Chapter 3
On Friday evening, Adriano entered the penthouse kitchen adjusting his watch. The divorce envelope waited beside Bella’s hand.
“Cancel dinner,” he said. “I’ll be late.”
Bella remembered another Adriano—sitting upright beside her hospital bed because she was afraid to wake alone. For weeks she had wondered whether that man still existed beneath the lies. Now she understood that loving who someone had been could become another way of refusing to see who he had chosen to become.
“I already canceled it,” she said.
Adriano barely looked up. “Good.”
Bella pushed the envelope toward him. “I canceled something else, too.”
He opened it. The color changed in his face. Divorce. The word sounded offended rather than heartbroken. Bella watched him read. No claim against his personal accounts. No public allegation of adultery. No attempt to take his privately owned property. The terms were so clean that suspicion replaced shock.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
Adriano laughed once. “Eight months pregnant. Where exactly are you going?”
Her son moved beneath her hand. “To someone who needs me more than you do.”
His pride supplied the conclusion she intended. “There is another man.”
Bella did not answer. Adriano’s jaw hardened. “You’ve been cheating on me.”
She placed the silver pen beside his hand. “You wanted freedom, Adriano. Take it.”
He stared at her. Then he read every page again. He checked the property schedule first. Bella claimed none of his personal accounts, none of the property titled solely in his name, and no support beyond what the law required for their child. He found no accusation about Bianca, no attempt to freeze his private money.
“You are not claiming anything from the legacy trust?”
“I am not claiming anything that is yours.”
Adriano heard reassurance where Bella had offered precision. He believed divorce would remove her standing inside the family structure. He also knew Rever’s Monday deadline would not wait for a prolonged negotiation. Bianca, apartment 6B, and the promised life after the transfer moved through his thoughts. Freedom sat before him without a financial war attached.
Greed defeated caution. Adriano signed with an angry flourish.
“Do not come back asking me for anything.”
Bella placed her copy inside the envelope. “I won’t.”
His eyes moved toward her stomach. “You cannot take my son out of this house.”
“Our son is not property. There will be a parenting agreement built around what is safe for him.”
“He is a Moretti.”
“He is a baby. You missed three specialist appointments this month. Do not discover fatherhood only when you think someone is taking a possession from you.”
She lifted the handle of the single suitcase waiting beside the elevator. Adriano did not offer to help. At the open doors, Bella looked once at the penthouse where twelve years of her life had disappeared behind marble and glass.
“Goodbye, Adriano.”
The doors closed before he answered. Inside the descending elevator, Bella finally released the breath trapped inside her chest. Her phone vibrated. Alina’s message appeared: Signature confirmed.
Bella typed one word. Yes.
The reply came immediately. Then Monday’s vote proceeds.
Upstairs, Adriano was already calling Bianca to celebrate. Downstairs, Bella stepped into Matteo’s waiting car, knowing her husband had just signed away the marriage while the document capable of ending his reign had not yet reached the table.
Matteo offered her a guarded suite in the Moretti estate. Bella refused. “I am leaving one house controlled by your family. I will not recover inside another.”
Dante drove her to a small Romano-owned townhouse in Cambridge. The refrigerator hummed. Pipes clicked.
A neighbor practiced six notes on a piano without ever reaching the seventh. Bella had brought medication, medical records, an ultrasound photograph, and a blue blanket embroidered with the name she had chosen: Luca.
Everything she and the baby needed fit in one suitcase.
May you like
“Stay until I fall asleep,” she told Dante.
In the unfamiliar bedroom with no performance left to maintain, Bella cried until her chest hurt. The correct decision could still break the heart making it.
