach. “She’s all alone in North City. If I don’t take care of her, who will?”

If Bianca successfully secured a new family shipping route, he’d buy her the necklace she’d been wanting for ages as a celebration gift. “She’s had her eye on it for a long time. The kid’s stubborn—she wouldn’t accept it for nothing.”

When love is at its strongest, it becomes restraint.

Honestly, compared to Adrian pouring his heart into Bianca like this, I’d rather he had just been lusting after a younger, prettier body on impulse.

At least that would’ve been easier to hate.

What I couldn’t stand was this—him fighting his own instincts so hard that he could even stop himself from sleeping with her.

Before midnight even hit, Bianca posted on social media.

In the photo, under the giant Ferris wheel at an amusement park on the outskirts of North City, there were two slim figures, one taller, one smaller.

Caption:

“My birthday hasn’t even started yet, and my wish already came true. Thank you, Mr. Adrian.”

The second I saw that glowing Ferris wheel in the picture, I couldn’t force myself to stay calm anymore.

I immediately texted Adrian:

“Come home now, or we get divorced.”

In our seven years of marriage, Adrian had rarely taken me outside the city because he was always busy with family business.

When I was eighteen, he took me out to the suburbs once, and we stood under that Ferris wheel together.

Back then, even a regular Ferris wheel ticket was expensive for him.

His eyes had flickered with embarrassment, but they were still full of determination.

“Elena, when I make enough money someday, I’ll bring you back here and make that dream come true.”

But Adrian, now you have all the money in the world.

And you forgot the Elena you loved when you were eighteen.

In the end, Adrian still couldn’t let go of what we had over those ten years.

The second I sent that message, he rushed back.

When he came in, the night frost was still on him, and there was irritation on his face.

But the moment he saw the half-melted mango cake on the table, he suddenly realized what had happened.

“Bianca likes mango flavor. They probably sent the wrong one.”

I gave him a bleak smile.

“Adrian, what exactly are you showing off?”

Showing off how detailed and intense his love for Bianca was?

Showing off that he cared about her so much he could even forget the thing I’m allergic to?

Adrian frowned, and there was a rare edge of annoyance in his voice.

“Didn’t I already promise you? I’m sending Bianca away at the end of this month.”

“It’s just a cake. I’ll have them make another one.”

That sentence completely shattered the image of him in my heart.

The Adrian I loved would never call anything about me just anything.

And he hadn’t come back alone that night.

Bianca was still sitting in the passenger seat.

“You should go to sleep. I’m still taking Bianca to the city center to watch the celebration.”

He dropped that line and walked away without looking back.

It was cold outside. Bianca was leaning against the car window waiting for him.

Adrian frowned and said something to her that sounded like a scolding, but his eyes were full of concern as he wrapped his scarf around her.

The second I saw the way Adrian looked at Bianca, I understood.

When he said he was hopelessly in love with her, he meant it.

It was the exact same look he had when he was eighteen, standing on the basketball court, taking one look at me and falling hard.

Ten years later, I saw that same look in his eyes again.

Only this time, it was for the new young secretary in the family business.

Bianca was young and pretty.

When she first joined the group, she was bold and full of energy, bragging that she’d become a director within a year.

The way she wore her ponytail, so bright and lively and fearless, reminded me exactly of myself back when I was the lead cheerleader.

And it was only after seeing how tender Adrian was with Bianca that I finally understood.

We were really over.