Gone for Ten Years, Gone Forever

The night I decided to leave Lorenzo Bruno, I made three quiet moves. First, I listed every gift he'd ever pressed into my hands online, the watches, the jewels, the kind of tribute that bought a woman's silence, and I let them go for nothing but the cost of a courier. Second, I sold the safehouse we'd bought for our life together, the one meant to shelter the bride, for a fraction of its worth, and I put a blade through the ten-million-dollar bridal silk I had never once worn. Third, I erased myself from the map, swearing myself to a Council-sanctioned operation that demanded a decade gone dark, every thread to the outside world cut clean. Maybe forever.

By the time Lorenzo had finished arranging his flawless little proposal, I had already vanished from his world. He never noticed. I was quietly dismantling my life through every embrace, every kiss, every night he didn't come home while he played 'wedding' with the girl from the Greco household. I had made myself into the obedient, accommodating woman he swore he adored, only for him to shatter my trust.

One night, he finally lost his composure and asked me, "Why don't you get angry anymore? Do you not love me anymore?"