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.

Valentina's POV

Silas's mouth was pressed against her neck, and his hands moved over her body with a hunger that made the air in the hallway feel unbreathable.

"God, Ana..." He groaned. "I always loved your body. You feel so good. No one else can ever feel like this. No one can make me feel this way."

That was enough.

My heart didn't break. It shattered completely, like a glass dropped from a great height onto marble, each fragment too small to ever piece back together. But I didn't scream. I didn't throw open the door. I didn't confront them.

Instead, I closed it softly. Gently. Like I didn't want to disturb them.

I turned away. My heart pounded so violently I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes. I stumbled back toward my room, one hand braced against the corridor wall, the other pressed against my stomach as if I could physically hold myself together. I barely reached the bathroom before I dropped to my knees on the cold tile and threw up everything.

I sat on the floor, shaking.

They didn't just betray me. They did it in this house, under this roof, without shame, without a single locked door between their sin and my existence. Like I was nothing. Like I had never been anything at all.

I leaned back against the wall, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The taste of bile sat bitter on my tongue.

My mind flashed back to the last miscarriage.

It had started early that morning. I woke with a searing pain low in my stomach, and when I pulled back the sheets, they were soaked through with blood. Dark, spreading, wrong.

I called for Silas. He didn't come. He was busy. Anastasia's birthday, they told me. He was overseeing the preparations for her celebration, making sure the flowers were right, the cake was perfect, the champagne was chilled. For her.

I managed to reach one of the household staff, a young woman who went pale at the sight of the blood and rushed me to the Family's private clinic in the back seat of a town car, holding my hand the entire way.

Hours later, when Silas finally showed up, he didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't take my hand. He didn't sit at the edge of the bed. He just stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, his jacket still on, like he was already planning to leave.

"Again?" he said. Cold. Flat.

Like it was my fault. Like I was the problem.

He didn't comfort me. He barely looked at me. When the Family doctor called it another unexplained miscarriage, Silas just nodded and walked out of the room. I heard his footsteps recede down the hallway. I heard the front door of the clinic open and close.

I thought he was disappointed in me. I blamed myself for months. I took the vitamins the doctor prescribed. I ate what they told me to eat. I rested. I prayed. I apologized to Silas for failing him, for failing us.

But now I knew better.

He wasn't disappointed. He was satisfied. Because that baby, like the ones before it, had served its purpose.

He got me pregnant. He had me drugged. He waited for the miscarriage. And then the doctor took what was needed, harvested what was left of my child, and delivered it to Anastasia Ferraro so some back-alley fertility specialist could try to repair her ruined womb.

And I had apologized to him. I had actually said sorry.

The bathroom tiles pressed cold against my spine. I stared at the ceiling and felt something shift inside me. Not grief. Not anymore. Something harder. Something with teeth.

I didn't sleep after that. I spent the remaining hours of the night arranging everything for my departure. Documents. The few pieces of jewelry that had belonged to my mother. The single photograph of my family I'd kept hidden in the lining of my suitcase. Every trace of Valentina Serrano, sorted and boxed and ready to disappear from this house.

I worked until the first pale light of dawn bled through the curtains.

Eventually, when the hunger became impossible to ignore, I walked to the kitchen. The estate was silent. The soldiers on night rotation had changed shifts an hour ago. The hallways were empty.

I made a simple breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, tea. Just for myself. I sat at the long dining table alone and ate in silence. The kitchen smelled faintly of coffee grounds and the lemon polish the housekeeper used on the wood. Ordinary smells. The kind of smells that belong to a home. This had never been mine.

My phone buzzed against the table. A message from my father.

Dad: I hope you haven't changed your mind again, because preparations have begun.

Me: Never.

I set the phone face-down and took another bite of toast.

Footsteps came down the stairs. I didn't look up.

"Mm, something smells good," Anastasia said lightly, her voice carrying that particular musical quality she reserved for mornings when she felt she'd won something.

I didn't react. They walked in together, side by side, without a shred of shame. Silas in last night's shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. Anastasia in a silk robe that wasn't hers, her hair still tousled, her lips still faintly swollen. They didn't even try to hide it.

"I hope you slept well, Donna Valenti," Anastasia continued, and the mockery in her tone was barely concealed beneath a veneer of sweetness. She used my title like a blade. "I had an incredible night, thanks to Silas here."

Silas cleared his throat. "Valentina." His voice was stiff, uncomfortable, the way it always got when Anastasia pushed too far in front of me. "What Ana is trying to say is that she couldn't sleep alone last night. Nightmares. I had to stay with her so she could fall asleep."

A small smirk crossed Anastasia's lips. Her eyes gleamed with triumph, bright and vicious.

I continued eating. Completely unfazed.

Anastasia glanced at the table. There was only one plate, one cup, one setting. Her brows lifted with exaggerated surprise.

"Oh. No breakfast for us?" she asked, her voice sugary sweet. "Guess we're on our own now."

I kept chewing. I didn't say a word.

Silas looked at me now, and the discomfort in his expression curdled into irritation. "Valentina, where's our breakfast?"

I took a sip of my tea. Calm. Measured. "I didn't make it," I said flatly.

There was a pause. The kitchen clock ticked.

"What do you mean, you didn't make it?" he asked slowly. His voice hardened. His eyes darkened, that particular shift that happened when his temper surfaced, when the violence inside him moved closer to the skin.

I shrugged.

Silas stepped closer. His presence filled the space between us, heavy with authority he believed was absolute. "You're the wife of the Don of this house. Your role is to support your husband and this household, and that includes making sure this kitchen functions. Or is that too much for you now?"

I stood and rinsed my plate quietly at the sink, my back to him.

"I said, is it too much?" His voice rose. I could feel the heat of his anger even without turning around.

I turned slowly. Met his eyes. "You can always eat out. Like last night."

He stepped forward, closing the distance, his jaw tight. "What is wrong with you lately? You've been acting like a spoiled brat, and it's getting very annoying."

I didn't respond. I reached for the glass teapot on the counter, still filled with hot water, intending to pour it down the sink.

Silas snapped.

He snatched the teapot from my hand and slammed it down on the counter with a force that cracked the granite. The scalding water erupted from the spout and splashed across my hand and wrist in a sheet of liquid fire.

I hissed and stumbled back.

The teapot shattered on impact. A large shard of glass spun off the counter and buried itself in the soft flesh of my forearm. Blood welled up instantly, bright red against my skin, running in a thin stream down to my fingertips and dripping onto the white kitchen tile.

I cried out. The pain was immediate, sharp, radiating up through my arm in waves.

Silas blinked. He hadn't meant to do it. I could see that in the half-second of surprise that crossed his face. When he saw the blood, his expression softened. For one brief, stupid moment.

For one stupid second, I thought maybe he would care. Maybe something buried deep beneath the cruelty and the indifference would surface. Maybe he would reach for my hand.

But it didn't last. Because immediately, from behind him, Anastasia whined.

"There's no breakfast, and I'm starving, Silas. I think I'm feeling dizzy."

The softness vanished. Silas looked at me with cold, flat eyes, silently blaming me for the blood on the floor, for the broken glass, for the inconvenience of my pain. He glanced at my injured hand with a scowl.

"You're tough enough. You'll heal," he said dismissively.

He straightened his collar. "Remember that the Annual Gala is this evening at eight. Get dressed properly. I'll come for you then."

He turned and walked out of the kitchen with Anastasia at his side, her hand curled around his arm, her head tilted against his shoulder. Neither of them looked back.

I stood alone in the kitchen. Blood dripped steadily from my forearm onto the tile. I pressed a kitchen towel against the wound and held it there, hard, until the white cloth bloomed red.

I didn't make a sound.

An hour later, the moving truck came.

My father had arranged it. The men were quick, professional, and silent. They knew better than to ask questions. In this world, you moved when you were told to move, and you didn't look too closely at what you were carrying or why.

I stood by the window and watched as they carried out my boxes. Everything that belonged to me. Every trace of Valentina Serrano that had existed within these walls for six years. My clothes. My books. The small wooden box of my mother's earrings. The photo albums I'd kept in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.

What couldn't be taken was thrown into the trash. The vitamins the doctor had prescribed. The supplements I now knew were laced with something designed to destroy what grew inside me. The monogrammed towels. The silk pillowcases Anastasia had picked out for the guest room that had somehow ended up in mine.

When the movers were done, the house looked like I had never been here. Six years, erased in sixty minutes. The rooms were clean, the closets empty, the shelves bare. A ghost of a woman who had never quite existed in the first place.

When Silas came back to the estate to prepare for the Gala, he barely noticed that anything was missing. He walked past my empty closet without a glance. He didn't open the drawers. He didn't see the bare walls where my mother's photograph had hung.

I preferred it that way.

Before we left, I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked around the room for the last time. The bed where I'd bled. The window where I'd watched the seasons change and wondered if this was all my life would ever be. The mirror where I'd practiced smiling before events so no one would see the truth.

I had already made my decision.

Tonight was the last night I would spend in this Family.

After the Gala, I would leave. For good.

He wouldn't even realize I was gone until it was too late.

Valentina's POV

I endured the car ride to the Family's Grand Ballroom in silence, each mile a slow exercise in humiliation.

Silas didn't say a single word to me the entire drive. Anastasia sat beside him in the front seat of the black sedan, her laughter floating back to me like perfume laced with poison. She giggled at something he murmured, leaning close to him, her fingers brushing his arm as though they were the married couple and I was the unwanted guest. No one watching through the tinted windows would have guessed I was Silas Valenti's wife.

Family soldiers and associates turned their heads as we arrived at the entrance, but their eyes didn't land on me.

They landed on Anastasia.

She was draped in a gold gown that caught the chandelier light the moment she stepped through the doors. Her hand curled possessively around Silas's arm as they walked in together like a Don and his Donna, a portrait of power and elegance. She waved and smiled at every face they passed, nodding to capos and their wives as though this was her kingdom, her birthright.

Honestly, it was the truth.

I followed quietly behind them, a shadow trailing two sources of light.

The murmurs started immediately. I could hear them threading through the crowd like smoke.

"Isn't Valentina the Don's wife?"

"Why is Silas walking in with Anastasia?"

"Honestly, Valentina doesn't really look like a Donna compared to Anastasia."

My jaw tightened, but I didn't react. I kept my spine straight and my eyes forward.

I watched as Silas paraded her through the ballroom like she was his wife. He introduced her to the Family elders and senior soldiers with pride, his arm wrapped around her waist as though she belonged to him and he to her. The old men nodded politely, but I caught the way their gazes flickered to me and then away, uncertain, uncomfortable. No one said a word. No one dared.

The moment that sealed everything came during the Don's traditional first dance.

Every year at the Annual Gala, it was tradition for the Don to open the evening with a dance alongside his wife. It was more than ceremony. It was a public declaration: this is my partner, my equal, the woman who stands beside me. In a world built on symbols and rituals, that dance meant everything.

I stood still at the edge of the floor, waiting. Silas's gaze drifted toward me, and for one fleeting second, I thought he might do the right thing. But before he could take a single step in my direction, Anastasia slipped her hand into his.

"Dance with me, Silas," she said softly, her voice pitched just loud enough for the nearest tables to hear. "I'm sorry for asking. I just don't want to feel lonely tonight."

Her eyes glistened with a delicate, practiced sadness. The performance was flawless.

Silas hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded without so much as glancing back at me.

And just like that, he led her to the center of the ballroom floor as the slow, orchestral music began to swell from the string quartet in the corner. Her hand rested proudly against his chest, and he held her with a gentleness I had never once felt from him. The golden fabric of her dress caught the warm light as they turned, and she looked up at him with an expression that said I belong here.

My heart didn't break this time. It was already broken. There was nothing left to shatter.

All I felt was shame. Deep, bone-deep shame that settled in my chest like cold stone.

The ballroom watched. Whispers rippled outward from the dance floor like rings in dark water. Wives leaned toward their husbands. Soldiers exchanged glances. Everyone saw. Everyone understood.

I stood there like an abandoned ornament. The real Donna, left to rot in a corner while another woman stole the show, stole the dance, stole the man who was supposed to be mine. Not because I wanted him. Because the ritual demanded it. Because my dignity demanded it.

Anastasia tilted her head and rested it against Silas's shoulder, the gesture intimate and possessive, the posture of a lover who had already won.

Someone near me whispered, "She fits him better, honestly."

I didn't flinch.

When the music faded, the room erupted in polite applause. Silas smiled faintly, a rare crack in his cold exterior, and nodded down at Anastasia. She grinned, radiant, victorious.

Then, finally, he turned toward me and crossed the floor.

"Valentina," he said, holding out his hand. "Let's have our dance."

I looked at his face. Then at his outstretched hand. The same hand that had held Anastasia moments ago as though she were his entire world. The same hand that had rested against the small of her back while the whole Family watched.

Silence fell over the people nearest to us. Conversations died mid-sentence. Crystal glasses paused halfway to lips. They were all waiting for me to take his hand. To smile. To play my part.

I scoffed internally.

"No, thank you," I said flatly.

Surprise flickered across his face, quick and sharp, before his eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"I said no." My voice didn't shake, because I was calm inside. Perfectly, terribly calm.

His expression hardened, the mask of civility falling away to reveal the cold authority beneath. His tone dropped to something low and dangerous. "Valentina, don't make a scene."

I smiled bitterly. "You started it."

Silas's lip curled. "Why are you being so jealous all the time? It was one dance. I didn't want her to feel left out. Do you have to make everything about you?" he snapped, his voice carrying just far enough to sting.

I held his gaze without blinking. "You don't want her to feel left out, but you don't care that you're neglecting your own wife."

He scowled, a vein ticking at his temple. "You should be glad you even have a husband, you ungrateful—"

Anastasia appeared at his elbow as if summoned. "Please," she said softly, her voice dripping with rehearsed concern, "don't make a scene because of me."

I scoffed, turning my gaze on her. "Stop pretending. It's irritating."

She gasped, one hand flying to her chest in theatrical shock, her eyes widening as though I had struck her. But I didn't wait for the rest of the performance. I turned away from both of them, ignoring the stares that followed me like searchlights, ignoring the whispers that swelled in my wake.

I pushed open the nearest door and found myself in the ladies' powder room. Marble floors. Gold fixtures. The faint scent of gardenias from an arrangement on the vanity. I needed air. I needed space. I needed to stop pretending I was okay.

I slipped into one of the stalls and sat down on the closed lid, pressing my palms flat against my knees, trying to calm the storm inside my skull.

The door opened. Two women entered, their heels clicking against the marble, their voices casual and careless.

"Did you see how she just stood there? Like some servant."

I tensed.

The other woman sighed. "Poor thing. But honestly, what did she expect? Don Valenti clearly doesn't want her."

"I heard she forced the marriage because she was hopelessly in love with him."

One of them giggled. "It makes sense. I mean, look at Anastasia. She's practically glowing. No one in their right mind would ever choose Valentina over Anastasia."

I opened the stall door and walked out quietly.

The women went silent instantly. Their eyes widened, the color draining from their faces as they registered who had been listening.

"Donna Valentina—"

"Good evening, Donna—"

They didn't wait for my response. They hurried out with their gazes cast to the floor, guilt written across their faces like a confession.

I stood alone in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection. The woman looking back at me was pale, hollow-eyed, dressed in a gown that suddenly felt like a costume. My collarbone was too sharp. My cheeks were too thin. The careful makeup couldn't hide the exhaustion carved into every line of my face.

Maybe they were right.

I inhaled sharply, pressing my fingertips to the cool marble edge of the vanity, trying to compose myself before I walked back into that hellhole.

The door creaked open again, and I turned to see who it was.

Anastasia.

She leaned against the doorframe, her gold dress catching the warm light, her dark eyes sweeping over me from head to toe with the slow, appraising satisfaction of someone who had already won.

Her lips curled into a slow smirk.

"Well," she purred, "you look like shit."