The Countdown Above My Fiancé

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me.

The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a fiancé out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset.

That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean.

Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me.

Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes.

[702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.]

Less than two years.

My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong?

Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant.

Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent.

Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture.

But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped.

[327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.]

More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.

“Mr. Bellandi, Miss Vale, I’m so sorry. South Dock is blocked off, and I couldn’t get a car anywhere” Mia Crane climbed into the back seat, soaked from the rain. Her satin blouse was wet at the shoulders, and strands of hair stuck to her face, but she still gave Marco a bright smile.

Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his suit pocket and passed it over my shoulder. “Wipe your eyes. Don’t let the ice burn your skin.”

Mia took the handkerchief. Her fingers brushed the back of his hand, light as a whisper. She smiled up at him through damp lashes. “Thank you, Mr. Bellandi. I knew you wouldn’t leave one of your people out in the snow.”

Lucian withdrew his hand and rubbed his thumb over the steering wheel. “A girl running errands for the foundation down at the docks has it rough enough.”

The second those words left his mouth, the red numbers above his head twisted.

[327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.]

A pulse of red light flickered, and then it changed.

[289 days, 10 hours, 12 minutes.]

One careless sentence of pity had shaved more than