Valentina's POV

I used to beg him to love me. But now? I was done begging.

"Hello, Father. I'm ready to marry Don Alastair Moretti. Send someone to pick me up in three days, after I finalize the annulment." I said the words the moment my father picked up the call. My voice didn't waver. I wouldn't let it.

My father was silent for a moment. Through the phone I could hear the faint clink of ice in a glass, the measured breathing of a man who had survived fifty years in this life by never reacting too quickly.

"Annulment?" Eduardo Serrano's voice was low, careful. "I thought you were hopelessly devoted to Silas Valenti. Why the sudden change of heart?"

"I was just being a foolish child then." The words tasted like ash. "But I've grown up now."

My father didn't hesitate. "Good. I have always told you that you were too good for that bastard."

I released a bitter laugh. It scraped against my throat like broken glass. "I think I just realized that now."

After the call ended, I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles bone-white, my chest aching with something that went deeper than heartbreak. It was the ache of a woman who had finally seen the shape of her own grave and chosen to crawl out of it.

Six years.

Six years wasted on someone who never wanted me.

Silas Valenti never loved me, and I knew that. He married me because his parents brokered the alliance with my father's Family. A strategic union. The Serrano name lending legitimacy and old-world connections to the Valenti operation on the waterfront. I stayed because I was hopelessly in love with him, because I believed that somewhere beneath the cold silences and the turned backs, there was a man worth saving.

I thought if I gave enough, if I waited long enough, he would see me.

Until I overheard his conversation with his underboss, Giovanni Russo, some hours ago.

——

I had gone looking for him because I had news to share. News that I thought might change everything. I'd walked through the dim corridor of the Valenti estate toward his study, the old floorboards groaning softly beneath my feet, the smell of cigar smoke and aged wood seeping from behind the half-closed door. I'd reached for the handle, and then his voice stopped me cold.

"Valentina doesn't know that her miscarriages have been helping Ana." Silas's voice cut through the air like a knife.

I froze in place, my hand still outstretched, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

"Silas," Giovanni's voice was low, careful, the way a man speaks when he knows he's standing on the edge of something monstrous. "You used three of her pregnancies. Are you sure she won't find out?"

Silas scoffed. The sound was casual. Dismissive. The sound of a man discussing inventory, not the lives of his unborn children. "She's too naïve. She thinks they were natural miscarriages. She doesn't know I had the doctor give her those drugged supplements that caused the miscarriages because we needed to harvest the biological material from the babies."

The blood drained from my face.

My stomach twisted, and my heart stopped. I couldn't breathe. The hallway seemed to narrow around me, the walls pressing inward, the dim sconces casting shadows that looked like reaching hands.

"Biological material?" Giovanni asked.

Silas's voice dropped, taking on the low, conspiratorial tone he used when discussing business he didn't want overheard. "Anastasia's womb was damaged. She couldn't carry a child. But the doctor said that stem cells harvested from a fetus with the right bloodline would help repair the damage. Valentina's miscarried babies have been perfect for that."

I couldn't breathe. My hands trembled against the doorframe. The world tilted, and I pressed my shoulder into the wall to keep from falling. Three pregnancies. Three times I had woken in sheets soaked with blood, screaming, begging God to tell me what I'd done wrong. Three tiny lives that never drew breath, and every single one of them had been stolen from me.

He always told me Anastasia Ferraro was just a distant relative from the old country, a cousin of some removed degree who needed the Family's hospitality while she found her footing in the city. And I had believed him. I had welcomed her into our home, poured her wine at Sunday dinners, treated her like blood. But the whole time, he was lying to me.

Giovanni let out a low whistle, the kind of sound a man makes when he's seen something that disturbs even his hardened conscience. "That's twisted, Silas. You're using your own unborn children like lab samples."

"I don't care," Silas snapped. I heard the sharp click of a lighter, the slow exhale of smoke. "I need an heir. A real heir. And Ana is the only woman I want to carry my legacy. She's finally pregnant, thanks to those treatments."

My breath hitched, and a wave of nausea surged through me so violently I had to clamp my hand over my mouth.

"Damn," Giovanni said quietly.

Silas scoffed again. "You think I stayed married to Valentina for love? I only kept her around long enough to repair Ana's womb, and it worked."

I couldn't hear anything else after that. My ears rang, a high, keening sound that drowned out the world. My throat tightened until I thought I might choke. My vision blurred, the hallway dissolving into smears of dark wood and flickering light. It couldn't possibly be true, right?

Silas kept saying over and over that Anastasia was only a distant relative, someone he'd known since childhood. And I believed him like a fool. I had stood in this very hallway and defended him to my own father, sworn that he was a good man, that the Valenti name meant something. And all the while, he had been feeding me poison and harvesting my children.

"So what happens now that Ana is pregnant?" Giovanni asked.

Silas chuckled coldly. The sound was barely human. "Simple. I'll dissolve the marriage after Ana's next blood test comes back. If she's truly healed, then Valentina's job is done."

My knees gave out, and I nearly dropped to the ground. I caught myself on the wall, fingernails scraping against the plaster, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The hallway swam around me.

I had thought the miscarriages were natural. I had even blamed myself, time and again, convinced that something was broken inside me. I had knelt in the chapel at the back of the estate and prayed to the Madonna, asking her what sin I had committed to deserve such suffering.

All that stress. All that pain and exhaustion. The weeks spent in bed, hollow-eyed and bleeding, while Silas barely looked at me.

He had done that to me to help another woman carry his legacy.

I had given him everything. My loyalty. My body. My heart. I had kept his house, stood at his side during sit-downs with rival Families, smiled for the cameras at charity galas while his hand rested on my waist like a brand of ownership. And he was planning to throw me away like garbage.

I didn't even remember walking back through the house. I just remembered hitting the cold marble floor of the bedroom as soon as I stepped inside. My legs had given out. My heart was racing, and I couldn't stop shaking. The room was dark. The heavy curtains were drawn against the afternoon light, and the only sound was the distant ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, counting out the seconds of a life I no longer recognized.

I had been nothing but loyal to him. I had defended him, cooked for him, stood by him while he ignored me, while he spent his nights in Anastasia's bed and left me alone in this mausoleum of a marriage.

I blinked when I realized that I had been sitting there on the cold floor, replaying it all in my head, for how long I didn't know. Minutes. Maybe hours. The light beneath the curtains had shifted.

That's when I remembered why I had gone looking for him in the first place.

My fingers trembled as I reached into my pocket, and I pulled out the small white stick.

Two pink lines.

Positive.

I was pregnant with his child.

I had come to tell him, to share the news that maybe, just maybe, things could change. That maybe this baby would be the thing that made him turn toward me, that made him see me as more than a vessel, more than a convenient arrangement with the Serrano name attached.

But now?

I stared at the stick, tears falling silently onto its plastic surface. Each drop caught the faint light and disappeared.

This baby wouldn't be born into love. It wouldn't be safe. It would be harvested like the others. Another sacrifice on the altar of Anastasia Ferraro's stolen motherhood.

My hand moved to my belly, cradling it protectively, my palm flat against the fabric of my dress.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, and my voice broke. The words barely made it past my lips. "But I won't allow you to be another sacrifice for him."

I wiped my tears away with a shaky breath and picked up the phone again, standing slowly to my feet. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The room steadied around me. I dialed the number I'd found earlier, the one for the clinic on neutral ground, outside Valenti territory, where no one would report back to Silas.

"Hello, this is the Blue Moon Medical Clinic. How can I help you today?"

"I... I need an appointment," I said softly. "For an abortion."

The receptionist's voice was gentle. Professional. The kind of voice trained to hold no judgment. "Of course. Can I ask how far along you are?"

"A few weeks."

"What is your name?"

"Valentina Serrano." I replied, using my maiden name. The name I was born with. The name that still meant something.

"Okay, Ms. Serrano. We have an opening in two days."

I nodded as tears ran down my face, though she couldn't see them. "See you in two days."

"Valentina, what's happening in two days?"

Silas's voice came from the doorway of the living room. I turned slowly. He stood there in the frame of the door, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, a glass of whiskey in one hand. His dark eyes were fixed on me with the flat, assessing gaze of a man who owned everything in the room, including the woman standing in it.

Valentina's POV

I stiffened at the sound of his voice.

There was a time when hearing Silas say my name sent warmth flooding through my chest, a flutter beneath my ribs that I mistook for something holy. Now the sound of it landed like a fist against bruised skin.

I didn't turn around. My eyes were swollen, the lids raw and tight, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me undone. I kept my gaze fixed on the window, on the dark water of the harbor visible beyond the compound walls, where the Valenti shipping boats rocked in their berths like sleeping predators.

"Nothing important," I said, wiping at my cheeks with my sleeve. My voice cracked on the second word, so I cleared my throat and added, "Just making a call."

Silas stepped farther into the room. The floorboards didn't creak under his weight. They never did. He moved the way men in this life learned to move, deliberate and quiet, as though sound itself owed him deference. I could feel his eyes on me, cataloging, assessing.

"You look like a mess. Have you been crying?"

A lump formed in my throat, hard and sharp as a swallowed stone.

"Something got into my eyes," I mumbled, pressing the heels of my palms against them. "Probably dust."

He didn't believe me. I could tell by the quality of the silence that followed, the particular weight of his stare. But he didn't press. Not because he was being kind. Because he simply didn't care enough to pursue it.

His phone rang.

I didn't need to look. I already knew who it was.

Anastasia.

Because of that ringtone. That soft, lilting melody he had programmed only for her, gentle as a lullaby, tender as a whispered prayer. He had never assigned a special tone to my calls. In six years, I had never warranted anything beyond the factory default.

Silas glanced at the screen, and his entire face changed. The hard mask he wore, the cold authority that kept soldiers in line and rivals at bay, dissolved like frost under sudden sun. Something warm and unguarded surfaced in its place, something I had never seen directed at me. Not once.

He stepped into the hallway and answered with a voice so gentle, so impossibly tender, that he might have been a different man entirely. As though he had shed one skin and slipped into another.

"Hey, Ana... yeah, I just got back."

I turned away, staring at the wall, pretending not to hear. Pretending I didn't care. Pretending the sound of his laughter, low and genuine, the kind of laugh he had never once shared with me, wasn't carving something vital out of my chest.

I stood there, frozen in place, and wondered how I had been so blind. Six years. Six years of loving a man who had already given his heart to someone else. Someone he introduced to the Family as his distant cousin from the old country.

Silas glanced back at me through the doorway, his expression already shifting back to its usual indifference, as though the warmth I'd just witnessed had been a hallucination.

"Yeah, I'll be there soon. I just need to take care of something here."

He hung up and slid the phone into the inner pocket of his jacket. Then he turned to me with the flat, transactional tone he reserved for household matters and low-level orders.

"I need to head out for a bit. I want grilled lamb and mashed potatoes for dinner, with that rosemary sauce you make."

That was it. No how are you? No what were you crying about?

He had only just walked through the door, and he was already leaving.

As he turned to go, I called out to him.

"Hold on, before I forget." I pulled a set of papers from the drawer beside me. "The Family lawyers sent these over earlier. They've been asking for your signature all week."

He groaned, impatient. "More damn paperwork?"

"Just a couple of pages," I said, holding out a pen. "It won't take long."

He didn't read a single line. Didn't scan the headers or check the clauses. He signed on the marked spots with the careless speed of a man who believed nothing in his world could move without his permission, and so nothing on paper could possibly threaten him.

He handed the documents back. "Tell the lawyers I handled it."

"I will," I said quietly, placing the papers back in the drawer. My hands were perfectly steady.

"Have dinner ready by the time I get back."

Silas didn't wait for a response. He strode to the door and was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor toward the front entrance of the compound, toward her.

I clenched my fists so tightly my nails bit crescents into my palms. I stared at the door he had walked through and couldn't help it. A bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat, dry and broken.

How hadn't I noticed? All this time. All these years.

He had just signed his own annulment papers without reading a single word.

As I turned, my shoulder caught the edge of the mahogany bookshelf, and a wooden box tumbled from the upper shelf. It hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud that seemed to echo through the silent room.

I crouched and picked it up. I recognized that box.

Silas had warned me once, months ago, never to touch it. He claimed it contained sensitive Family documents, syndicate contracts, things that were none of my concern. He had snapped at me the day I'd reached for it, his voice going cold and dangerous, as though I'd tried to break into the Family safe.

Back then, I had apologized and backed away, the obedient wife, the dutiful La Donna who knew her place.

But now I unlocked the box without hesitation, using the small brass key Silas thought he had cleverly hidden beneath a false bottom in his desk drawer. I had known about it for weeks. I had simply been waiting.

Inside the box, documents and photographs were arranged with meticulous precision.

The first thing I noticed was a folded sheet bearing an official seal. I opened it, and the blood drained from my face.

Certificate of Marriage: Silas Valenti and Anastasia Ferraro.

A secret marriage certificate. Already prepared. Already stamped.

I stared at it until the words blurred.

Silas had been planning a future with her. A legitimate union, a new La Donna for the Valenti Family. All while I was still his wife. All while I was still sleeping under his roof, cooking his meals, pressing his shirts, playing the role of the devoted spouse before his soldiers and his allies.

My hands trembled as I set the certificate aside and reached for the next document.

My stomach twisted so violently I nearly doubled over.

The file was thick. Clinical. Thorough. It contained everything about the miscarriages.

The dates. The dosages. The samples collected. Everything laid out in the precise, emotionless handwriting of a medical professional who had long since stopped seeing me as a person.

My name was listed as the donor. Anastasia's as the recipient.

"Termination successful... biological material harvested... womb responding to experimental fertility treatment... patient A.F. showing significant improvement..."

My hand flew to my mouth.

The room tilted. The walls seemed to breathe inward, pressing closer, and the faint smell of old leather and cigar smoke that permeated every room of this compound suddenly turned my stomach. I could taste bile, hot and acrid, at the back of my throat.

Three miscarriages. Three children I had mourned, had wept for in the dark while Silas slept soundly beside me, had blamed my own body for losing. Three lives that hadn't failed on their own. They had been taken. Harvested. Fed to the woman he actually loved so that her damaged womb might one day carry the heir she wanted to give him.

I sank to my knees on the cold floor, the documents spread before me like evidence at a trial, and my eyes blurred with tears that fell silently, one after another, onto the paper.

I stayed like that for several minutes. I don't know how many. Time had stopped meaning anything.

Then something shifted inside me. Something old and broken gave way to something harder, something forged in the furnace of six wasted years. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. My breathing steadied.

I stood. Calmly. Deliberately. I returned every document, every photograph, every damning page back into the box exactly as I had found them. I locked it. I replaced the key beneath the false bottom of his drawer.

Then I walked to the closet, pulled out a leather suitcase, and began to pack.

I started with my clothes. I folded them neatly, precisely, and placed them in the bag with the careful attention of someone who understood that this was the last time she would touch anything in this room. I gathered the things we had collected over the years, the gifts, the decorations, the framed photographs, and I separated them from my life with surgical detachment.

The gold necklace he gave me on our first anniversary? Into the discard box.

The framed photograph from our wedding ceremony, the one where I was smiling and he was looking past me toward someone off-camera? Gone.

The candle he once said smelled like me, purchased from a shop in Little Italy during the only walk we ever took together? Gone.

I lost track of time until I heard the front door open again, followed by the sound of his shoes on the hardwood.

"What are you doing?"

Silas stood in the doorway, surveying the room with visible surprise. The suitcase on the bed. The open closet. The box of discarded memories on the floor.

I didn't look up. "I'm reorganizing my closet."

He stepped inside, slowly, his eyes moving from the suitcase to the box and back again. "What about these ones here?" He gestured toward the discard box.

I shrugged casually, folding another blouse. "I'm getting rid of old things."

"You're throwing all this out?" Genuine surprise in his voice now, as though the idea that I might discard pieces of our shared history was somehow more shocking than anything he had done to destroy it.

I nodded. "Yeah. I don't need them anymore."

He reached into the box and picked up a small stuffed toy, a little plush bear I used to keep by the bed. He had given it to me during our first year together, back when I still believed the coldness in him was something I could thaw. I had slept with it tucked against my chest on the nights he didn't come home.

"Even this?"

I nodded without looking at it. "It's old."

He held it for a moment, turning it over in his hands, and something flickered across his face. Not guilt. Silas Valenti didn't feel guilt. Confusion, maybe. The disorientation of a man who had grown so accustomed to his wife's devotion that its absence registered as a malfunction rather than a consequence.

"You loved this so much."

He was right. I had cherished it desperately, the way starving people cherish crumbs.

I shrugged. "Things change. People change. Love fades."

He frowned, and for a moment it looked like he wanted to say something else. His mouth opened, a question or perhaps a command forming behind his teeth.

But before he could speak, a voice drifted in from the hallway.

"Silas? Where are you?"

His body went rigid. A subtle tension that ran through his shoulders and down his spine, the kind of involuntary response that no amount of control could fully mask.

A second later, Anastasia Ferraro stepped into the bedroom as though she owned it. She moved with the languid confidence of a woman who had already won, who was simply waiting for the formalities to catch up with reality. Her hand found Silas's arm, resting there casually, possessively, her manicured fingers curling against the fabric of his jacket. Her lips curved into a smile as her gaze settled on me. It was the kind of smile that was meant to cut.

"Oh. Am I interrupting something?"

Silas didn't hesitate. Not even for a breath.

"No," he said smoothly, as if nothing about this tableau was strange. As if his mistress standing in his wife's bedroom, her hand on his arm, her perfume mingling with the scent of the clothes I was packing, was the most natural thing in the world. "You're not interrupting anything."

I didn't react. I turned away and continued folding a shirt, pressing it down into the suitcase with deliberate care, as though the two of them were furniture. As though they weren't even in the room.

Silas cleared his throat, trying to reclaim my attention. "Actually, Valentina... I meant to talk to you about something."

I kept folding. My hands moved steadily. I didn't look up.

He continued anyway, his tone carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a decree he expected no one to question.

"Ana will be staying here with us for the time being."

Valentina's POV

I paused, letting his words settle in the air between us like smoke from a cheap cigar. Then I picked up another blouse and folded it with deliberate care, pressing the creases flat with my palms.

"Anastasia needs support," Silas added from behind me. "And it's better for her baby if she's somewhere stable. You know how hard it's been for her."

I scoffed quietly. The sound barely left my throat, but in the stillness of the bedroom, it carried.

Silas stopped talking.

"Valentina." His tone shifted, the way a blade turns in its sheath before being drawn. He was getting annoyed. "Are you even listening to me?"

I turned around. Slowly. And met his eyes.

He stood in the doorway of our bedroom in the Valenti estate, his jacket still on, his collar loosened just enough to suggest he'd been drinking. Behind him, down the corridor, I could feel Anastasia Ferraro's presence like a draft through an open window. She was somewhere close, listening. She was always listening.

"I'm listening, Silas," I said, my voice flat and even. "Do whatever you want. It's your house, after all."

Silas's mouth opened slightly, then his expression darkened. The muscles along his jaw tightened, and the lamplight caught the hard edge of his cheekbone.

"I don't like your tone, Valentina," he said, low and dangerous.

I lifted an eyebrow. "What tone?"

"You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to be civil, and you're making this harder than it needs to be," he snapped, taking half a step into the room. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight.

I folded the blouse gently, smoothed it once, and placed it into the open suitcase on the bed. Then I turned to face him fully. My expression was calm. Blank. A mask I had learned to wear so well it had nearly become my real face.

"She needs support," he continued, his voice carrying the rehearsed quality of a man who had practiced his justification on the drive home. "She's pregnant and alone. I'm just trying to help."

"Why, Silas?" I asked quietly. The question dropped between us like a stone into still water. "Is she pregnant with your child?"

Silas froze.

His jaw clenched so hard I could see the tendons in his neck strain. No words came at first. His mouth opened, then closed again, and for a single, revealing instant, something flickered behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or the cold calculation of a man deciding which lie to deploy.

He glanced toward the hallway where Anastasia waited, then back at me. "She's my cousin, Valentina," he said finally, his voice instantly defensive, pitched too high, as though I had accused him of breaking Omertà itself. "Does it have to be my child before I help her?"

I gave him a bitter smile. It was the kind of smile that had no warmth in it, the kind that forms when the heart has been hollowed out so many times there is nothing left to wound. "No. But it would explain a lot."

Silas's eyes went dark. The lamplight seemed to retreat from him. "Why are you so heartless, Valentina?" he snapped, and the word heartless landed like a slap. "I've told you several times there's nothing between us. Anastasia is just my cousin, and she has no one but me."

I turned away from him, back to the suitcase. My hands moved with practiced calm, folding the last of my clothes, tucking them into neat rows. Each garment was a countdown. Each fold brought me closer to the door.

"You don't need to explain anything to me, Silas," I said softly. "It's your house. You can do what you want."

Silas paused behind me. I could hear his breathing, heavy and rough, the way it always got when he was struggling to contain the violence that lived just beneath his skin.

"Silas..." Anastasia's voice floated in from the corridor, and then she appeared in the doorway, stepping into view like an actress hitting her mark. Her expression was soft with manufactured concern, her hand resting delicately on the slight swell of her belly. "Maybe I should go. I don't want to cause any more tension." She let her gaze drift to the floor, the picture of wounded modesty. "It's clear I'm not welcome here. And besides..." She glanced at Silas with those wide, guileless eyes. "She's your wife. La Donna of this house."

Silas's arm reached out to her instinctively, his hand finding her elbow with a tenderness I had not felt from him in years. Perhaps ever.

"You're not going anywhere," he said firmly. His voice had changed completely. For her, it softened. For her, the sharp edges smoothed into something almost gentle. "This is my house. You're family. I don't give a damn if she's my wife." He didn't look at me as he said it, but the words were meant for me. Every syllable. "If there's anyone who shouldn't be here, it's her."

I flinched.

I couldn't help it. The reaction was involuntary, a small, sharp contraction somewhere deep in my chest, as though a wire that had been holding me together had finally snapped. But I composed myself quickly, pressing my lips together, straightening my spine. They weren't going to see me cry. Not tonight. Not ever again.

Then, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't just told the woman he'd married that she was less than a stranger in her own home, Silas turned to me with a frown.

"Where's dinner?"

I blinked. "Dinner?"

"Yes," he said slowly, the way one speaks to a child or a servant, "grilled lamb, mashed potatoes, and rosemary sauce. I told you before I left."

"Oh, Silas," Anastasia gasped, pressing her fingertips to her lips in a performance of pure delight. "That's my favorite meal. You remembered!"

My chest tightened. My eyes burned, and I had to look away for a moment, fixing my gaze on the half-packed suitcase so that neither of them would see the moisture gathering along my lashes.

Silas's face melted into a wide, warm smile. A real smile. The kind he had never once given me. "Yes. Yes, I did," he said, his voice rich with affection. "How could I forget?"

Then he turned to me. The warmth vanished. "So? Where is it?"

"Oh," I said, and my voice came out blank, emptied of everything. "No. I didn't make it."

His eyes flashed with irritation, the familiar storm gathering behind his pupils. He scowled. "Why not?"

"I was a little busy today," I said flatly. I held his gaze without flinching. "Maybe Anastasia can cook something instead. Since she'll be living here and all."

Anastasia stiffened. The smug, sweet expression slid from her face like a mask knocked loose, and for one unguarded second, I saw the real woman beneath: calculating, cold, furious. Then it was gone, replaced by that wounded-doe look she wore so well.

Silas's face turned a mottled red. The vein at his temple pulsed, and his eyes blazed with the kind of rage that, in this world, preceded broken bones and hospital visits. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

"You ungrateful, bitter little..." he spat, the words coming out strangled, venomous. "Is this how pitiful you are? You cannot do the one thing you're good for."

I clenched my jaw. My fists tightened at my sides until my nails bit into my palms, four small crescents of pain that kept me anchored, kept me from shattering. But I didn't react. I didn't give him the satisfaction.

They weren't worth my pain anymore.

Silas looked at Anastasia, then turned back to sneer at me. The contempt on his face was so complete, so thorough, it was as if he were looking at something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe.

"Forget it," he said. "Anastasia, let's go eat out. I'm not staying here while she's like this. She can figure herself out."

Anastasia nodded sweetly, slipping her hand into his with the ease of long practice. "Maybe it's best to give her some space," she murmured, her voice dripping with false compassion.

The door slammed behind them. The sound reverberated through the estate, rattling the crystal perfume bottles on my vanity, sending a tremor through the silence that followed.

I stood there.

I stood in the middle of the bedroom I had shared with a man who despised me, surrounded by half-packed clothes and six years of accumulated grief, and I stared at nothing. The tears came slowly, tracking down my cheeks in thin, silent lines. I didn't wipe them away. I let them fall onto the collar of the blouse I was still holding, darkening the silk.

It was only a matter of time. I was leaving soon. Then all of this would end.

The suitcase lay open on the bed like a promise.

I held onto that.

I woke late in the night, throat dry, pulled from a thin and dreamless sleep by a thirst that wouldn't be ignored. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 12:43 AM. The numbers glowed a faint, sickly green in the darkness.

The estate was quiet. The kind of quiet that old houses hold at night, full of settling wood and the distant hum of the heating system and the vast, breathing emptiness of rooms no one was using. I slipped out of bed, pulled a robe around my shoulders, and padded barefoot down the corridor toward the kitchen.

That was when I heard it.

The sounds were coming from the guest room. The one Silas had said Anastasia would stay in. Temporarily, he'd said. Just until she was settled.

I froze in the hallway. The marble floor was cold beneath my feet. The corridor stretched before me, dimly lit by a single wall sconce that cast long, distorted shadows across the wainscoting.

I knew what those sounds were.

Every instinct told me to turn around. To go back to bed, drink water from the bathroom tap, and pretend I hadn't heard anything. But I didn't. Because a part of me, the last stubborn, aching part that still clung to some threadbare hope I hadn't yet managed to kill, needed to see it. Needed to watch that hope burn so I could sweep the ashes away and finally be free.

I walked slowly toward the guest room. Each step was measured, silent, the way one learns to move in a house where making noise at the wrong time invites punishment. The thick carpet runner muffled my footsteps.

The door wasn't fully shut.

A thin sliver of warm light spilled into the hallway through the gap, and with it came the sounds, unmistakable now, close and raw and real.

I stopped at the door. My hand trembled at my side. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes.

I leaned forward and looked through the narrow opening.

And instantly regretted it.

Silas was on top of Anastasia.