He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 01
The moment the car threw her through the air, Elena had only one thought: *Finally. A reason good enough to see my husband.*
But even after she woke up in the emergency room of a private clinic with twelve stitches in her temple, Dante, the head of the De Luca family, still hadn’t come.
Elena called his encrypted number. She heard the sound of a running shower, and then Bianca’s breathy laugh.
“Dante’s in the shower… Oh, wait. He’s handling Family business.”
“The clinic called about a car accident? You sounded fine, so I told him it wasn’t urgent.”
“You’re not actually going to cry, are you? I’ll be sure to remind him once he’s out.”
Elena’s nails dug into her palm, her grip tightening on the phone.
She thought of her birthday, when Dante had shut down an entire stretch of coastline to celebrate Bianca’s new role as liaison between their two families. Bianca had even put a birthday hat on her hunting dog. The next day, the tabloids ran with it: *Dante Throws Lavish Fireworks Display for Dog’s First Birthday.*
She thought of the night her appendix had ruptured. It was three in the morning, and she’d driven herself to the clinic alone. Dante never answered his phone. A thunderstorm had knocked out surveillance in the harbor district, so he’d stayed at an ally’s safe house to oversee Bianca’s security himself.
It wasn’t as if she’d never asked him about it.
Every time, Dante said the same thing. “I grew up with Bianca. She’s in charge of secure communications now. Don’t make this sordid.”
Five years of marriage. Five years of making excuses for his coldness.
It wasn’t that he lacked warmth.
He just refused to give any of it to her.
Elena walked to the nurses’ station, retrieved her phone, and typed a message.
[I’m at the clinic. I’m terminating the pregnancy.]
A long time passed before the screen finally lit up.
One word.
[Received.]
A child would mean their name in the De Luca family records, binding them both forever to a system where a wife’s emergency calls could be screened and ignored.
Elena stared at the word on her screen and signed the consent form for the procedure.
…
Elena lay in the hospital bed, her face a blank mask.
Halfway through the procedure, she began to hemorrhage. Her blood pressure plummeted.
A nurse ran for help. The attending doctor frantically called Dante’s private line. As the wife of the head of the De Luca family, Elena was undergoing a high-risk procedure, and protocol required the doctor to notify her husband.
No one answered.
Ultimately, the surgeon proceeded without authorization, working with his team for over two hours to pull her back from the brink.
When Elena woke up, the room was still empty.
A call came from her structural engineering firm. Elena requested medical leave and handed off the restoration drawings for the old theater project to a colleague. After she hung up, she noticed an internal weekly bulletin left on the pillow beside her.
The bulletin circulated only among a handful of allied Families.
She flipped casually to the society page, and her fingers froze.
The photo was from a gathering at the coast to commemorate the truce. Dante stood among a group of bosses, Bianca nestled against his shoulder. At their feet, a line of seashells spelled out the number: 10,000.
Beneath it was a quote from Bianca.
[We get about thirty thousand days in this life. You’ve been in mine for ten thousand of them.]
The message was unmistakable.
The daughter of the Ferraro Don could press herself against the head of the De Luca family, while his own wife hadn’t even been invited.
Elena stared at the page for a long time before closing the bulletin.
Suddenly, she didn’t know what she was fighting to protect anymore.
This marriage was a ghost.
From the very beginning, it seemed she was the only one who ever thought of it as real.
She borrowed a pen and paper, wrote a single line, and sent a photo of it to Dante.
[I’ve had enough. I’m ending the marriage and my protected status with the De Luca family. If you don’t reply by noon tomorrow, I’ll take your silence as consent.]
Until noon the next day, her phone remained silent.
Elena didn’t wait any longer.
[There’s nothing to discuss. Dante, we’re done.]
After sending the text, she dialed a number she had written down six months ago.
The man on the other end answered immediately, as if he’d been waiting for her call.
Elena got straight to the point. “You were right. I lost. I agree to your terms.”
A two-second silence, then a soft, low laugh.
“A man who fails to protect you once will fail you again. If there’s no trust, you leave. And if I ever disappoint you, you can leave me, too.”
“I’ll come get you in three days.”