Thirty-two times.
That was how many times Tristan had "tested" me during our three years together.
When I met Tristan Bennett, we were both hiding our true identities. He never mentioned he was the Bennett family heir, and I never brought up the surname Torrente. We were just ordinary college sweethearts in Ashborne City. He said he loved me, and I believed him.
The seventeenth time: driving across town late at night to deliver documents for him, I was run off the road and crashed into a guardrail, earning nine stitches in my forehead. His first words at the hospital were, "Can't you even drive properly? You delayed my business."
The twenty-sixth time: he owed money at an underground casino. He sent me to negotiate. A gun was drawn, and a bullet grazed my arm, soaking my sleeve in blood. The scar is still there. He never asked if I was in pain; he only cared if his debt was cleared.
The thirtieth time: he asked for my entire life savings for an "emergency." He turned around and used that money to buy someone else a new car.
I thought if I endured it all, we would eventually have a future.
Until he announced he was opening a casino and demanded ten million dollars. "The ultimate test," he called it. If I passed, he’d marry me.
I refused.
He immediately bought Aurelia Gallom a twenty-million-dollar mansion. Waving the property deed in my face, he said, "Vesna, I was just testing you. It's a shame you failed. We're done."
I didn't cry, and I didn't beg. The moment I walked away, I had never felt so free. He didn't know I was a Torrente, or that my father, Dario, owned the criminal underworld of this city. And he certainly never imagined that I would later marry Silvio Marchesi—the most powerful Mafia Boss in Ashborne City—and become the Donna of the Marchesi syndicate.
