My Fiancé Saved His First Love and Left Me to Drown

"On top of that, you and Vittorio were once intimate. That alone is reason for you to keep your distance. I won't dredge up the past, but I, Adriana, am not the kind of woman who just swallows whatever she's handed." "If the rest of you insist on staying, fine. Then I'll leave!" With that, I didn't bother waiting for their reactions. I turned to go. But Vittorio caught my wrist, his brow creasing with displeasure, his voice low and chiding. : "Adriana, we're all famiglia here tonight. Don't throw a little tantrum." "Besides, this is the flagship you drew up yourself, every line of her. It cost me no small favor to charter her off the docks. Whatever else, don't let all my effort go to waste." I looked into Vittorio's earnest eyes, and something in me softened. I hesitated, again and again, and in the end I gave in. There was nothing else I could do. This son of an allied bloodline, the man I'd chased for three years before I finally won him, left me with no power to resist. Even knowing full well that he and Carmela stayed tangled up in each other, I still clung to a thread of hope, now that the blood-alliance was already sworn between our Families. I hoped he'd come to his senses and pull away from that ambiguous closeness they dressed up as friendship. But when the storm hit, when the vessel took on water and began to sink beneath us, he saw the wound on my leg plainly and still wrenched my hand away, hauling Carmela into the only lifeboat that could have saved us. Only then did it dawn on me. That deep trust, that devotion I'd given him, was nothing but a joke. A colossal joke, one that cost me my very life. Yet if Vittorio had truly felt nothing for me, perhaps it wouldn't have hurt this much. Just like now, when his mouth flirted with Carmela, and yet he'd sat in the wedding suite waiting for me the whole night through. Of course, he was never going to get me. As the first glow broke at the horizon, his ease drained away and his face went dark. Even the so-called friends who'd come to carouse couldn't take it, and one by one they made their excuses and slipped out into the night. Still he ignored Carmela's coaxing and stubbornly kept watch in the bridal suite, waiting for me to come back. After a long while, his eyes went suddenly hazy, and he murmured to himself. : "Could leaving her behind on the ship really have made her that angry?" "But I checked. There was clearly still another lifeboat on board, more than enough for her." "There were so many of us packed on the same one. If I'd let her come with us, it would only have been more dangerous." "This Adriana…… why can she never understand how much I favor her?" His thumb moved as he spoke, worrying at the empty base of his ring finger, tracing a mark that wasn't there anymore. I gave a silent, cold laugh. Carmela, though, pouted and complained. : "What else could it be? Some people just never know when they've had enough." "Vittorio, stop waiting. If she wants to make a show of snubbing you, she's not going to come see you so easily." "I've got a fitting scheduled today. You promised you'd come with me. You're not going to blow off a friend over some woman, are you?" At her words, Vittorio's expression tightened. He simply wrapped an arm around her shoulder, his voice turning gentle. : "How could I?" "I've just spoiled her too much all this time. Let her get too big for her boots." "Come on, I'll go with you today. Even if she drops dead out there, it's got nothing to do with me!" As he spoke, he ripped down a paper double-happiness cutout beside him that hadn't stuck properly, crumpled it into a ball like so much trash, and tossed it into the wastebasket. And though I was already soaked through, the harbor still cold in my bones, I could still feel, clear as anything, the wet trails of tears on my face. In a daze, I trailed after Vittorio, and somehow we came to the very boutique where we'd had our alliance gown custom-made. Carmela tried on several gowns and wasn't happy with any of them. Seeing Vittorio keep his brow knit as he stared at his phone, she pouted and grumbled. : "Hey, you're supposed to be here for me. Can you stop zoning out?" "None of these look good. Why don't you have them bring out the one your girlfriend had made and let me try it on? Who knows, maybe it'll fit."

I drifted in the still air of the boutique, my eyes brimming with tears, still clinging to the hope that Vittorio might remember what we had once been to each other and refuse her. And he did hesitate, saying almost on instinct, "That doesn't seem right, does it?" "It's her mother's keepsake. It only came in because it needed cleaning. If she found out, she'd never let me hear the end of it." But Carmela clung to his arm and wouldn't let go. "Oh, come on, don't be so stingy." "I only want to try it on. I'll take it right off after. It's not like I won't give it back." "You don't tell, I don't tell, and no one on any street will ever know." "And if you say no, I'll just run to the boys and tell on you. Say the great Farlone heir would throw over his own for a woman." With that, she smiled and simply told the clerk to bring out the gown. When the clerk shot Vittorio a questioning look, the kind a servant gives before crossing a line that belongs to a Family, his expression froze for a beat. And yet he nodded. In barely ten minutes, Carmela had changed into the dress and appeared before him, veil and all. Vittorio blanked for an instant, then smiled. "Not bad. It suits you." "I almost thought you were the one I was about to marry." Carmela let out a soft laugh and suddenly pressed a hand over his mouth, her voice low. "Don't say things like that. If Adriana heard, she'd get petty again." "Back when you and I split, I already made up my mind. All those years we had together can't just be buried like nothing. Even if we can't be lovers for life, we'll be good to each other for life." Vittorio looked at her, long and deep, some feeling in his eyes I couldn't name. But to me, every bit of it was a knife driving into my heart. They were still lost in that murky, unspoken mood between them when the clerk took a phone call, and her face suddenly changed. She turned to Vittorio, clearly uneasy, the way people go careful when a name that carries weight comes down the line. "Mr. Farlone, could you please have your companion take off this gown? The Marchettis just called. They want the dress back." Carmela's face soured, and Vittorio arched a brow, displeased. "Wasn't it Adriana herself who wanted this gown as the main dress for the union? Why is she going back on it now?" "The sit-down's almost here. Every Family will be watching. Can't she stop changing her mind on a whim? All this back and forth doesn't wear her out, but it sure wears me out." The clerk stiffened, startled, and stammered, "Mr. Farlone, I think you've misunderstood." "The Marchettis just called to say Miss Marchetti's body was recovered from the water a little while ago, so there's no more need for this gown…" For a single instant, Vittorio froze. He grabbed the clerk by the collar, roaring, out of control. "What did you say!" The clerk's face crumpled, and she kept clasping her hands, pleading. "Mr. Farlone, please, my condolences, but it really was the Marchettis who called. I wouldn't dare lie to a man like you." I watched Vittorio stand rooted there, disbelief and shock flickering in his eyes, his whole body gone rigid. But Carmela's eyes darted, quick, calculating, and she suddenly pulled out her phone, playing a video for him as she spoke. "Vittorio, don't listen to their nonsense. Adriana isn't dead at all!" "Don't believe me? Look!" Following his gaze, I saw it clearly on Carmela's phone: a recording of a call, me griping to my closest friend. On the call, I complained, "I honestly can't stand that pack of hangers-on Vittorio keeps around him, especially that Carmela!" "They talk all this brotherhood, all this famiglia, but who knows what they're really after. Do they think I'm a fool?" "One of these days, I'll make them pay. I'll make Vittorio regret it for the rest of his life!" My friend threw out an idea too. "Why don't you take a page from those old stories and fake your own death, make a real big scene of it?"

"If you really let Vittorio believe you're dead, maybe he'll actually regret it, and finally see Carmela for what she really is!" On the phone, I'd laughed and said, : "Let's do it!" In reality, I never even got the chance to start that offhand little joke of a plan before I died in the seawater that came crashing down over everything, in the black water where the flagship went under and no soldier of my father's ever reached me. But the moment Vittorio heard the laughter in my voice, the guilt and worry he'd been carrying were swallowed up by rage. He snatched Carmela's phone out of her hand and smashed it straight into the marble floor of the tailor's front, shattering it to pieces. The fitting clerk went still against the wall, the way men go still when a made man stops pretending to be civil. "Adriana. Fine. Well done." He ground the words out through his teeth, then stamped his heel down and crushed the phone flat, so furious it turned into a laugh. His thumb dragged once across the empty space on his own hand, where the ink used to sit. : "Just to get under my skin, you'd even fake your own death, and get your father to help you torture me too? You really are something!" "You were the one who did everything to seal this pact between our Families, and now the second something doesn't go your way, you're the one pulling this vanishing act, this fake death. Is there no end to it with you?" Then he suddenly jabbed a finger at the clerk, seething. : "Tell the Marchettis: ten days from now, if Adriana isn't standing at that altar, there won't be a union at all!" "The Marchettis may be an old bloodline, but the Farlones didn't crawl up from nothing either. We won't be jerked around by her!" "Pull another cheap stunt like this in front of me, and she can forget ever setting foot in the Farlone house as long as she lives!" With that, he grabbed Carmela, who'd just finished changing, and refused to hear another word out of the clerk, turning on his heel and walking straight out past the soldiers waiting at the door. And I stood quietly behind him, and as we passed, though our fingers brushed, he couldn't feel the cold radiating off me at all. Watching his furious back, I gave a bitter smile, my heart aching as though it were being wrung to shreds. Vittorio, I really did wish I could torment you. But I lost. I lost to my own unwillingness to hurt you, to the trust I placed in you. And in the end I lost everything. Three days after being forced to trail Vittorio, I went from pain to numbness, and grew weary. He never reached out to me again. Every day, apart from carousing through one Family club after another, night after night, he was out running cars through the harbor roads, throwing himself off bridges, chasing every kind of dangerous thing that could kill a man who'd stopped caring whether it did. And of course, the one always at his side was Carmela. At first he still consciously kept away from her touch, but when Carmela kissed his lips in tears after the jump, he didn't refuse. He even deepened the kiss himself. When it ended, he looked a little regretful, but Carmela said breezily, her smile holding a half-second too long before the words came, : "Oh, come on, you were just a little nervous back there, so I kissed you to steady your nerve." "Don't you dare read into it, or Adriana would be furious enough to drop dead." As she said this, I stood quietly off to the side, and if I hadn't already become a spirit, I would have wanted to cut their lines myself and let their flesh rot together in the water below. And Vittorio, whether out of a guilty conscience or remorse, quietly took out his phone after that kiss and sent me a text telling me to show up at the union on time. Then his thumb went back to that bare patch of skin where the broken mark had been, rubbing at nothing. But he never again refused Carmela's "steadying," and those so-called comforts gradually went from shallow kisses to late-night visits behind closed doors. Yet even so, they still hadn't taken the final step. No matter how forward Carmela was, Vittorio seemed to hold that last thread taut, refusing to let himself cross the final line. But all of it came to an end, in the end, on the eve of our union. That night, both Carmela and he were drunk. I still stood off to the side, already used to the reek of seawater on my body, and to the two of them being intimate anytime, anywhere. Until the moment he used the drink as an excuse and broke through that last barrier. I'd already been in pain until I was numb, already grown used to every breaking of the code, every abandonment. But in the moment I saw them tangled together at last, no matter how hard I bit down on my lips, the tears still slid down, traitorous and unstoppable. My thumb pressed to the base of my ring finger, to the raw place where the pinky had been torn away, as if pain could hold a spirit together where nothing else would.

By the time they were finished, Vittorio smoked one cigarette after another, then, as though doing penance before a priest he'd stopped believing in, sent message after message to my phone. But this time, I, who had never once replied, suddenly sent back a single line: "Tomorrow, at the union, I will be there." Vittorio froze. So did I. All the way until the sit-down the next day, as I trailed beside Vittorio, who had changed into his groom's suit yet still moved through it all in a daze, I couldn't believe it. After all, my phone had long since sunk into the sea with my body. No diver the Family sent would ever fish it back up. And even if my own blood had recovered my corpse, why keep the news buried in silence and go through with this blood-alliance union that no longer had any meaning at all? Yet there among the assembled Families, I truly did see my father, the old Don who had cherished me, and my sister, the one I had been closest to. Nothing about them seemed off. They weren't even especially grief-stricken. When Vittorio crossed the floor to pay his respects, they were relaxed enough to trade quiet words with him, the way men do on neutral ground. Eleven-thirty. The ceremony formally began. Vittorio stood at the end of the red carpet, his expression uneasy. Even now, even with my whole bloodline watching from their seats, he still wasn't sure I wouldn't leave him standing there before every capo and consigliere in the room. The doors of the hall swung slowly open. When he saw the figure at the end of the carpet, and the familiar wedding gown, Vittorio finally let out a breath. But the next instant, the lights blazed bright as day, and every made man in the room went still. Because the bride standing at the end of the red carpet wasn't me. It was Carmela. She wore the wedding gown my mother had left to me, gathering the skirt in her hands as she ran the length of the carpet to Vittorio, weeping. "Vittorio, I'm sorry." "I know I shouldn't have come and ruined everything today, but Adriana still hasn't shown up, and last night she was even out entertaining men she'd bought for the night. She's clearly out to humiliate you in front of every Family here!" "She won't stand with you, but I will. I swear, every happiness she could give you, I can give you too!" "Vittorio, we've already lost so many years. Let's not lose any more, okay?" Carmela wept as though her heart were breaking, and many in the room who didn't know the truth genuinely believed I'd been out haunting clubs, shameless and loose, and one after another the whispers began to turn against me, pity gathering around Vittorio like smoke. "This is supposed to be a blood-alliance between the Farlones and the Marchettis. The old Don's eldest has quite the temper, doesn't she?" "Right? Out buying men the night before the union... that's spitting on the man she's meant to stand beside." "Poor Vittorio, bound to a woman like that. If you ask me, the Ricci girl is the loyal one. Those two are the real match." "..." Vittorio's brow was tightly drawn. After wiping away Carmela's tears, he didn't answer her right away. Instead he stayed where he was, waiting in silence, the whole room waiting with him. He waited half an hour. The end of the red carpet remained empty. Still I hadn't appeared. At the stroke of noon, he sighed, took Carmela by the hand, and gave a respectful, distant nod toward my father and my sister. "Don Hart. Sister. You've seen it for yourselves. It isn't that I, Vittorio, fail to keep my word. It's that Adriana is simply too willful." "The Farlones must take a bride today, before the Commission and every Family present. Since Adriana is unwilling to step through our door, I have no choice but to choose Carmela." "I ask for your understanding." With that, he took the rings straight from the officiant, drew out the wedding band, and moved to slide it onto Carmela's finger. Carmela gazed at him with adoring eyes, the corner of her mouth curving quietly into a smug smile that held a half-second too long. And I watched it all, seething with hatred, wishing I could rush forward and tear the two of them to pieces! The moment the ring was about to slide onto Carmela's finger, my father, who had stayed so composed all this time, suddenly spoke. His hand, which had been slowly turning the signet ring on his finger, went completely still. "Vittorio. Adriana is right here today. Your union can proceed without a hitch." "So long as you're willing." Vittorio stopped short. His fingers trembled, and the ring dropped to the floor. In the silence, the small sound of it striking marble carried to every corner of the room. The next second, the whole hall floor began to rumble. The center of the red carpet sank, and then a transparent coffin rose slowly with the ground that had just given way. At the sight, not a man in that room dared breathe. Because inside the coffin, lying in plain view before every Family, was my body, eyes closed, steeped in formalin. For one instant, Vittorio froze.