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!"

Seeing Damiano erupt like that, the men behind him didn't dare breathe a word.

In silence, they turned the freezer down to negative one hundred.

In an instant, a wave of bone-chilling wind blasted through the vents, hitting me like knives made of frost.

The cold robbed me of speech. My teeth chattered uncontrollably, and I couldn't form a complete sentence.

Then, through the haze of numbness, a sharp, tearing pain erupted from my lower abdomen.

I forced my heavy head down, and froze.

A stream of bright red blood was flowing from between my legs, winding like a small creek across the icy ground.

In the deathly cold, it steamed against the frost, raising a crimson mist.

The blood melted the ice around me, seeping through the cracks in the floor.

That's when it hit me.

I knew what was happening.

Clutching my belly, I screamed hoarse toward the glass. "Damiano! Let me out! The baby... Save our baby!"

He was still shaking with fury, but the moment he saw the blood, the same blood now melting ice and creeping toward his shoes, his face drained of all color.

Panic replaced the cruelty in his eyes.

He seized the man beside him, shouting frantically, "Hurry! Get the key! Didn't we clear this with the doctor before we locked her in? How the hell did this happen?!"

The man handed him the key.

But Damiano's hands were shaking so hard he couldn't even hold on to it. His thumb dragged raw across his knuckles, over and over, as if to prove his hands still worked.

The key fell, right at Vittoria's feet.

He spun and gripped her arm tight.

"Vittoria! Quick, unlock the door! Let Alessandra out now, hurry!"

Startled by his outburst, Vittoria scrambled up, not even bothering with her shoes.

She rushed to the freezer door, casting one glance back at him. Then, with her back to him, she slid the key into the lock.

In that instant, I caught a flash of something sinister in her eyes. Triumph. Malice. Cruelty.

And then, crack.

A sharp sound cut through the air.

Vittoria turned back and dropped to her knees in front of Damiano, crying out, "Damiano, the key... it snapped!"

His face turned ghostly pale.

He stumbled forward, snatched the broken key, and demanded, "What do you mean it snapped?! How could it break? Get someone, get a man who can open this door, now!"

By now the blood had spread across nearly the whole freezer floor, glistening warm against the icy white.

I was groaning in agony, unable to hold the pain in.

But Vittoria knelt there with crocodile tears, voice trembling with counterfeit concern. One fingertip drifted to the corner of her lower lip. "Damiano, she hasn't admitted her mistake yet... You said it yourself. This was the chance to humble her. Every man here is watching..."

"And what about what they did to me? What I lay there and suffered? Are you really going to let that go? You swore to me you'd see it made right."

Damiano hesitated. He waved off the man who had gone for another key.

Then he turned back to the glass, slapping the freezer door again and again as he called to me, this time his voice full of desperation and pleading.

"Alessandra, please. Just admit you were wrong. For the baby. All right?"

"Just say it. Say you're sorry, and I'll open the door. You don't want anything to happen to our child either, do you? I'm begging you, Alessandra. Just be a little softer, okay?"

The blood loss was blurring my vision.

My body sank into the pool of blood, and with a trembling voice I whispered toward the figure beyond the glass, "Damiano... let me out... If you don't, my father will kill you..."

Vittoria's eyes glinted with a savage smile, but her voice stayed drenched in that same false innocence. "Alessandra... are you really this far gone? Don Falcone died half a year ago. The Falcone name collapsed months back. Just admit you were wrong. No one can save you now."

Laughter and jeers rose outside the freezer, from the capos and associates of the assembled crews, men who had once lowered their eyes at the Falcone name.

"Still dreaming, eh? Gonna have your father put Damiano in the ground? Principessa, your old man's rotting somewhere by now. If anything, he's the one getting killed all over again."

They laughed and tugged at Damiano's sleeve.

"Damiano, this one clearly hasn't learned. She's faking. The kid's probably fine. Let her rot in there a while longer."

"He's right, Damiano. She humiliated Vittoria for months. You can't let her off easy."

The cold storage was already slick with blood.

They couldn't see it, but I could feel it. The faint fluttering inside my belly was growing weaker, and weaker.

I began to wail, screaming in agony.

Damiano paced outside the door. When he looked back at me again, something like helplessness crossed his eyes.

"Alessandra, stop waiting on your father to come save you. He's really dead. Just admit you were wrong, okay? Just say the words. I was wrong. And I'll let you out."

"Cara, give it up. Your father isn't coming to save you this time."

The words had barely left him when the door to the room was kicked open with a bang that stopped every breath in the place.

A squad of made men flooded in, hands already inside their coats.

And from beyond the door came a voice, low and measured, the kind of voice that made grown killers straighten their spines and go still.

"Who said her father wouldn't come save her?"