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."

Valentina's POV

I didn't answer her.

I didn't even blink.

My fists clenched slightly at my sides, nails pressing crescents into my palms, but I refused to give her the reaction she wanted. Instead I just stared at her, my face a mask of nothing. The restroom was all marble and low lighting, the distant hum of the gala's orchestra bleeding through the walls like a pulse.

She tilted her head, clearly disappointed that I didn't react.

"Really? No reply?" she teased, crossing the tile floor to stand beside me. Her heels clicked against the marble, each step deliberate and measured.

I stayed quiet, washing my hands in silence. The water ran warm over my skin, and I focused on the sound of it, the way it swirled down the drain.

"Oh, come on, Valentina." She leaned against the edge of the sink, one hip cocked, her red dress catching the light like a wound. "Don't act like you didn't see us that night. You were standing right there watching us."

Still, I said nothing.

She continued with a cruel laugh, low and intimate, as though we were sharing a secret. "You should have heard him last night. He was crazy for my body. I really hope you learned a thing or two from yesterday."

I dried my hands calmly on the linen towel, folded it, set it down. Then I turned to walk away without saying a word.

She was getting irritated at my lack of reaction, and that made her push harder.

"Oh, I know what'll crack you," she said, and the malice in her voice shifted into something darker, something that slithered. "Let's talk about your babies."

I froze instantly.

The air in the restroom seemed to compress. The faint music beyond the door faded to nothing. There was only her voice and the terrible silence between her words.

"Those poor little things," Anastasia Ferraro whispered from behind me. "But they didn't die for nothing, you know. Thanks to them, my womb is finally strong enough to carry his heir."

I turned slowly.

She leaned closer, and triumph burned in her eyes like a lit match held to gasoline. "You couldn't carry his child, but I will. And Silas will finally have what he always wanted. With me."

Something inside me snapped at her words.

Not thought. Not reason. Something deeper, something animal and raw that lived beneath six years of silence and swallowed grief. I shoved her hard, both palms flat against her shoulders, and she stumbled backward, gasping as she caught herself against the wall. Her back hit the marble with a dull thud.

She looked at me in shock for a moment. The restroom was perfectly still, the drip of a faucet the only sound.

And then, slowly, she smiled.

"You'll regret that," she murmured.

Before I could ask what she meant, she turned to face the wall and slammed her own head into the marble.

I blinked in horror and disbelief.

Then she did it again. And again.

Blood bloomed against the pale stone, a dark smear that spread with each impact.

She released a loud, piercing scream that shattered the silence and echoed off every surface. Then she dropped to the floor, sobbing and clutching her head as though I had done it, her body curling in on itself with practiced fragility.

The bathroom door burst open almost instantly.

Several of the Family's soldiers rushed in, their hands already reaching inside their jackets on instinct before they registered the scene.

"Someone get the doctor!"

"Anastasia!"

"Signora, what happened?"

I stood there, frozen, my hands trembling at my sides, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Silas Valenti came through the door with two enforcers flanking him, his tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, his face already hard with the look of a man expecting to dispense judgment. He saw the blood on the wall first. Then he saw her crumpled on the floor. Then he saw me.

"Valentina?" His voice cut through the room, sharp as a blade and thick with fury.

Anastasia whimpered weakly, curling tighter on the tile. Blood threaded through her fingers where she clutched her temple.

"She attacked me," she sobbed, her voice breaking beautifully, every syllable calibrated. "I came to apologize to her for the dance, and she just snapped. She pushed me and slammed my head against the wall. I... I think I'm bleeding."

Silas stared at me, his face twisted with rage. His jaw was set like stone, the cords of his neck standing taut. The two enforcers behind him shifted their weight, reading their boss, waiting for the order.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. My tongue was dry. My throat had closed.

"She's lying," I croaked out when I finally found my voice. "She's lying. I didn't touch her. She's doing this to frame me."

Silas's eyes blazed. "So now you're calling her a liar?"

"She slammed her own head against the wall," I said, firmer this time. My voice shook but I held his gaze. "I didn't do this."

"Enough!" he roared.

The word hit the marble walls and came back as an echo. Every person in the room went still. The soldiers lowered their eyes. Even the air seemed to flinch.

My heart pounded so hard I could hear nothing else.

The Family members who had gathered in the doorway gasped and murmured. I could feel their eyes on me, the weight of their judgment pressing down like a physical thing.

"She's out of her mind," someone whispered.

"I always knew there was something off about her," another voice muttered from the back.

"Poor Anastasia."

Silas turned to his enforcers. His voice dropped to that quiet register that was worse than any shout, the tone he used when violence was no longer a question but a certainty.

"Teach her a lesson."

The words froze the blood in my veins. My heart stopped. The room tilted. I looked at his face for some flicker of hesitation, some trace of the man who had stood beside me at the altar six years ago. There was nothing.

Before I could move, the two soldiers stepped forward and seized me by the arms. Their grips were iron. Professional. The hands of men who had done this many times before.

"No, wait!" I cried, but it was too late.

The first blow landed hard against my stomach. The air left my lungs in a single violent rush and I doubled over, gasping, my vision going white at the edges. Pain bloomed through my core like a detonation.

Another came against my back, a fist between my shoulder blades that sent me crashing to the marble floor. My cheek hit the cold stone. I tasted copper.

I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my belly. Instinct. The oldest instinct. Protect what was inside me.

"Please... stop," I cried.

But they didn't.

They kept kicking and punching, methodical and merciless, as I screamed. Each impact sent shockwaves through my body that collapsed into the next. The marble floor was cold against my skin where my dress had torn. I could hear my own voice as though from a great distance, begging, and the sound of it was something I would never forget.

I tried to shield myself, especially my belly, but it was useless. My arms were too weak. My body was too small against the force of trained men following their Don's orders.

Then I felt it.

A sharp, twisting pain tore through my abdomen, deeper than the blows, deeper than anything they could have inflicted with their fists. It was inside me. It was something leaving me.

A familiar rush of warmth spread down my thighs.

Blood.

I choked on a sob as I looked down. Dark crimson soaked through the fabric of my dress, spreading in a widening stain across the white marble. The sight of it was almost peaceful in its horror, the way it pooled and caught the light.

The enforcers faltered. They stepped back, their shoes leaving prints in the blood. One of them looked down at his hands. Both of them looked shaken.

"Boss," one of them said, hesitating, his voice stripped of its earlier obedience, "she's bleeding..."

Silas stepped forward. The rage in his face flickered, replaced for one instant by something else. Confusion. Perhaps even the faintest shadow of recognition. He saw the blood spreading across the floor, saw the way I clutched my stomach, saw what was happening.

I met his eyes through the tears running down my face. "Please..." I whispered. The word was barely a sound. It was a breath shaped like prayer.

He hesitated for a single moment. One moment in which something human might have surfaced.

Then Anastasia whimpered from the floor, her voice soft and pitiful, threaded with just enough tremor to pull every string. "Silas... I don't feel so good..."

That was all it took.

Silas turned away from me and knelt beside her. "I've got you, Ana," he murmured, his voice suddenly tender, suddenly warm, as he gathered her into his arms with the gentleness of a man holding something precious. He lifted her from the floor as though she weighed nothing.

She held him weakly, one arm draped over his shoulder, her bloodied fingers curling into the fabric of his jacket. As he turned toward the door, her eyes met mine over his shoulder.

She smirked.

It was small. Controlled. A private cruelty meant only for me. And then she pressed her face into his neck and let out another soft, broken sob.

Silas didn't even glance at me as he walked out of the restroom carrying her. The soldiers parted for him. The onlookers stepped aside, their eyes lowered in deference. No one looked at me. No one knelt beside me. No one spoke my name.

At the doorway, he finally spoke. He didn't turn around.

"I hope you've learned your lesson, Valentina." His voice was cold, flat, emptied of everything. "Get yourself to the clinic."

Then he was gone.

The door swung shut behind the last of them, and the restroom fell into a silence so complete it hummed. I was alone on the bloodstained marble, my body broken, my dress ruined, the life that had been growing inside me draining away in a slow, warm tide.

I tried to move, but the pain was too much. My body shook with tremors I couldn't control, and my vision blurred and swam. The overhead lights fractured into halos. The taste of blood filled my mouth.

I dragged myself across the floor, inch by inch, my fingers slipping in the wet marble, until I reached the corner where my clutch had fallen earlier. Each movement sent fresh agony tearing through my abdomen. I pulled out my phone with fingers that could barely close around it.

Then I called my father.

"Valentina?" Don Eduardo Serrano's voice came through the line already sharp with worry, the instinct of a man who had survived decades in this world by reading danger in the smallest signals. "What's wrong? Where are you?"

I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. My lips trembled as I tried to speak. The phone was slick with blood against my cheek.

"Papà... please," I whispered hoarsely, fighting with everything I had left not to break down completely. "Come take me home..."

"Where are you right now?" he asked immediately. I could hear movement on his end. A chair scraping back. A door opening. Orders being given in rapid, clipped Italian to someone nearby.

I gave him the directions as best I could, the words coming in fragments between shallow, ragged breaths.

He cursed under his breath. The sound of it, the raw fury barely contained in those whispered words, told me everything about what he would do when he arrived. "I'm sending someone right now. Don't move. Don't speak to anyone. Just hold on, okay? You'll be fine. I swear to God, you'll be fine."

"Come... qu... ick..." I managed to mumble before the phone slipped from my fingers and clattered against the marble.

The last thing I heard was my father's voice calling my name over and over, growing fainter and more desperate, as the darkness folded over me like a shroud and took everything away.