Three years of marriage, and Vito never once sat down at the table with me. I couldn’t get through a single meal without fish, but the mere smell of it made him snarl about the stink—and afterward, he’d refuse to speak to me for a full month. So whenever he ate at home, I took my plate of fish outside the villa. Three years. Every single day. Until the afternoon I passed by the seafood market at the docks and saw Vito, with practiced ease, gutting a fish for some young girl—then eating the plate of tuna sashimi she fed him with her own hand. That was when I finally understood. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stand the smell of fish. He’d simply been saving his affection for someone else. … At noon, the seafood market baked under a punishing sun, giving off a rancid, rotting stench. A few men in black suits stood watch outside the stalls, telltale bulges at their waists where they carried their guns. I stood across from Vito, watching this man—the Don whose word was law in the Toronto underworld, who held countless lives in his hand—crouched down and expertly cleaning fish for some little girl who sold them out of buckets. When he finished, he peeled off the rubber gloves and let out a soft breath. The girl saw him and hurried over with a tissue, dabbing gently at the sweat on his brow. They looked at each other and smiled. Then, when Vito wasn’t watching, she rose up on her toes and stole a quick kiss right on his lips. Vito froze for a beat—but he said nothing. Something twisted in my chest. Three years. Three years of hiding outside just to eat my fish. And the moment I walked back through the door, he’d order me to rinse my mouth five times before he would even consider kissing me. But just now—just now, he’d let that girl press her lips to his, with the taste of fish still fresh on them. A wave of nausea rolled through me. The girl spotted me approaching, and reluctantly pulled away from him. Vito, the instant he recognized me, went white as bone. I didn’t bother reacting to him. I simply pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and spoke to the girl. “One fish. The bigger, the better.” She clearly didn’t know who I was. She glanced back at the tanks and gave me an apologetic look. “Ma’am, you’re too late—we’re all sold out. Would you like to reserve one for tomorrow?” I shook my head, my voice even. “I’m not late. I got here the moment the market opened.” “Oh—then why are you only buying now, ma’am?” “You two were busy being intimate. I didn’t want to interrupt.” I was speaking to her, but my eyes stayed fixed on Vito. Beside her, he stiffened again, his brows drawing together. I changed the subject. “Isn’t there still one fish left?” The girl turned to look on instinct. There was one fish floating in the tank—dead, at some unknown point during the morning. She waved her hands quickly. “Ma’am, that one’s dead. It’s not fresh anymore. I can’t sell it to you.” I kept smiling. “It’s fine. This fish is only dead. It’s not like certain people—clean and respectable on the outside, rotten to the core underneath. Just knock a little off the price.” “After all, today happens to be my birthday.” Vito’s head snapped up, his expression darkening further. A gleam of hidden satisfaction flickered in the girl’s eyes as she pretended to hesitate, then nodded. “Well… all right, then.” “But my friend can’t clean it for you. He’s been working all morning, he must be exhausted—” Before I could answer, Vito had already scooped the fish up himself, pulling the gloves on with brisk familiarity. “It’s fine, Gina. I’ve got it. It’s just one more.” The girl called Gina tried to lean in for another kiss. He turned his face away. She laughed sheepishly. “Thank you.” The two of them moved around each other with an intimacy that was impossible to miss. Something lodged itself in my chest, so tight I could barely breathe. Vito stunned the fish, then asked me: “How do you want it prepared?” “Sashimi.” My answer made his hands go still again. He pressed his lips together, silent for a long moment, before he finally spoke. “This one isn’t fresh. It won’t work as sashimi. You’d get sick.” I looked at him, and before I could stop it, a wounded ache rose up in my throat. “Is this fish only unfresh today? Or has it been rotten for a long time?” I meant more than I said. On the surface, I was talking about the fish. But I was really asking whether our marriage had gone bad today—or whether it had been decaying for years. Vito paused. He set down his tools, then dropped the fish back into the tank. “I’m sorry. I can’t sell you this one.” “I always eat fish on my birthday.” The girl finally caught on that something was wrong. She asked hesitantly: “Vito, do you two… know each other?” “No.” Vito answered so fast it hurt. Then he shot me a look, silent, insistent. Eyes red, I gave a soft murmur of agreement, and turned to leave, keeping my dignity intact. What he didn’t know, in that moment— What I was giving up wasn’t just the fish. It was him.
Back at the villa, Vito’s messages started rolling in one after another. *Wait for me at home. I’ll give you an explanation.* *I haven’t forgotten it’s your birthday. I have a present. I’m on my way back…* I didn’t answer a single one. My cursor hovered over the “Accept” button for a long time as I sat in front of my laptop, staring at the offer letter from New York. In my mind, I ran through our three years of dating, our three years of marriage. There had been so much good. But now, I couldn’t tell where the truth ended and the lies began. He’d told me he hated fish—hated the smell—said it reminded him of the rotting corpses at the docks, of the bloody water after the family cleaned out its traitors. Yet there he was, standing in the fishiest place on earth, letting a fish-monger’s daughter kiss him. He was supposed to be the youngest, most dangerous, most untouchable Don in Toronto. And yet, for a girl named Gina who sold fish out of a bucket, he was willing to squat down on filthy concrete and gut them for her. Evening came. Vito didn’t come home. There were no more explanations on my phone. No more messages. I pressed a hand to my mouth, and in the end, I swallowed the tears back down. I clicked the button. I accepted the offer that had been sitting in my inbox for a week. It was time to end all of it. Once that was done, I called my lawyer. Drafted the divorce agreement. Started the inventory of marital assets. Late that night, Vito pushed open the door, the winter air still clinging to his dark suit. I sat on the couch and slid the divorce papers across the table toward him. He barely glanced at them. “Mia. As the Donna of the Leone family, you don’t get to act impulsively. Put the papers away. Let me explain what happened today first.” I looked up at him, my voice trembling. “Explain? I saw that girl kiss you with my own eyes. You didn’t even pull away. For three years, if I wanted to eat fish, I had to hide outside like an animal. When I came home, I had to rinse my mouth over and over before I could get near you. And you let *her* do that? You call that anything but favoritism? You call that anything but cheating?” Vito loosened his tie. His voice was still measured, still perfectly organized as he laid it out for me. “That kiss—she’s naïve, she just threw herself at me. I didn’t have time to move away, and I couldn’t shout at her for it.” He sat down on the couch across from me, calmly building his case. “Six months ago, I was ambushed on international waters by the Ruso family. Gina risked her own life to save me.” “My relationship with her isn’t what you think it is.” “There are plenty of ways to repay a debt. You could have written her a check. You could have handed her cash. Why did you have to be at that stall, gutting her fish, letting her cross every line?” I’d been married to Vito long enough. I knew him inside and out. A man like him—a man of that stature—didn’t do things like that out of gratitude. He simply refused, to the death, to admit he was interested in a fish-monger’s daughter. Vito stared at me, absolutely convinced he’d done nothing wrong. “Gina is a good girl. She has no one. She won’t take money. This is the only way I can help her.” “As for the fish smell—Gina makes her living catching fish. If I turned my nose up at the very thing that keeps her alive, what kind of man would that make me?” I laughed, my eyes burning red. “Vito! And what about your duty to me, as my husband? You didn’t even have the guts to acknowledge me as your wife in front of her today.” Vito leaned closer, and for a rare moment, genuine urgency broke through in his eyes. He reached out to touch me. I flinched away. He didn’t push it. His voice dropped low. “No. I only did it because I didn’t want her to feel guilty.” “But I never betrayed you. I’m not signing these papers. You know as well as I do—the Leone family cannot have rumors of a divorce, of a marriage falling apart. The moment I sign this, our rivals will use it to tear us down. Every man loyal to us will suffer for it.” His voice softened, coaxing. “Today was just a misunderstanding. You’re my wife. I’m not going to destroy our marriage and our family for the sake of someone I owe a debt to. Don’t be reckless. Give me the chance to make it right.” The words had barely left his mouth when his phone rang. It was Gina. Through the speaker came the sound of a girl in tears: “Vito, the tide came in at the docks. All the fish you helped me catch today, they’ve all gotten out—I can’t manage it alone, can you come help me?” Vito looked at me, conflict raw in his eyes. I pulled my lips into a mocking smile. In the end, he couldn’t let Gina go. He stood up and said quietly, “I’ll finish up quickly and come right back. We’ll talk this through. Don’t do anything rash. Don’t sign anything.” He grabbed his coat and strode out. The door closed. The house went silent, save for the ticking of the wall clock. The minute hand had just crossed midnight. I sagged against the couch, drained. My nose stung. I whispered to myself: “Happy thirtieth birthday, Mia.” “Congratulations. From now on, you get to celebrate your birthday the way *you* want.”
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