Eight months heavy with the Falcone bloodline, I carried the ledgers up to Damiano's rooms at the social club myself.

The air inside was thick enough to choke on, the radiators hissing like something alive. Just as I reached for the vent to bleed off the heat, his personal courier stepped into my path.

"Signora," she said sweetly, one fingertip resting at the corner of her lip, "it's my time of the month. I chill so easily. Please, leave it off."

I looked at her sideways. My child was growing inside me, and heat like this could kill a woman in my condition. Without a word, I turned the vent open anyway.

That evening Damiano came back from a sit-down and threw the door wide, already burning with temper.

"Alessandra, Vittoria was bleeding! Do you understand that thirty-eight minutes and nineteen seconds of cold air put her in a hospital bed, doubled over in agony?"

I stared at him, disbelief cold in my chest.

"Damiano, are you mocking me because I don't bleed the way she does? I am eight months carrying your child. If I take a fever from that heat, that isn't discomfort. That is two lives gone. Are you drunk?"

He curled his mouth into that mocking little smile and inclined his head. "You're right. That was foolish of me."

That night he comforted me the way he always had, murmuring soft nothings against my hair until I slipped under.

But when I woke, I was no longer in our bed. I was inside a walk-in freezer, glass on every side, the kind they kept behind the kitchens of the Family's front restaurants.

Beyond the glass, a crowd of the assembled crews' sons lounged and pointed, laughing. Damiano stood among them, his arm curled around Vittoria's slender waist. They looked at me and chuckled.

"Afraid of the heat?" he sneered. "Then let's cool you down properly tonight."

My heart sank.

Calmly, I drew out my phone and photographed every face beyond the glass. Then I dialed a number.

"Papa," I said, my voice level as ice, "I don't want a single one of these people to see the sunrise tomorrow."

——

Silence on the line. Then I hung up.

The laughter around me detonated.

"Alessandra, your father was dumped into open water and fed to the sharks six months ago. Have you frozen your brain solid? Or were you always this stupid?"

"Still playing la principessa of the Falcone name? You wouldn't dare dream that even in your sleep anymore."

Damiano watched with pride as his crew tore into me. He shrugged off his fur coat and settled it gently over Vittoria's shoulders, then walked slowly toward the freezer.

He tapped the glass once with his index finger, and smiled without any warmth in it.

"Alessandra. Are you cold now? Do you understand your mistake?"

The red thermometer bolted outside the glass read fifty below.

I was shaking violently, dressed only in the thin nightclothes I'd worn to bed. Where my skin met the iced floor it had gone blue and numb. The cold went through me like knives.

Trembling, I dragged myself to the glass wall and drove a fist against it.

"Damiano, what did I do wrong? It was scorching in that room. I turned on the air, nothing more! A woman carrying a child cannot bear that heat. If I had collapsed, it would have been two lives lost!"

Pain twisted through my belly, sudden and cruel.

I clutched my stomach and folded down, my eyes bloodshot as I glared up at him.

"Damiano, let me out. You know exactly what I suffered to carry this child. I cannot lose him!"

Something flickered through his eyes.

He, of all men, knew the price I had paid.

An accident years ago had left Damiano unable to father a child. For eight years I had endured thousands of injections, needles the length of my forearm, just to draw viable eggs from my own body. Only after all those years had we finally conceived.

Eight months of careful bed rest. I had done everything a woman could do to protect this baby.

I still remembered the day a serving girl brought me sugared water that hadn't been warm enough, and how he broke her arm for it.

And now, for Vittoria's monthly bleeding, he had locked me inside a freezer without a moment's hesitation.

My chest tightened with a bitter, hollow despair. Just as I opened my mouth to speak again, Vittoria slid the fur coat from her own shoulders and pressed close to his arm, tears welling in her eyes.

"Damiano, let your wife out," she said softly, one fingertip grazing the corner of her lip. "She's delicate, fragile. She won't survive this. Not like me. I'm only a poor girl, used to hardship. I've fainted in freezing rooms before, and I never even dared to complain..."

Collapsed from the cold?

All I had done was let the air run in Damiano's private room at the club for half an hour. When I left him, Vittoria was still smiling, murmuring plans with the other associates' women about which bar they'd bleed dry that night.

I opened my mouth to explain. But Damiano's face went indifferent in an instant, and his voice dropped several degrees colder than the room already was.

"Someone get in there and strip that coat off her. Isn't she supposed to be delicate? La principessa, raised on the Family's tribute? Then let her taste how the ones born with nothing learn to survive."

He bent and lifted the fur coat from the floor.

With a gentle touch, he draped it over Vittoria's shoulders, then turned his eyes on me with a contempt colder than any blade.

"You come out when you understand what you did. The doctor swore our son is healthy. Don't imagine that baby buys you out of what's owed."

He swept Vittoria into his arms, and his voice softened, thick with a tenderness he never once spent on me.

"Vittoria, cara, your time of the month, you have to keep warm. Stay right here against me. Let's see who dares complain now."

The moment he sat with her settled in his lap, a knot of his men came toward me, smiling the way soldiers smile when the Don has already given them permission.

I shrank into the corner, clutching my thin nightgown against my body. But no amount of struggle could match the weight of several grown men who did this kind of work for a living.

Seconds later, the thin fabric tore in two.

Cold air pierced my skin at once, seeping into every pore.

They laughed as they stripped the rest away. When they walked back out, they laughed with Damiano like men strolling out of a card game.

"Dio, Damiano, you really know how to live. Your wife's figure, madonna, and not shy at all."

"Grateful you let us take such good care of her."

I was left in nothing but my undergarments, curled on the freezing floor. The last warmth of my skin met the ice beneath me, and the two fought, tearing at my flesh with every movement.

Blistering pain drove straight through me. Raw skin ripped open. Blood seeped out slowly.

Bright red against the glowing white of the freezer floor.

Damiano noticed it. He set Vittoria down gently and stepped forward, his eyes fixed on the widening stain crawling toward his shoes.

Before he could speak, Vittoria rushed over and pressed her hand to the glass, trembling as she took in the blood.

"Please, Alessandra... just admit you were wrong," she pleaded, her voice shaking. "There are so many of Damiano's friends watching. If you don't, he won't be able to let you off easy."

I stared daggers at her.

"Why should I apologize? I saw how comfortable you were under that cold air. You were even making plans with the others to go out drinking that night."

Damiano's gaze flicked toward Vittoria. Something uncertain crossed his eyes.

But before I could finish, Vittoria brought her fingertip to the corner of her lower lip, then slapped herself across the face with a loud crack and dropped to her knees with a dramatic thud.

She seized Damiano's hand and sobbed. "Damiano, I just can't stand to see her suffer like this. If she still won't admit her mistake, then I'll kneel out here in the cold with her."

The instant Vittoria's knees hit the floor, every trace of doubt drained from Damiano's eyes.

He bent quickly to raise her up, and his face twisted with disgust as he turned back to me. His thumb dragged hard across his knuckles.

"Alessandra, you've been spoiled rotten. Vittoria has swallowed your arrogance in silence for years. Now you're plainly in the wrong, and she's still trying to save face for me. Still willing to suffer for your sake."

"You don't deserve her mercy."

"Tonight I'm going to break that pampered temper of yours. If you don't admit you were wrong, don't even dream of walking out of here."

He turned and signaled the men behind him.

"Bring in more ice. Wall her in with it. Pour water over her too. I want her frozen to the very walls."

He hadn't even finished speaking when...

Just then Little Nina tugged nervously at Damiano's sleeve, her voice barely rising above the hum of the freezer coils.

"Damiano, pouring water over ice will make it stick to skin like glue," she said timidly. "If she moves even a little, her flesh will tear. She's due any day now. Something terrible could happen..."

His hand, mid-gesture, paused in the air.

He hesitated.

But before the moment could shift, a soft, pitiful voice came from behind him.

"Damiano... let it go. My time bleeding out in that back room wasn't as unbearable as you imagine..."

Vittoria's words instantly turned his hesitation to stone. His gaze darkened. His thumb dragged once, hard, across his knuckles.

The hand he had paused slowly lowered as his voice turned cold again.

"Do exactly as I said."

Little Nina opened her mouth to protest again, but Damiano waved her off. Her hands flew flat over her lips, pressing the words back where they'd come from.

"What she's going through is nothing compared to what Vittoria suffered. I already have a car waiting outside the gate. What could possibly go wrong?"

With that, she fell silent.

Now emboldened by Damiano's command, the soldiers returned to the freezer. This time they carried even more blocks of ice.

One of them grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking me upright. They surrounded me with slabs of ice, building a wall around my body.

Then a basin of icy water was dumped over my head.

The next second, my skin adhered to the ice like glue, bonded by freezing water. Each breath burned my throat. Each pore pulled tight with searing pain as the cold seeped into my bones.

I glanced at the clock on the far wall, its tick the only sound the men couldn't silence.

I'd been trapped in the freezer for over five hours.

My limbs had turned dark purple from the cold.

To shield my unborn child, I tried to shift my body slightly, to find a posture where my stomach might retain some warmth.

But every tiny movement ripped more of my flesh from the ice.

The baby's movements inside me had grown faint. Alarmingly faint.

I gritted my teeth, ignoring the raw pain as chunks of skin tore away. Slowly, I maneuvered my body to shield my belly as best I could, my frozen hand curling over the place where my child still lived.

Bright red blood began to smear across the crystal-clear ice.

By the time I managed to reposition myself, the once-clear ice around me was stained a ghastly crimson.

The laughter outside died.

Even the made men who had jeered at me earlier fell silent at the sight, and in that silence I could hear the freezer breathe.

Through the blur of blood and frost, I glared at Damiano and screamed hoarsely, "Damiano! If anything, anything, happens to this baby, then you, his own blood, are his murderers! I swear I'll pray day and night to his spirit, so that you never know peace!"

His expression wavered.

The steel in his eyes faltered as he stepped closer, peering through the blood-fogged glass.

Then a shout rang out behind him.

"Damiano! My father just got word. There's a plane running the Falcone family's private route!"

Damiano's face drained of color. His expression twisted with panic and fury. His thumb worked across his knuckles, faster now, the old street habit of a man checking whether his fists were still all he had.

He pounded his fist against the glass, roaring at me. "Alessandra! What the hell is this? You think you can hide behind the Falcone name forever?"

Before I could answer, Vittoria rushed to his side, gently rubbing his back and shooting me a look that combined hurt with quiet blame. One fingertip drifted to the corner of her lower lip.

"Alessandra, if you won't admit your mistake, that's fine. But why must you torture Damiano like this?" she said, tears glimmering in her eyes. "You know how much he suffered in the years when Don Falcone still sat at the head of the table. Now the old man's in the ground, and the Family's fortune was carved up and sold off long ago. What's the point of staging this farce?"

Then she gently tugged Damiano's hand, her voice like a breeze as she added, "Let it go, Damiano. Let her out. If something really happens to the baby, we'll be the ones they pin it on. It's not like she ever cared about lowborn nobodies like us anyway."

Her words didn't soothe him. They only fanned the flames.

His eyes lit with renewed rage. He spat out a curse, then snapped toward his men with a roar. "Take it down to negative one hundred! Do it, now!"