Chapter 5 - The Unsent CovenantThat night, I sat alone in my study with a fresh sheet of heavy ivory stationery and a gold fountain pen.

I didn't write as a Don. I didn't write as a powerful man demanding a second chance. I wrote as the twenty-four-year-old boy who had promised to love a gentle girl in Brooklyn.

"Anna,

I saw the photograph today. I saw you holding sunflowers in Halifax.

For four months, I believed that my pain was the greatest tragedy in this story. I believed that if I hunted hard enough, if I burned enough lies, I could force the universe to give me back what I lost.

Then I read your journal.

I read about the lavender perfume. I read about the emerald brooch. I read about the 184 times I looked you in the eye and lied to cover my own pathetic cowardice.

I realized that the monster you feared fourteen years ago wasn't a rival family or a federal prosecutor. It was the man sleeping beside you.

You asked me if I would notice if you disappeared for five days. I notice every second of every hour. I notice the silence in this house that deafens me. I notice the empty safe that reminds me that my fortune is worthless.

But today, I saw your smile in Halifax. It was a smile I haven't seen in ten years—a smile that exists only because you escaped my world.

I am keeping my oath, Anna. The door is open. I am pulling my men out of Canada. I am sealing your new identity through our offshore legal proxies so no one in my world can ever track you again.

Your fortune—the three million dollars from your mother’s estate trust—has been transferred into your Halifax account. It is not my money. It is yours.

You don't belong to me. You never did. You belonged to yourself.

Be happy, my love. Live long, draw your sunflowers, and forget the man who didn't know how to treasure a miracle.

— Nicholas"

I folded the ivory paper, placed it inside a plain white envelope, and sealed it with wax.

May you like

"I left my mafia husband after overhearing another woman's laughter in h...

"Three months after I broke my wife's heart and divorced her, a hospital...

"I caught my maid wearing an astronaut suit in my daughter's bedroom—the...

I didn't mail it.

I walked over to the floor safe, placed the sealed letter inside the dark, empty space where my original oath had rested for fourteen years, locked the heavy steel door, and threw the key into the Hudson River at midnight.