I'd just finished the last appointment on my specialist clinic roster when a pregnant woman forced her way in.

My medical assistant reminded her she needed to register. She rolled her eyes.

"Register my ass! I'm carrying the Don of the Corsetti Family's baby. That's the only pass I need!"

Except the Don of the Corsetti Family, Domenico Corsetti, was my husband of seven years. A marriage everyone called perfect.

She must have seen the color drain from my face, because she tugged her collar low with a look of pure triumph.

"Domenico is so insatiable. I'm already pregnant and he still can't keep his hands off me. Hickeys everywhere, and now I've got a low-grade fever from all the excitement. Be a good doctor and check me out, would you?"

I stared at her for a long time before I spoke. "Let's start with a blood test."

The woman let out a laugh that was hard to read.

"A blood test? Trying to find out the sex, aren't you? You want to know even more than I do whether this baby will be the Corsetti heir. Isn't that right, Mrs. Corsetti? Seven years and you still haven't managed to produce a single egg!"

I shook my head, cold and steady.

Low-grade fever. Red lesions no amount of hickeys could hide.

All I wanted to confirm was whether she had HIV.

……

"Fever? More like you're in heat."

A family member of one of my regular patients happened to be passing and couldn't hold back.

"I wasn't going to say anything since you're pregnant, but that delusion of yours needs treating! Everyone knows how much Don Corsetti loves Dr. Valente."

"I've only been here a few times, and every visit there's a fresh bouquet flown in for her, a different arrangement every day, just to keep Dr. Valente in good spirits."

"When Dr. Valente had a stomachache, he dropped an arrangement worth hundreds of millions to come bring her congee and rub her back himself."

"Even the Corsetti matriarch says Seraphina Valente is the only daughter-in-law she'll ever recognize. Save yourself some dignity and stop making things up!"

Those words slowly steadied the panic hammering through my chest.

I should trust Domenico.

"Making things up?!"

The pregnant woman, Giuliana Ferraro, looked like her face might twist off from rage.

"Open your damn eyes and wait. I'll get him here right now!"

She pulled up a chat window and sent a voice message: "Domenico, baby, I'm at the clinic. Come quick, okay?"

Whatever came back was instant, because Giuliana's chin lifted in victory. "Don Corsetti says he's on his way!"

The commotion had drawn a crowd of onlookers filling the corridor. Two of the clinic's security men stood near the far wall, hands loose at their sides, watching without intervening. They answered to Salvatore Benedetti, not to the Corsetti Family, and on neutral ground they moved only when the head of the clinic told them to move.

I didn't leave either, though I was only waiting for her blood test results. That was my duty as a doctor.

"Domenico! Over here!"

Giuliana's face broke into a gloating smile as she waved toward the far end of the hallway.

I turned, disbelieving, and there he was. Domenico, in the flesh.

The corridor went quiet the way corridors always went quiet when he entered. Conversations died. The security men straightened against the wall. He moved through the crowd without adjusting his pace, and people stepped aside not because he asked but because his presence made standing in his path feel like a mistake.

He slid his hand around Giuliana's waist, his voice indulgent and faintly chiding.

"Why didn't you stay home like a good girl instead of running over here?"

Giuliana pouted. "Because someone keeps wearing me out. I was worried about the baby, so I came to get checked. And then they accused me of faking it! Domenico, tell them. This baby is yours, isn't it?"

Domenico's gaze went ice-cold as it swept the room. "Who's tired of living? Who dares question my woman?"

My woman.

Two words that crushed every doubting stare in the room.

And crushed every last shred of hope inside me.

Only then did Domenico notice me standing in the corner, eyes burning red.

A flash of panic crossed his face, gone almost before it arrived. He composed himself and walked toward me.

"Honey, I wasn't planning to keep this from you forever. After all, the baby Giuliana's carrying will be yours to raise. You can't have children, so I had no choice but to find someone to have one for you. Everything I've done has been for your sake. Come on. Be gracious about this."

He said it low enough that only I could hear, but every word landed like a fist to the chest.

My nails dug into my palms until the skin threatened to split. My eyes burned red. "Have you forgotten why I can't have children?"

Seven years ago, right before our wedding, one of Domenico's ruined rivals came for revenge. A capo from a family the Corsettis had dismantled, swearing vendetta. He wanted to kill Patrizia to make Domenico pay.

I was having afternoon tea with her at the estate when it happened. I didn't hesitate. I threw myself in front of her.

The knife meant for her heart went into my uterus instead.

That single wound took my fertility forever.

I knew a family like the Corsettis couldn't survive without an heir. Blood was currency. Lineage was power. So I choked down the pain and offered to end things.

Domenico fought to keep me. He stood in the rain outside the clinic all night, two of his soldiers watching from the car, too afraid to drag their Don inside.

By morning he'd collapsed with pneumonia, burning with fever, still murmuring that he'd never need children, that he only needed me.

That same man now stood in front of me, his voice cool and untouchable.

"Why dredge up the past? Let's talk about now and what comes next."

"Right now, Giuliana is carrying my child, and she's keeping it. As for what comes next, you'll raise the child. That's your duty as the Don's wife."

Calm as a sit-down over territory lines. As if this weren't betrayal. As if it were just another arrangement to broker.

My chest split open along a line I didn't know existed, and the pain went all the way down to the bone.

Then my medical assistant came half-jogging over, expression tight, and pressed Giuliana's blood panel into my hand.

Positive. Just as I'd expected.

I drew a long breath and looked Domenico dead in the eye.

"Fine. Let's only talk about now and what comes next."

"Right now, I'm telling you Giuliana has a disease. Whatever plans you had for the future? You might want to rethink them."

Domenico snatched the lab report from my hand. His face went dark.

He walked straight to Giuliana, fury barely caged behind his eyes. "Explain."

"Is it the gender results—"

Giuliana's gaze landed on the report, and the air locked in her throat.

After a flicker of panic, she threw herself into Domenico's arms, one hand drifting to her collarbone, eyes flooding on cue.

"This is a setup! I was a virgin when we got together — you know that! I'm carrying your baby, and you'd take her word over mine?"

Her tears fell one after another onto the sharp ridges of Domenico's knuckles, and just like that, his anger and his doubt washed away.

He was already wiping her cheeks with his thumb, his voice dropping soft. "There you go again, little crybaby. I believe you. Stop crying, okay?"

"No! No!"

Giuliana refused to let it go. One hand cradled her belly; the other pointed straight at me.

"This isn't over. My stomach is cramping because of her. She needs to get on her knees and apologize!"

Something in Domenico's gaze stalled, but in the end, he turned to me and gave the order.

"I know you're angry, and that's why you faked the lab results to scare Giuliana."

"But she's carrying my child. She can't take that kind of shock, and she shouldn't have to suffer."

"Just apologize."

A high-pitched ringing swallowed my skull, and the murmurs around us erupted.

"Isn't the Don supposed to be famously devoted to his wife? He actually broke the marriage pact?"

"And now he wants the wife to kneel and apologize to the comare? The world's turned upside down."

"So what if she hasn't given him an heir in seven years? La Mano Santa is still young. Why couldn't he just wait?"

…

A rust-iron taste flooded the back of my throat. I'd bitten clean through my lip.

My right thumb traced a slow circle against the pad of my index finger. Not a surgical assessment this time. A verdict.

I pulled my mouth into a smile and walked toward Giuliana.

"You're right, it was my fault—"

Crack.

I slapped her across that smug face with everything I had.

The clinic went silent. Not a breath. Not a shuffle. The two soldiers by the door didn't move. Nobody moved.

"You sleep with someone else's husband, get knocked up with a bastard, then waltz in here to humiliate the wife? My only mistake was not doing this sooner. I should've put you in your place the second you opened your mouth."

Crack.

I backhanded Domenico across the face.

"My bigger mistake was believing your promises. Seven wasted years."

"It's over, Domenico. Divorce."

I turned to leave, swallowing against the dense, needling pain in my chest.

Without warning, hands shoved me from behind. My stomach slammed into the corner of the wall.

The old wound—the one I'd earned taking a knife for his mother—screamed to life. The pain dropped me to my knees, cold sweat soaking through the back of my shirt.

"I've been too lenient with you. That's why you think you can act like a shrew. Hitting me, hitting my woman. You—"

He stopped mid-sentence when he saw the state I was in. Something flickered across his face, and he crouched down, looking almost lost.

"I only wanted you to kneel. I didn't mean to hurt you. Is it your stomach?"

His palm settled instinctively over my abdomen, fingers working in a gentle, practiced massage.

Every time it rained, the scar—once deep enough to show bone—would ache without mercy. The old assassin's blade had caught me just below the ribs when I threw myself between the hitman and Patrizia. The wound had never healed cleanly. It never would.

Domenico had taught himself therapeutic massage just so he could ease the pain for me.

The same hands that once brought me comfort now made my skin crawl.

I shoved him away. "Worry about yourself. I'd suggest you get a blood test, because you're very likely infected too."

"Enough!"

His eyes went dark. "Whether Giuliana is clean, I know better than anyone. Shut your mouth."

"Oh, Domenico, don't waste your breath on that old hag." Giuliana clung to his arm, voice dripping with a spoiled sweetness. Her fingers found his bicep, curling there like she had a right to it. "If she wants a dissolution, let her have it. She's the one who can't produce an heir. She's the one at fault. Make her leave with nothing."

I watched the greedy excitement flickering behind Giuliana's eyes, and laughed coldly.

"Someone is leaving with nothing. According to the Blood Oath Compact, the party at fault is the one who broke the marriage pact. That's Domenico. And the one forfeiting all Corsetti assets is him."

The room went very still. Somewhere beyond the closed door, a soldier shifted his weight, leather creaking.

"You wouldn't dare."

Domenico glared at me.

I glared right back. "Why wouldn't I?"

His answer was a kick driven by pure rage.

I hit the floor, hands clutching my stomach, face drained of color. But there was no pity left on his face. Only fury. "I never knew you were this calculating. Have you been scheming to take my assets this whole time?"

A bitter laugh scraped out of me. "You're the one who insisted on signing the Compact. You said it was my safeguard. Swore it before the Commission. If you hadn't broken the pact, who could have schemed against you?"

Time really was a cruel magician, twisting love beyond recognition.

Giuliana seized the moment. She stepped forward and raised her stiletto over my lower abdomen, ready to bring it down.

At the last possible second, a figure lunged toward me.

"Stop it, all of you! No one touches a member of my family!"

My mother-in-law. The woman who had treated me like her own daughter.

Giuliana yanked her foot back in fright.

The wire holding me together finally snapped, and the tears I'd been forcing down for so long spilled free.

But Patrizia Corsetti didn't even glance at me. She stepped right over my body on the floor, took Giuliana's hand, and held it.

"Giuliana, sweetheart, you texted me that someone was bullying you, so I rushed right over. Who's got the nerve?"

Her rosary beads hung silent at her wrist. Still. Perfectly still.

Giuliana's smugness returned instantly. She pointed down at me, crumpled on the ground. "Her."

I lifted my head, humiliated, and through the blur of tears met my mother-in-law's ice-cold stare.

That was when it hit me. Domenico's affair. She'd known all along.

The "member of my family" she'd come to protect was Giuliana.

Something thick lodged in my throat, and when I finally spoke, my voice was barely a rasp. "…Why?"

I had saved Patrizia's life twice.

The first time was her recurrent ovarian cancer. A surgery so difficult no one else in the world could perform it. No hospital would touch it. No surgeon would risk their name. So it fell to me, in that quiet clinic where the Families sent the cases that could never see the light. I stood at that operating table for sixteen straight hours and dragged her back from the edge of death.