Chapter 5

[Alessia's POV]

When I came to, I was in the hospital. Through the haze, I felt myself being rushed toward an operating room. The nurses' anxious voices buzzed around me.

"Both women are severely injured with cranial hemorrhage and multiple fractures. We only have one OR left today—there've been too many car crash victims. Whoever goes in later might not make it. Don Luca, you have to decide who we operate on first!"

The next second, I heard Vito's voice, wrecked and hoarse. "Save them both! Can't one of them be transferred to another hospital?"

"No can do, Don Luca! In their condition, they can't be moved at all! You have to decide right now!"

Silence fell, heavy and suffocating.

I forced my eyes open just a sliver and saw Vito standing at the OR doors. His jaw was clenched tight, and on his face was a kind of struggle and torment I had never seen before.

In the end, he spoke as if it took everything out of him. "Save… Cecilia first."

He'd chosen Cecilia. I already knew the truth and had given up on him in my heart, but hearing him make that choice with my own ears still made me feel like my heart was crushed. I couldn't breathe through the pain.

So that was how it was, after all.

I closed my eyes again and let the darkness consume me.

When I woke up again, the first thing I saw was the stark white hospital ceiling. The sting of disinfectant filled my nose. I was still alive.

I turned to see Vito sitting by my bed. He looked exhausted, with his bloodshot eyes and stubble darkening his jaw. His suit was wrinkled and rumpled. He had none of the usual imposing air of a Don.

When he saw I was awake, he immediately leaned over, hand reaching for my face. "You're awake? How do you feel? Anything hurting? Anything uncomfortable?"

I slowly turned my head away, dodging his touch. "Didn't you already decide my life or death didn't matter when we were at the OR doors? You chose to save Cecilia over me, right? Why bother pretending you care about me now?"

Vito clearly hadn't expected me to have heard that. He went rigid and was quiet for a long time—so long that I thought he wasn't going to respond.

"Cecilia's health has always been bad. She'd had a blood disorder dragging on for years, and she's been weak this whole time. Under the circumstances, if she didn't go into surgery immediately, she would've died for sure… That's why I chose her first."

He paused, his voice turning rough. "After that, I immediately pulled strings to free up another OR so they could operate on you, too. Alessia, I never gave up on you."

My face stayed expressionless, but inside I felt nothing but cold, barren emptiness.

I let out a short, humorless laugh. "If Cecilia is just your friend and some patient you feel obligated to take care of, then why did seeing us together push her over the edge so badly that she jumped off a building?"

Vito fell silent again. It was a while before he finally spoke, fumbling for a flimsy lie. "Cecilia used to have someone she loved very much, but they couldn't be together for various reasons. Her emotions have been unstable since then. Maybe she was just triggered when she saw us at the nightclub."

I quietly watched him, staring into those calm eyes as he lied through his teeth.

When we were newlyweds, I used to curl up in his arms and tell him, only half-jokingly, "Vito, I hate being lied to. My mom lived her whole life inside my father's endless lies and ended up losing her life because of them. If you ever lie to me, I'll walk away without another look back."

Back then, Vito had lowered his head, kissed the top of my head, and murmured, "I'll never lie to you."

Yet now, the lies came one after another. He didn't even blink when deceiving me.

To me, love had always been a luxury, not a necessity. If it worked, we stayed together. If it didn't, I would move on.

From the moment Vito chose Cecilia outside the OR and from the moment he lied to me again, he was already out of my life, once and for all.

At my silence, Vito chose to change the subject. He took an elegant velvet box out of his bag and flipped it open. Inside was a full set of shimmering jewelry—a necklace, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet.

"You told me before you'd been searching for the keepsakes your mother left behind, the ones your stepmother sold off." He held the box out to me. "I've had people looking for them for a year, and they finally tracked them down at an auction overseas. I brought them back for you."

My gaze fell on the familiar jewelry. I felt like an invisible hand had wrapped around my heart and squeezed gently. The sensation was bitter and painful all at once.

I reached out and took the box, saying coolly, "I'll accept the jewelry, but I won't say thank you. Soon enough, I'll be giving you a big gift, too."