All Chapters of I Gave Him Ten Years. Then I Took It All Back: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The dinner ended, and Marco took off his wedding ring and dropped it into the car's storage compartment.I moved to the back seat without being asked. He looked at me in the rearview mirror, surprised that I had not sat next to him."What?"I understood what he meant. It was the kind of unspoken understanding we had built over ten years of hardship."We agreed on our wedding night," I said. "I would never try to take Sofia's place."Ten years ago, Sofia Conti disappeared the night before the wedding. Her parents brought me back from the countryside in a hurry, announced that I was their real daughter, and pushed me into the marriage with the Falcone family. On our wedding night, Marco drank himself unconscious and called out Sofia's name for hours.While Sofia raised champagne glasses at gallery openings in Europe, I attended the meetings Marco could not show up to during the years the family had cast him aside. I kept the allies from turning against us. While Sofia skied in the Alps,

Marco did not come home that night. I was not surprised.I sat at my desk and looked at the ring on my finger. The Falcone family crest was engraved on the outside, and a thin scratch ran along one edge. It had been left by a knife during an assassination attempt years ago. I had raised my hand to block the blade, and the ring took the hit. If not for that ring, I would have lost the finger.I took the ring off and put it on the table. Then I opened my laptop and started drafting divorce papers.I had never had a choice in my life. I was swapped at birth, brought back, rejected, and forced into a marriage. The only thing I could choose was how I left.At nine in the morning, Marco called."Last night...""Marco, come eat breakfast. I made you bacon."Sofia's voice came through from somewhere nearby as he was speaking. It was the same sweet, spoiled tone I remembered from when I first arrived at the Conti house."I am not interested," I said coldly."Ginevra, do you have to be this dist

I opened the link and saw the photo. Marco and Sofia were standing across from each other, his hand resting on her arm. Their faces were close, too close for two people who were supposed to be nothing more than childhood friends. He was looking down at her. She was looking up at him. The angle caught the light across his jaw and the curve of her smile. It looked intimate. It looked like a moment that was never meant to be photographed.The headline sat bold across the screen: True Love Returns. Falcone Donna Out.The comments rolled in fast.[A man at the top always goes back to his first love.][Marco stripped his wife of her authority in front of the Contis. We all saw who he chose.][I heard Sofia was forced out ten years ago. Now we know who did it.]I locked the screen. The car was already on the highway heading for the airport. Buildings thinned out on both sides. I adjusted the seat back and closed my eyes.Two black sedans appeared in the rearview mirror. One came up on the rig

Marco came in and closed the door behind him. We looked at each other across the desk for a long moment. He looked around the room. White walls. Metal filing cabinets. A desk covered in papers. The port cranes moving outside the window. He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes."You look like you are doing well."I did not answer. I picked up my glass, took a sip of water, and looked back at the papers in front of me. He stepped closer and stood beside the desk, glancing at the names on the documents."About everything that happened. I am sorry.""For what?" I did not look up."For all of it. I remember everything you did for me. I would not have made it through those years without you. The negotiations you attended for me. The assassinations you stopped. The children you lost. I never forgot any of it."His voice dropped."What I said at the Conti house, I said because you told me you regretted marrying me. I know you had every right to regret it. You gave so much, and I never thanked

I stayed in the office until three in the morning. The car with the unknown plate had stopped at the side gate for forty minutes and then left. The dockworker said one man got out, walked the perimeter of the warehouse, and did not approach the main building. He was checking the layout.I sent the plate number to a security firm owner I knew. He said he would have an answer in two hours.At six in the morning, the sky was still gray. Port air came through the window crack, carrying the smell of rust and saltwater. I wore an old coat and sat in the hard chair, flipping through the contracts I had signed the night before.My phone buzzed. The security firm had a name. The car was registered to a shell company with cash inflows over the last three months tracing back to a gallery account. I remembered that gallery. Sofia had held several shows there while she was in Europe.I stood up and walked to the window. The cranes were not moving yet. The whole port sat quiet like a sheet of gray s