Chapter Three

GINEVRA

I don't know how long I sat on the bedroom floor with my back against the bed, staring at nothing. The afternoon light slowly faded from the room, leaving long shadows across the walls I had shared with Leandro for three years. Shared. The word almost made me laugh because what kind of marriage was this? Leandro had not touched me in months, and he was always finding excuses to sleep at the company or in his study downstairs.

Now I knew why.

The medical papers were still scattered across the floor, and I reached for them again with shaking hands. Stage three gastric cancer. Three months without treatment. Maybe a year with treatment if my body responded well.

I picked up one of the pamphlets Dr. Vittorio Bellini had given me. The title read, "Living with Cancer: A Guide for Patients and Families." Smiling faces filled the cover, surrounded by husbands, wives, children, and other relatives who looked happy to be together. I stared at them for a long moment, wondering what family I was supposed to have.

What family did I have now?

I had a husband who wished I were another woman and was openly spending time with the woman he had loved before me. I had a son who thought I was annoying and did not even seem to miss me. I had a mother-in-law who had just confirmed that I was nothing more than a temporary replacement in her son's life, and that the only thing she believed I had ever been useful for was giving Leandro a child.

My real family was back in Bologna.

My older brother, Corrado, had probably spent the last three years furious with me for disappearing without an explanation. My parents were probably still hurt and angry because I had walked away from them without even giving them the chance to understand why I had done it.

And then there was Enea, the man I had been supposed to marry.

He had done nothing to deserve being abandoned at the altar, yet I had left him behind without giving him a proper explanation. I had been so sure that I was doing the right thing. I believed I was choosing love over duty, choosing my own happiness instead of allowing my family to control my future.

I had run away because I wanted to prove to my parents that love was more important than money and family connections.

Instead, this was what I had found.

A fresh wave of nausea suddenly hit me, and I barely made it to the bathroom before I was sick. I stayed there for several moments, holding onto the edge of the sink as my body shook. When I finally lifted my head, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and almost failed to recognize the woman staring back at me.

My face looked pale and tired, and I had lost so much weight that the clothes that once fit me now hung loosely from my body. I looked sick. I looked like someone who had been slowly disappearing without even noticing it.

How had I not seen it?

How had I convinced myself that all those signs were nothing more than stress?

Because I had been too busy trying to save a marriage that had already died.

The thought came bitterly, and I closed my eyes as another wave of sadness washed over me.

I splashed cold water onto my face and slowly returned to the bedroom. Before I could sit down, my phone began to ring. When I looked at the screen and saw Leandro's name, my heart skipped.

For one foolish moment, hope returned.

Maybe he had realized that he needed to come home. Maybe Nico had asked for me. Maybe Leandro had finally understood that Beatrice belonged to his past and that I was his wife.

I quickly picked up the phone.

"Leandro?"

"Mom?"

My breath caught.

It was Nico.

His small voice sounded uncertain, and for a moment, he sounded like the little boy I remembered. I thought of the premature baby I had held in the hospital, the tiny child I had been afraid to let go of, and the toddler who used to cry for me in the middle of the night.

"Nico, sweetheart..." I began, but a sudden coughing fit stopped me. A sharp taste filled my mouth, and I pulled the phone away as I covered my lips with my hand.

When I looked down at my palm, I saw blood.

"Mom? Are you sick?"

I quickly closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. At least he cared enough to ask. Maybe somewhere inside him, my little boy still loved me.

"I'm okay, baby," I managed to say, although my voice was weak and rough. "I just miss you so much. When are you coming home?"

There was a short silence.

Then I heard Beatrice's voice in the background. I could not make out what she said, but whatever it was seemed to change Nico's mood immediately.

"You're lying," he said.

My heart sank.

"What?"

"You're pretending to be sick so I'll come home. I know what you're doing, Mom."

"Nico, I'm not pretending. I'm really..."

"Aunt Beatrice says you always manipulate people to get what you want, and I'm not going to let you do that to me. I don't want to come home. I want to stay here with Dad and Aunt Beatrice. Stop pretending to be sick just to make me come back. It's pathetic."

The call ended.

I sat there with the phone pressed against my ear, staring at the wall as tears slowly filled my eyes. There was blood on my hand, my body was failing me, and the person I had spent years protecting had just called me pathetic because he believed I was pretending to be sick.

If only he knew the truth.

I carefully placed the phone on the bed as though it might break, then walked over to the dresser. Our wedding photograph sat inside a large golden frame, another expensive gift from Ottavia Bellandi.

I picked it up and studied Leandro's face.

He was not smiling.

I remembered noticing it on our wedding day, but I had convinced myself that he was simply nervous. I had been too happy to question anything. Looking at the photograph now, I finally understood what I had refused to see back then.

He had not looked like a man getting married.

He had looked like a man being sent to his execution.

Then I looked at myself.

I was smiling brightly, completely unaware of the truth.

You look like her.

Ottavia's words returned to my mind.

A poor man's version.

My hands trembled as I placed the photograph down and opened my laptop. For the first time in three years, I searched for Beatrice.

The results appeared almost immediately.

There were articles about her everywhere. Beatrice was a tennis prodigy, a Grand Slam winner, and an Olympic hopeful. Her photographs filled the screen, and every article praised her talent, beauty, discipline, and success.

She was everything I was not.

She had built a name for herself through hard work and determination, while I had spent the past three years trying to become the perfect wife for a man who had never truly wanted me.

Then I saw an article about her career.

An injury had forced her to step away from professional tennis eight weeks earlier.

Eight weeks.

The same amount of time Leandro had suddenly started coming home late. The same period when he began taking Nico on strange outings and barely spoke to me. The same time when the distance between us became impossible to ignore.

My hands went cold.

I continued scrolling until I found old photographs of Leandro and Beatrice from five years earlier, long before I had ever met him.

They looked perfect together.

Leandro was smiling in those pictures, and it was not the polite smile I had seen from him at family events. It was a real smile. His eyes were bright, and his happiness was impossible to miss.

I had never seen him look at me like that.

Not once.

I kept scrolling through the more recent photographs.

There was Beatrice returning to Milan. Beatrice attending a charity gala with Leandro standing in the background. Beatrice visiting a children's hospital and reading to sick children, with Nico sitting beside her and looking at her with obvious admiration.

I slowly closed the laptop and looked around the bedroom.

For the first time, I noticed how little of the room actually belonged to me.

My clothes took up only one wardrobe while Leandro's things filled almost every other space. There was a book I had been reading sitting forgotten on the bedside table, its place in the room almost as insignificant as I felt.

Even here, in the bedroom I had shared with my husband for three years, I looked like a visitor.

I had believed Nico was mine.

I had believed Leandro was mine.

I had believed this home was mine.

Then Beatrice came back and suddenly everyone seemed to know where they belonged.

My phone lit up with another notification.

This time, it was not a private message.

It was a new photograph from Beatrice's public social media account.

I opened it with trembling fingers.

The photograph showed Nico asleep in what looked like an expensive hotel room. His small hand was wrapped around a Mickey Mouse plush toy, and he looked completely peaceful.

Then I saw the caption.

"Best day ever with this little sweetheart. Some people are simply meant to be in your life. #family #blessed #gardaland"

The comments were already filling the post.

"Such a cute kid!"

"You'll make an amazing mom someday!"

"Beautiful family!"

I stared at one word for a long time.

Family.

She was claiming my son in front of thousands of people, and Leandro was allowing her to do it.

My eyes slowly dropped to my wedding ring. The diamond caught the soft light from the lamp, shining as though it still represented something precious.

I had worn that ring for seven years.

Seven years of believing in a promise that apparently had never meant the same thing to the man who made it.

I slowly twisted the ring around my finger.

Then I pulled it off.

My hand felt strangely light without it.

I placed the ring on the nightstand beside our wedding photograph and picked up my phone. My fingers hovered over Leandro's name for several seconds as I fought the last bit of hesitation inside me.

Then I typed the words I had been too afraid to say for years.

"Let's get divorced."

I stared at the message for only a moment before pressing send.

This time, I did not regret it.

If I truly had only three months left to live, I refused to spend those final months begging for love from people who had never wanted me in the first place.

I was done waiting for Leandro to choose me.

I was done trying to prove that I was worthy of being Nico's mother.

And most of all, I was done being Beatrice's replacement.

I had spent three years living as someone else's substitute.