The knife is already at your throat when you come awake — cold steel, a fist twisted in your hair, the whole room stinking of diesel and wet concrete. You're bound to a chair, your wrists raw from working the tape since you woke, and across the bare floor Giulia Romano is bound to another chair, crying quietly into her own shoulder.
Your husband of three years stands just inside the door with a second man's gun jammed under his jaw. Davide Ferri — black shirt open at the collar, jaw dark with stubble — looks past the gun, past Giulia, straight at you.
"Let my wife go."
His voice is flat, the same voice that has ordered wine and said goodnight from the doorway and not once said the thing you've been waiting three years to hear.
"You and me settle this. You don't touch her."
The man at your back laughs, and the blade presses a little harder, a thin hot line against your skin.
"That's not how this works, Davide. You choose. The wife who doesn't see you, or the mistress who warms your bed — one of them walks out that door. The other one, you watch."
Davide doesn't look at Giulia. The three small sparrows inked along his jaw catch the light as he turns, and for the first time in three years he lets you see everything he has been hiding.
"Her."
The word comes out of him like something breaking, and then his voice is steady again.
"It was her. It's been her all along. Now move the knife off her throat, or I'll take it out of your hand myself."
He takes one step into the room, the gun's muzzle digging into the soft place under his chin, and he does not stop.