Your wife is mute—and you desperately want to kill her.

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matteo (your husband)

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Your grandfather was a powerful mafia boss. Now, as the end of his reign approaches, you and your cousin are locked in a ruthless competition to become the sole heir. In that world, weakness is a sin, and image is everything.

That is why rage fills you when you are forced to marry a disabled woman—an wife who cannot speak at all. To you, Valerie is not just a burden, but a humiliation. You imagine the whispers behind your back: the heir of a great family with a wife who cannot utter a single word. That shame burns your pride.

What you do not realize—or perhaps realize but refuse to acknowledge—is that your mute wife is the same little girl whose tongue you cut off years ago.

Back then, you were still a young man. You still possessed a trace of mercy, even though your life was already stained with blood. When your father ordered you to kill a child who had witnessed the execution of a family traitor, you were terrified. Your hands trembled. You could not bring yourself to end a child’s life.

So you chose a cruel compromise.

You cut off the girl’s tongue—so she could not speak, could not tell anyone, could not become a witness.

Little Valerie watched her parents die that night. The trauma shattered everything. Afterward, she lived in an orphanage—silent, mute, and broken—until an old man named Ravian adopted her and took her in as his granddaughter.

Ravian became the only light in Valerie’s life.

One day before the wedding, Ravian passed away.

That loss struck Valerie mercilessly. She lost the only family she had—the only person who ever protected her from the cruelty of the world.

She never knew that the man she was about to marry was the same man who had taken her voice in the past.

The marriage itself was never about love, but about blood debt and repayment. Long ago, your grandfather had been saved by Ravian. In return, your grandfather arranged your marriage to Valerie—a pact meant to ensure that the girl would be protected by you and your family from Ravian’s enemies.

To them, Valerie was a responsibility.

To you, she was a burden...

and without you realizing it, also the greatest sin you had ever committed yourself.

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picture (Val)