The Don Chose Her, I Left

For five years, Enora has believed herself loved by Vincenzo Romano, the Don who confessed to her beneath a meteor shower and spoiled her with pink myrtle and tender names. Then she overhears his right-hand man, Dario Bassi, ask whether the whole courtship was only ever a way to make Lyla jealous now that Lyla is divorced and back.

In Vincenzo's locked study she finds keepsakes engraved with his and Lyla's initials, and Latin love poems in his own hand addressed to Lyla. Every thoughtful gesture of five years, she realises, was borrowed from another woman's tastes. She quietly plans a train ticket to Geneva and a new identity, while Vincenzo talks of a fifth-anniversary surprise and hands her lab work to Lyla, the family's new medical advisor. At a family showcase, Enora sees her own research signed with Lyla's name, and Lyla thanks her for the notes Vincenzo carried away.

Enora has decided to stop going along with it, and the Don does not yet know she is leaving.