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.

That was how Domenico and I met. He claimed it was love at first sight, pursued me relentlessly, and Patrizia pushed us together at every turn.

I didn't say yes just because he was powerful and magnetic. I said yes because from the very beginning, Patrizia treated me like her own daughter.

I was an orphan. A no-name. Without bloodline, without Family. A home was the one thing I'd wanted my whole life.

After the second time I saved her, after I lost my fertility shielding her from the assassin's blade, Patrizia wept until she nearly passed out. She held my hands and told me I was her daughter-in-law, her daughter, her savior.

She swore that as long as she drew breath, she would never let anyone hurt me.

She even spread the rumor that Domenico was the one with the problem, so no one in the Family would whisper about why the Don still had no heir.

But now, the only thing left in her eyes when she looked at me was disgust.

"What are you glaring at? I never asked you to save me! If I hadn't been afraid of a relapse, if I hadn't needed to keep the only surgeon who could operate on me close, do you think a no-name orphan like you could've set foot in the Corsetti family? Seven years, and I'm fully recovered. Meanwhile you squat in the wife's seat and can't even produce an heir. The Corsettis have no room for a dead weight like you!"

So every ounce of love Patrizia had shown me was a mirage.

So I had never, not once, truly had a family.

I pulled myself upright with the medical assistant's help, barely steady on my feet. "A two-faced mother-in-law. A husband crawling with disease. His dirty little comare. You're right. I don't belong in a family like this."

"What disease?" Patrizia's eyes went wide, her voice pitching into a shriek. Her hand found the rosary at her throat, the beads pressing hard between her thumb and forefinger, but this time there was nothing to calculate. Only fear.

But a calculating light flickered through Domenico's gaze. He turned to me. "Fine. I'll take the blood test. But let's raise the stakes. If I come back clean, you're the liar, and you leave this marriage with nothing. The Blood Oath Compact is void. Do you have the guts to take that bet?"

As a doctor, I knew perfectly well that with Domenico and Giuliana tangled up in each other day and night, the odds of him carrying the sickness were overwhelming.

But there was always that sliver of a chance.

My hesitation was all he needed. He declared it like a man who'd already won. "Silence is consent. The bet takes effect immediately."

He handed the vial of drawn blood to one of his soldiers and ordered him to oversee the testing personally at the clinic.

Everyone waited, curious about the result. But Giuliana couldn't sit still.

"Ow, it hurts!"

She clutched her stomach, her voice cracking into a whimper. "When that old hag examined me earlier, she pressed on my belly a couple of times. I felt off right then, and now the pain's getting worse!"

"That's a lie!" The medical assistant cut in before she could finish. "You started provoking everyone the second you walked in. Dr. Valente never even touched you!"

Giuliana rolled her eyes. Her fingers drifted to her collarbone, tracing it lightly. "You work for the old hag, of course you'd cover for her. Careful though. Liars get what's coming to them. Watch your back when you walk out of here. Wouldn't want a car to fix that problem for you."

The blatant lie, the casual viciousness of the threat, left the assistant shaking with anger. In this world, a threat like that from a woman carrying the Don's supposed heir was not idle. Cars did fix problems. People vanished.

I patted her hand to calm her, then spoke, my voice level. "Since it's your word against hers, let's check the security footage."

I pointed to the camera in the corner, still running.

Three years ago, a patient had given me trouble and Domenico had stepped in immediately. He'd not only handled the situation but insisted on having the camera installed in my examination room at the clinic.

He'd said it would make sure I never again found myself in a situation where the truth couldn't be proven.

Domenico clearly remembered. Something wavered behind his eyes.

"Then let's check—"

"Sure! Go ahead and check!"

Giuliana's shriek cut him off, raw and piercing.

"I get accused of having some filthy disease. My stomach's killing me and somehow I'm the one being attacked. And you don't even believe me?"

"Domenico, I've taken so much abuse, and all I wanted was one apology. Is that really so hard? Forget it. I was blind. I loved the wrong person. I deserve this. I don't want to live anymore!"

She clutched her belly and lunged toward the wall.

Patrizia grabbed her, panicked, and turned on Domenico, her voice like a blade. "What are you still hesitating for? A worthless woman or your own flesh and blood. How is that even a choice?"

Domenico nodded once, his gaze ice-cold on me. "No need to check. I believe Giuliana."

He seized my right hand without warning, and a single savage twist sent a crack through the air. Bone snapping.

Blinding pain swallowed me whole, and through it came his voice, sharp and merciless.

"You're a surgeon. You should know. If the bone is set within three minutes, your hand can still be saved."

"Get on your knees right now. Give Giuliana a sincere apology, head to the floor, and we'll call it even. Otherwise, you deal with the consequences."

My heart was pounding so hard with hatred it felt like it would bleed.

"Domenico Corsetti!"

The scream tore out of me.

"I will not apologize for something I didn't do! I've spent years saving lives. Even if I despise the other woman, I would never sabotage my own reputation for a personal vendetta!"

The room stirred, voices rising in my defense. People who had been treated behind the clinic's discreet walls, people whose families owed their lives to my hands.

"She's right. La Mano Santa has always put her patients first. We've all seen it."

"My wife had triple nuchal cord. She did the C-section herself, pulled both of them back from the edge."

"Same here. My wife couldn't conceive. She spent a whole year working with her, and now we have a baby."

…

Domenico faltered for a moment. Then his eyes cut to Giuliana, not far away, still clutching her stomach, and his expression hardened again. The Don's jaw set. The room felt it, the way a room always felt it when he decided something.

"You think you're above a personal vendetta?"

"You lost the ability to have children a long time ago. That twisted your mind. You can't stand seeing Giuliana pregnant, so you smeared her, you hurt her. Someone like you doesn't deserve to be called La Mano Santa!"

His words hit the room like a match dropped in oil.

"I'd heard rumors it was the Don's problem… Turns out Seraphina is the one who can't have kids? Did she start those rumors herself?"

The same people who had just been thanking me turned on me in an instant, fingers jabbing at my face.

"No wonder! My wife was perfectly fine, and then after one ultrasound you suddenly said she needed a C-section. You're sick in the head. You just wanted her cut open!" He spat in my face.

Before I could wipe it away, a palm cracked across my other cheek.

"You can't even have kids yourself, and you had the nerve to treat my wife's fertility? No wonder it cost so much. You were scamming us the whole time! Trash!"

The mob forced me to my knees and shoved my head down, slamming my forehead against the floor.

My ears rang from the blows. Blood ran freely down my face.

Inside, there was nothing left but despair.

Too late. Three minutes had long since passed. My hand would never be the same.

I don't know how long it went on before Domenico finally stopped them. He pulled me upright, battered and barely standing, and leaned close to my ear. His voice was quiet. The voice of a man who owned the room and every person in it and knew he didn't need to raise it.

"Sweetheart, I never actually wanted to leave you. But that temper of yours really needs to go. Now your hand is ruined. You'll never operate again."

"Once my blood test comes back, you won't have a penny to your name. From now on, you can only depend on me."

"But as long as you behave, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life. After all, the one I love most has always been you."

My right hand hung limp at my side. My eyes were burning red.

He'd broken my wings and built a cage around me, and he still dared talk about love.

Disgusting. Every word of it.

I stared at them, each syllable ground out like blood from my throat: "You'll pay for this."

The words had barely left my mouth when Salvatore Benedetti approached. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them with the cloth from his breast pocket, slow and methodical, and the people nearest to him went quiet one by one because they knew what that gesture meant.

"Signora Corsetti, your examination results are in. I'm sorry to say your cancer has returned." He paused, the cloth still moving across the lens. "But please don't worry. Your daughter-in-law is La Mano Santa. With her performing the operation, the chances of success are very high."

At the same time, Domenico's right hand rushed over with a report in hand: "Don Corsetti, the results are back—"

Salvatore's words turned every pair of eyes in the room toward Patrizia.