The Don Thought I'd Stay

Chapter 4

On my last day before leaving, I finished the hospital handover and went back to the manor to pick up my documents.

Sofia was sitting in the living room.

She still wore the black onyx around her neck. Beside her sat a glass taken from Damian's private liquor cabinet.

Damian had promised she would never set foot here again.

Sofia caught my gaze and smiled. "The men at the door saw the amulet. No one dared to stop me."

That was when I understood. As long as the privileges Damian gave her remained, the boundaries he promised me would always be just lines drawn on paper.

She saw my file case. "You're really leaving?"

I didn't answer.

But she went on, deliberately bringing up Damian's nightmares, the strange silence of war zones at night, and the little boy who sold roses.

My hand stopped. "Which medical post did you volunteer at?"

"North of Aleppo."

"What year?"

"2020."

I laughed.

The real events happened two years later. The surgeries by flashlight. The rose‑selling boy. The sudden quiet before the shelling. All of it was written in the internal report I had submitted to my mother's foundation.

And Sofia had once organized those files.

So the woman Damian thought understood him best had built every step of her closeness to him from pieces of my life.

I didn't call her out.

Because I no longer needed to prove she was a liar in order to prove I deserved to be chosen by my husband.

Then gunfire erupted outside the estate.

The first shot shattered the floor‑to‑ceiling window. The second grazed Sofia's shoulder.

As the guards rushed in, Sofia grabbed my wrist and cried, "Don't blame Elena... she's just too upset."

Ten minutes later, Damian arrived.

The first thing he did when he burst into the living room was grab my shoulders and check me over. "Are you hurt?"

I shook my head. He exhaled in relief. Only then did he notice Sofia on the stretcher.

That was why I had never thought of him as a completely terrible husband.

But it didn't take a completely terrible person to destroy a marriage.

Nicolò handed over the preliminary report. "Two members of your private security team were reassigned last night. The order came from your account. The shooter used their standard ammunition."

Damian gave the order. "No one touches Elena. Confiscate her security team's weapons first. Separate them for questioning."

Then he turned to me. "Give me a few hours."

I asked, "Do you think I gave that order?"

"I don't know."

It was honest enough.

And it was honest enough to break me.

"Damian, I'll ask you one more time. Do you really think I would hire someone to shoot another woman over a man?"

He opened his mouth.

Just for a second.

But he didn't say no.

I thought of that dinner we never had. The place setting moved to the opposite side of the table. The way he told me over and over that she was just a responsibility, and the way he kept making me step aside for that responsibility.

I hadn't left him over the safe house. I hadn't left him over the amulet. I hadn't left him over that seat. I hadn't even left him over the night he stayed by Sofia's bedside.

I had been waiting.

Waiting for one time. One time when he wouldn't need evidence, wouldn't need to weigh options. When he would just know what kind of woman his wife was.

Now I got the answer.

I pulled the divorce papers from the bottom of my file case, the ones my lawyer had prepared a month ago.

"This has been sitting in my drawer for a month. I never signed it."

I turned to the last page and wrote my name under Damian's frozen gaze.

Elena Bellini.

"Because I kept telling myself we could still talk."

I slid off my wedding ring and placed it in his palm, on top of the agreement.

"We're done talking."

Damian's hand closed around the papers. "You're signing this now because I'm investigating you?"

"No."

I looked him in the eye. "I'm signing it because I finally understand. I was never competing with Sofia for you. I was competing with the version of me you had in your head. The one who would always understand. The one who would never leave."

"I can't win against her. And I don't want to try anymore."

Two hours later, I entered the underground parking garage through the hospital staff corridor.

From three years of marriage, I took only my passport, my medical license, my mother's old pocket watch, and a twenty‑kilogram suitcase.

*****

As the plane climbed through the clouds, Yorkshore shrank beneath me.

Three years ago, I had come back from a war zone and become Mrs. Moretti.

Three years later, I left that name behind in Yorkshore.

This time, I was just Elena.