The Don's Unsent Letters

My best friend and my husband, Lorenzo Bartoli, fought every time they met.

Lorenzo was the Don of the family, while my best friend was his Consigliere.

She always fiercely opposed his most ruthless, high-risk decisions. Tempers explode every single time.

But there was one rule that they both agreed on without any hesitation. No one was allowed to touch me.

Because of them, no one in the city dared to cross me.

Until the fifth month of my pregnancy, when I went down to the basement vault to organize Lorenzo's guns for him.

I opened the safe to see stacks of letters, hundreds of them, all unsent.

I picked one up. The moment I opened the letter, cold dread overwhelmed me. The receiver of the letter wasn't me.

[My dearest Sofia…]

I quickly scanned downward to the final lines of the letter.

[If I don't make it back alive, everything in the Swissie accounts goes to you. As for Vittoria, she's a good woman, but I have never loved her.]

With trembling hands, I tore open the rest of the letters like a hysterical woman.

Three hundred of them in total. Every single one was addressed to Sofia Finzi.

Sofia was not a stranger.

She was my best friend.

I collapsed onto the pile of letters, tears splashing across the papers, smudging the ink, yet I could still recognize the handwriting.

It belonged to Lorenzo Bartoli, my husband.

His every word was soaked with tenderness.

[My dearest Sofia, I'm going to propose to Vittoria tomorrow.

[I know it's selfish of me. I know it's unfair to you, but Vittoria… She's too fragile. In this dog-eat-dog world, she can't survive. She needs me.

[You, on the other hand, Sofia, you will always be my soulmate. My best Consigliere. A comrade that I can trust with my back.

[If there ever is a next life, I will marry you.]

There was a stain at the bottom of the page that looked like teardrops.

I once thought that I had hit the jackpot by marrying Lorenzo. I once thought that his protectiveness of me was because of love.

I never thought that it was nothing more than charity.

It was so noble, yet so cruel.

I bent down and started to dry heave. The child in me seemed to have gotten a fright as an excruciating pain exploded in my abdomen.

My world started to spin and my vision started to go black.

Suddenly, I heard the heavy steel door of the basement burst open, followed by two voices that I would recognize even in death.

"Vittoria, what are you doing? Damn it! You've lost a lot of blood!"

"Quickly! Call the doctor! Prepare the car! Lorenzo, hold her! Stop trembling!"

What perfect coordination.

One was my husband, and the other was my best friend, Sofia Finzi.

Their panic sounded so real. It was so real that for one desperate second, it almost felt like those 300 love letters were just a