If it weren't for that thick stack of flight tickets, I could have confidently dismissed Don Ferrante's warning that "he doesn't love you as much."
No wonder he was always out of touch at the end of each month.
Turns out, he was busy traveling thousands of miles to be with Elara.
For two whole years, I felt like a fool, desperately racing to master the cipher work and prove my value to the Ferrante operation, just to carve out time to fly back and see him.
Those brief meetings after long flights were once the happiest moments of my life.
Yet, my cross-ocean love, in the face of that stack of tickets Ansel cherished, had become a joke.
As I made my way to the proposal site, I tried to convince myself that maybe he had traveled to Palermo for business. A sit-down with an allied family. A supply-chain problem. Anything.
When I saw him offering the blood-bound ring to Elara, the very woman who had once tormented me, it became clear why he hadn't visited me despite the mere hundred kilometers between us.
Elara had barred him from seeing me, leaving him to send word through intermediaries, stories of longing and sorrow to explain his absence.