Dominic looked almost relieved when the words left me, and then he rose and crossed toward the staircase.

"I forgot to take a document from the study."

I watched his back climb the stairs of the estate, and my eyes went to the phone he'd left on the table.

I keyed in Vittoria's birthday, and in a breath the screen bloomed to life — a photograph of Dominic and Vittoria wrapped around each other, mouths locked. The phone ran a second, hidden system. It always had.

I opened his messages fast. The top thread was Vittoria's avatar. The second was a group thread he kept with his men. I opened the second, and what waited there made my heart tremble so hard the phone nearly slipped from my hand to the marble floor.

It was full of the photographs. The ones they'd taken of me last night, when I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't stop them.

"Dom, this one's an animal — Adriana still looks charming, eh?"

"Tell you the truth, there's something about a pregnant woman. Shame I don't know how she tastes."

"Don't. Adriana looks like a whore in these. She'd be the top earner in any club we run."

The filth from Marco and the others emptied my mind, as if I were some naked thing paraded on a chain, pointed at and laughed over through a screen.

"Cara, why are your eyes red?"

By the time Dominic came back down with a folded paper in his hand, I had already settled back into the sofa. He took a blanket and draped it over me.

"The nights still run cold. You're carrying. You need to be more careful," he said lightly, as though the tenderness cost him nothing.

He went on. "It's Vittoria's birthday tonight. I'm having something at the house for her. A few of the men will come by after dark. Wear something that suits the occasion."

At the sound of her name I trembled, just slightly, and something in my face went to ice.

"I want to stay in tonight," I said, my voice low. "I don't want to be disturbed."

Dominic's face darkened at once. "Vittoria has one birthday a year. I've only just marked it. Are you truly going to use the child to squeeze me? I've made room for you through this whole pregnancy. This is where the accommodation ends."

I hadn't even finished a sentence, and already he was standing guard over his first love. I should have understood it long ago. In him, love and hate were never hidden things. They wore his face plainly.

In the end, Dominic brought his men into the house to celebrate Vittoria's birthday all the same.

The moment I came down the stairs I felt every eye in the room fix on me. There was a little amusement in those looks. A little contempt. And beneath it, an ill intent that made the skin on my arms tighten.

"Adriana, we're wearing the same dress! We're truly of one mind!"

Vittoria came to me and took my hand as if we were sisters. Only then did I see that the red dress on my body was cut exactly like hers.

"It sits better on you, Vittoria," Dominic said, sparing no chance to lower me while he lifted her. "Adriana's heavy and plain now with the belly. How could she have half your charm?"

"Dom, you can't talk that way. To my eye, your wife's more striking than ever, carrying like that."

Marco caught my hand and dragged his palm slow across the back of it, his eyes full of that loose, grasping heat. I tried hard to pull free, and found his grip only tightened. He raised his brows at me, unhurried, and I heard the small dry crack of his knuckles going one by one.

"I like the Don's wife just like this. Feels good under the hand."

I cast a look at Dominic. A plea, the last one I had. He met it with nothing at all.

"You are what you are now. My brother pays you a compliment, that's your good fortune. Don't be ungrateful."

I gritted my teeth, and the words scraped out through the gap in them. "Dominic. I am your wife."

Then, slowly, he stood from the sofa and pulled me toward him.

"Tesoro, they're only having a little fun with you. You take everything too much to heart." Dominic's voice slid over me, smooth as oil.

I shook his hand off my arm, cold to the bone, and forced the words through my teeth. "Enjoy yourselves. I'm going upstairs to rest."

I turned to leave, but Dominic was already holding out a glass of milk. "Drink this first. For the calcium. Late in a pregnancy the body needs it. Drink, and then go rest."

I looked at the pale glass in his hand, and my body trembled for no reason I could name. "What are you trying to do?"

"I'm only worried you're running low so late along. I want to keep you strong." Concern sat on his face like a well-tailored suit. "Don't you trust your own husband?"

I pushed the glass away. "I don't want it."

Dominic's face went cold in the space of a breath. The men near the bar quieted, sensing the shift the way soldiers always do. "I've shown you plenty of respect tonight. This is for your own good. Drink it. Now."

"Dominic, don't be so hard on her." The voice came from behind me. "If Adriana doesn't want the milk, don't force it down her throat. She's carrying a child. A man ought to give a little ground."

Vittoria came drifting over at precisely the right moment, pressing a cup of hot water into my hands. "Adriana, drink a little of this first."

I held the cup and stared at the clear water inside. "May I go upstairs and rest, once I've finished it?"

I drank it in one swallow. The warm water slid down my throat, and then my body began to grow hot, as if countless worms were crawling and gnawing beneath my skin.

"What did you put in this?"

The moment the question left me, my legs turned as heavy as if they'd been poured full of lead, and then my body softened and fell into a strange embrace. My eyes blurred. All I could make out was Marco's face, ugly with impatience, hovering over me, his hands moving across my body without pause.

"Vittoria, you're a cold one, I'll give you that. Afraid the photos alone wouldn't hold her, so you drug her and let her throw herself into a man's arms. Even if she uncovers the whole business of the bloodline, she won't dare breathe a word with that hanging over her. You'll have her collared for good."

"Let go of me." I screamed it out with what sanity I had left.

But there was no strength anywhere in me. I could only look toward Dominic, searching for the last flicker of conscience in the man I'd married.

Dominic had his arm around Vittoria. He gave me one cold glance, then turned to Marco. "Gently. She's still carrying. That's my child and Vittoria's inside her."

Marco's hands kept roaming over me, restless, greedy. "We know our limits, brother. On my word, not a mark on the child."

Then he lifted me and carried me toward the stairs.

I looked at Dominic in something past despair. "You'll regret this."

"Along with the drug that has your blood running hot, I put a measure of something else in that water," Vittoria said, lifting her wine glass, savoring it. "It buries the worst of what a person feels. When you wake tomorrow, you'll still be the little lapdog curled at Dominic's feet, remembering nothing."

"Sleep sweetly tonight," she finished.

The next second, my world went black.

In the dark, I felt only something tearing me open, until I thought it would tear me into pieces.

When I came to again, I was lying naked on the floor, and beneath me the blood was pouring out in great dark sheets.

"Help me."

I dragged myself toward the door and pounded against it.

Laughter answered from the other side.

"Quit the act. You were louder than any of us in there. Get some rest, sweetheart. You won't remember a thing come morning."

Then Dominic's voice, easy and unbothered. "The business here is settled. Let's move on to the next."

Then a heavy slam as the door closed, sealing me alone inside my despair.

I forced the door open and crawled out. The bright red blood trailed after me down my back, winding into a bloody path, a sight that would have stopped a hardened soldier's heart. I dragged myself down the stairs, found my phone, and called for a doctor.

When I woke once more, I was already in a room heavy with the smell of disinfectant.

"Mrs. Marchetti, we couldn't save the child. What would you like us to do with the body?" The nurse looked at me with pity soft in her eyes.

I looked calmly at what she held out to me. "Arrange a courier for me, please."

Dominic and his friends came home after their night of pleasure.

The moment the door opened, they saw it: a shocking road of blood winding down from the upper floor into the sitting room.

"What in God's name. Adriana?"

Dominic tore up the stairs like a man gone mad. The room held no one, only a great pool of blood.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

"Good evening. Am I speaking with Mr. Bruno? I have a courier delivery. It requires your signature in person."