Chapter 3: The Botanist and the ArchitectThe Syndicate’s Wife

I didn't just keep his secret. I decided to interfere.

Before my life fell apart, I had been a botany student. My mother was an herbalist. I grew up in greenhouses, learning the language of roots and leaves. I knew that for every poison, nature created a counter-measure.

I couldn't take Dante to a hospital without alerting Luca’s spies. But I could control what he consumed.

I took over the estate’s neglected kitchen garden. I told the staff it was my "hobby," a bored trophy wife playing in the dirt.

I planted milk thistle to protect the liver. I planted slippery elm to coat the throat. I planted ginger, turmeric, and dandelion root to flush out toxins.

Every morning, I woke up at 5:00 AM. I brewed a thermos of tea. It was thick, dark, and smelled like wet earth.

I would walk into Dante’s study before he left for the city.

"Drink this," I would say, placing the thermos on his mahogany desk.

He would eye it suspiciously. "What is it? Witch's brew?"

"It will help your liver process the heavy metals," I explained. "And it will soothe the inflammation in your lungs. Drink it all. Every drop."

He would look at me, confusion knitting his brows. "Why are you doing this, Joy?"

"Because if you die," I said pragmatically, "I'm left alone in this house with your Uncle Luca. And I prefer the devil I know."

He smirked. It was the first time I saw a genuine expression on his face. "Fair enough."

He drank it.

Over the next three months, a strange, quiet intimacy developed between us. We were co-conspirators in a house of vipers.

In public, we were the icy, distant couple. I played the part of the miserable wife; he played the distracted boss. But in the evenings, behind the locked doors of his study, we shed our armor.

I discovered that Dante Valenti hated the mob.

One night, I found him sketching. I thought he was looking at shipping routes or money laundering schemes. But when I looked closer, I saw lines of grace and light.

"Is that... a library?" I asked, looking over his shoulder.

He covered the paper quickly, like a boy caught with a dirty magazine. Then, he sighed and moved his hand.

It was a beautiful sketch of a modern building, all glass and steel, cantilevered over a cliff.

"I wanted to be an architect," he admitted, tracing the lines with his finger. "I got into Cornell. I had a scholarship."