"But I'll give him this," he added with a grin, flipping through my chart. "Stubborn mouth, soft heart. He already took care of all your medical bills."
My smile didn't disappear, but it shifted—subtly, almost imperceptibly—into something bitter.
Salvatore really did deserve an award for his performance.
To everyone else, he was just a responsible boss at the front office, someone who took care of his people out of basic decency. A man with principles. No one knew the truth. No one knew that behind the locked door of his private study at the compound, I had been in a relationship with him for five years. Five entire years of secrecy, of compromise, of waiting.
No one except a handful of his closest men. His inner circle. The ones bound by the same silence that bound me.
I had asked him more times than I could count, always carefully, always hoping for a different answer.
"When can we stop hiding?"
Every single time, he brushed it off with the same vague excuse.
"The timing's not right."
I used to believe him.
I used to tell myself that there was a reason, that the Family's politics demanded patience, that one day things would be different.
But today, I finally understood.