La Esposa Rechazada Del Cruel Mafioso - Adri Lu... -

It's a photograph. Me. Leaving a bookstore in Milan last Tuesday. A red X drawn over my face.

I stand in front of the floor-length mirror in my empty room, my reflection a ghost in a designer nightgown I didn't choose. My hair is longer now — dark waves down my back, the same obsidian black as the night he first rejected me. My eyes are hollow. Once, they were warm. Once, I thought love could soften a cruel man. La Esposa Rechazada del Cruel Mafioso - Adri Lu...

I look up at Alessandro. His jaw is clenched. His hands — those hands that have never touched me with kindness — are shaking. It's a photograph

I stood beside him in ivory lace, my hands trembling inside silk gloves, while he signed the mafia contract that bound our families. The wedding was a formality. The real ceremony happened afterward: Alessandro's father, Don Ferraro, shaking my father's hand over a table of illegal arms deals. A red X drawn over my face