I stripped off my silk, left my father's ring on the kitchen table, put on a plain cotton dress, and became his wife.
And over the years, lulled by his sweet words repeated day after day, I withered into a gaunt, hollow-eyed woman in a waterfront tenement, jumping at sirens in the night.
I never imagined that within five or six years, every one of his elder brothers would die in turf wars and Commission purges, and the Ferrante family's contested succession clause would hand Dante the territory on a single condition: claim the dual-bloodline right, and the family was his.
Once the Commission ratified him, he simply slotted Gianna into the role of his wife and raised her children as his own.
By the time I dragged myself to his door, Dante had long since forgotten that my daughter and I existed.
So much so that when we died miserably in my past life, he didn't shed a single tear.
If anything, he was relieved he wouldn't have to write up divorce papers after all.
This time, no matter what it took, I would change my daughter's fate and my own.