The Fiancé My Best Friend Stole

Sophia hated my penthouse the moment she settled in. By the third morning, she was wandering barefoot across the charcoal rug with a blanket around her shoulders, wrinkling her nose at the black marble, dark shelves, and gray walls.

"Elena, babe, why does your home look like a Bellandi interrogation room? Anyone would lose their mind here."

I set down my coffee. "Someone used to like it this way."

"A man likes black, so you paint your whole life black?" She shook her head. "You need something that belongs to you. My sheets are blush pink. Luca hates them, but he sleeps in them anyway."

Luca was standing by the window, fastening his cuff link. His hand stopped.

Sophia smiled at him. "He complains every time, then still crawls in like a good husband."

I remembered the pink sheets I bought years ago. Luca had stood beside the bed for half a minute, then taken his pillow to the guest room. Back then, he said, "Elena, don't dress me like the hero in your dollhouse." I had laughed and pretended not to be hurt. Later, I changed the sheets to gray.

Sophia kept talking, unaware. "So if your fiance couldn't even handle pink sheets, maybe he didn't love you enough."

The cup burned my fingers. I almost dropped it.

I tried to smile. "Maybe he didn't."

The room went quiet. Sophia looked confused, but Luca's voice turned cold before she could ask. "Or maybe he came back and found out the woman waiting for him hadn't waited at all."

My breath caught.

Sophia frowned. "Luca, what does that mean?"

"Nothing." He looked at me instead of her. "Some people like to make a shrine out of old love. It makes them look loyal. It doesn't mean they were faithful."

"You think I wasn't faithful?" I asked.

"I think five years is a long time," he said. "Long enough for grief to turn into something else."

I wanted to ask about three years ago. I wanted to ask whether he had come back, whether he had seen something, whether a single misunderstood moment had been enough for him to erase everything I had suffered. But Sophia was standing between us, pale and lost, and I couldn't drag her into a history she didn't know existed.

So I lowered my head and whispered, "Then you should have asked me."

Luca's jaw tightened. For one second he looked like he might cross the room. Instead, he turned to Sophia. "Rest. The doctor said no stress."

After they went to the guest room, I stayed in the kitchen until my coffee went cold. I had learned to be quiet with pain.

That night, I opened the drawer beside my bed and took out the engagement ring Luca had given me five years ago. I had kept wearing it on a chain under my clothes after the crash. At the wedding, I had moved it back to my finger because seeing him alive made me stupid for one last day.

The diamond looked smaller than I remembered.

A week later, Sophia insisted on taking me to the Velvet Club, the Bellandis' private place on the north side, where families traded favors and insults without raising their voices.

"You need air," she said while fixing my hair in the mirror. "And you need to meet someone who isn't a ghost."

She meant well. That was the problem. Every kind thing she did made it harder to hate her.

I wore a black velvet dress, light makeup, and Luca's ring on my finger. I didn't wear it to fight for him. I wore it because I was too weak to take it off before I had to.

When we arrived, Luca was already at the main table. Sophia went straight to him. He stood at once, pulled out her chair, and asked whether the music was too loud. She smiled and pressed a quick kiss to his jaw.

"Elena," Sophia said, pulling me down beside her, "this is Dante Valenti. He's an old friend of Luca's, apparently dangerous, and very single."

Dante Valenti sat across from me in a navy suit without a tie, his lazy smile barely hiding sharp eyes. Three years ago, when my search nearly got me killed, Dante had gotten me out and kept unwanted visitors from my hospital room.

He looked at me for a long moment. "Ms. Vane. Long time."

"Dante," I said softly.

Sophia missed the history in that silence. Luca didn't. His gaze settled between us, dark and still, and for the first time all night, he looked less like a husband and more like the man who once hated anyone who stood too close to me.

Halfway through dinner, Sophia went to fix her makeup. Luca waited until the conversation moved away from us, then took a black hotel key card from his jacket and slid it toward me.

"Suite upstairs," he said. "Dante is staying there tonight."

I stared at the card. "Why are you giving this to me?"

His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. "Isn't this what you want? You and Dante already know each other well enough."

My face went cold. "Luca."

"Don't look at me like that. You found comfort once. Why pretend you're too pure to do it again?"

Dante's glass stopped halfway to his mouth. He said nothing, but his eyes sharpened.

I should have thrown the card back at him. Instead, I sat there with my hands in my lap and felt something inside me fold in on itself, small and tired.

For five years, I had believed love meant endurance. Now he was alive, sitting in front of me, using the only man who had helped me survive as a knife.

Slowly, I pulled the engagement ring from my finger.

It had followed me through five years of searching. Once it had been a promise. Then it became a grave marker. Now it was only cold metal.

I placed it beside the key card.

The ring tapped against the black marble. Luca's eyes changed at once.

"Elena," he said, and for the first time his voice sounded almost afraid.

I couldn't look at him for long. If I did, I might break. "I can't do this anymore. I can't wait for you, hate you, love you, and be punished by you at the same time."

Sophia came back then, smiling until she saw our faces. "What happened?"

I stood before I could lose my nerve. My legs felt weak. My whole body felt weak.

But I still picked up the key card, not because Luca had sent me anywhere, but because I needed one door in that room that did not belong to him.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm tired."

Behind me, Luca called my name once.

I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.

“You don’t get to throw me at another man and still look hurt when I walk away.”

Then I left.