On the night of our ninth wedding anniversary, my husband, Dominic Valente, brought his pregnant mistress home to the compound.

With a voice as flat and measured as if he were reading terms at a sit-down, he laid out a few instructions.

"Daniela is particular about what she eats. From now on, every meal is to be different. See to it."

"She's fragile and can't sleep alone, so pack your things and move to the guest room at the end of the hall."

Without bothering to respond, I picked up the suitcase I had already prepared and walked calmly toward the door.

The housekeeper tried to stop me, but Dominic let out a cold laugh.

"Let her throw her little tantrum. She'll come crawling back in less than three days anyway."

The moment he said it, the room erupted in laughter. His soldiers by the foyer, the housekeeper, even the courier who'd driven Daniela in from the city.

Right in front of me, they placed a two-million-dollar bet. Two million in cash, counted out on the marble table in the entrance hall, wagering I wouldn't even make it through the night before begging Dominic to let me back in like a pathetic little lapdog.

But what they didn't know was that a black Maybach was already idling beyond the estate gates, headlights dark, engine running.

This time, I was truly leaving.

——

Just as I stepped past the heavy iron doors of the compound, Dominic called out behind me.

"Seraphina. Leave the safety bracelet. Daniela's been having nightmares lately, and she needs it more than you do."

My body went stiff.

That bracelet was the only thing my parents left me. The last piece of the Rossetti name that hadn't been bartered away, sold off, or absorbed into someone else's empire.

As I faced him, Dominic saw the redness in my eyes but remained indifferent. He stood in the doorway with one hand in his pocket, the silver lighter turning slowly between the fingers of the other.

"Name your price," he said.

How much could nine years of groveling in a loveless, blood-bound marriage possibly be worth?

I didn't bother calculating.

All I could remember was what happened the last time I refused to give Daniela something she wanted. My ski goggles, of all things. Dominic had stripped me bare and left me alone on the mountainside in the freezing cold, then taken the gondola down with her while his soldiers watched from the lodge and did nothing.

Inhaling sharply, I unclasped the bracelet and placed it around Daniela's wrist. Her hand drifted to her stomach the instant my fingers touched her skin. She held it there, cradling the slight swell, her eyes lifting to Dominic to make sure he saw.

Then I told her gently, "May the child in your womb be safe and sound."

Hearing that, Dominic surprisingly offered me a sliver of dignity.

"Seraphina, as long as you behave, my child will be your child too."

The moment he finished speaking, the bracelet on Daniela's wrist suddenly slipped and shattered on the marble floor.

A shard grazed her leg, drawing blood.

Dominic rushed to scoop her into his arms, holding her like she was made of Murano glass.

He barked at the housekeeper to call the Family's private physician. The lighter had gone still in his pocket. His hands were occupied now, both of them cradling a woman who was not his wife.

The urgency in his voice made everyone look at me with mocking eyes. The soldiers. The staff. Every person in that house who answered to the Valente name.

And honestly, I found it laughable as well.

Last night, when I had a heart attack, Dominic was on his way out to stargaze with Daniela at the vineyard overlook.

Even as I collapsed, frothing at the mouth on the living room floor, he didn't flinch. Just stepped right over me, adjusting his cufflinks as he passed.

Before I blacked out, I heard him tell the housekeeper, "Disinfect the whole living room. Daniela is coming home tomorrow. I don't want her to smell anything foul."

Gripping the handle of my suitcase, I turned to leave again.

But he grabbed my wrist, his grip the kind of force that had ended negotiations and broken lesser men. He stared at me coldly. "Apologize."

"Wha—"

Before I could even speak, he yanked me down, forcing me to kneel in front of Daniela on the cold marble.

My knees scraped against the shards of jade, leaving blood stains on the pale floor. The pain shot through me like a blade, but no one in the room moved. No one would. Not when the Don had spoken.

Seeing the mess, Dominic released me with a look of disgust.

"You broke her bracelet on purpose and injured her. Don't you think an apology is the least you owe her?"

Since marrying into the Valente Family, "I'm sorry" had become my most-used phrase.

The soup I cooked was too bland, so I apologized.

Worried that he might feel uncomfortable after drinking, I sent him a message, disrupting his peace. I apologized again.

I stumbled upon a text from Daniela, inviting him to a hotel. And once more, I found myself saying, "I'm truly sorry for invading your privacy..."

With blood in my mouth and pain in my bones, I straightened up, resigned. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band still sat, though it felt like nothing. Like absence shaped into gold.

Bowing 180 degrees to Daniela, I offered three deep apologies.

Then I looked at Dominic with cold, empty eyes.

"Is that enough?" I quietly asked.

His chest rose sharply, eyes fixed on the blood at the corner of my lips.

"Seraphina," he sneered, "your precious old man isn't here to protect you anymore. The Rossetti name doesn't open doors in this city. Not anymore. Who are you pretending to be so pitiful for?"

Before I could answer, the Family's private physician arrived, bag in hand, flanked by one of Dominic's soldiers who held the door.

Brushing past me like I didn't exist, Dominic led him straight to Daniela's side.

While Dominic's world revolved entirely around Daniela, I walked swiftly out the door.

I had barely stepped beyond the foyer of the estate when a car horn sounded twice from the darkness beyond the perimeter wall.

Two short blasts. A signal.

I saw a silver sedan idling just past the iron gate, its headlights off, and quickened my pace, hope rising in my chest like something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in years.

But before I could reach the gate, two of the Family's soldiers materialized from the guardhouse shadows, moving with the practiced silence of men who had done this before.

They grabbed me roughly, one on each arm, and dragged me back into the estate without a word, their grips bruising through the fabric of my sleeves, as if I were contraband being returned to inventory.

Inside the study, Dominic had me bound to a chair, my arms restrained behind my back with zip ties that bit into my wrists, the kind the enforcers kept in the supply closet alongside things I tried not to think about.

Without warning, he ordered the Family's private physician to drive a needle into my vein, the bore of it so thick it looked like it belonged in a veterinary clinic, not pressed against the crook of a woman's arm.

From behind the half-open door of the study, I heard the doctor speaking in a voice that trembled at its edges, the way men's voices trembled when they knew they were caught between a medical oath and the only oath that mattered in this house.

"Don Valente, although both your wife and Miss Ferraro share RH-negative blood, your wife has a long history of heart disease. Forcing a draw of this volume could trigger acute cardiac shock. I strongly advise we transfer her to a proper facility where we can monitor—"

"No need to persuade me." Dominic's voice was ice over stone. The silver Zippo was motionless in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, perfectly still. "Your only job is to make sure Daniela gets better. I'll handle everything else."

I heard his footsteps approaching across the hardwood, each one measured and deliberate, and I slowly closed my eyes.

"Does it hurt?"

His tone, for once, carried a trace of gentleness, thin as a razor's edge and just as dangerous.

"Hang in there. It'll be over soon."

I turned my head away, unwilling to waste a single word on him, staring instead at the wall where a framed photograph of Salvatore Valente's younger days hung in judgment over the room.

By the time they had drawn eight hundred cc's of blood, my lips were already turning purple, and the edges of my vision had gone soft, the study dissolving into watercolor at the periphery.

Just then, a faint cough echoed from the master bedroom down the corridor. Daniela.

Upon hearing it, Dominic immediately pushed the doctor's hand aside and ordered him to draw twice as much, his voice carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a kill order.

The doctor, drenched in cold sweat, his hands shaking around the syringe, warned him again. "If I continue, your wife could die."

Dominic paused for only two seconds, and in those two seconds the room held its breath, the soldier by the door held his breath, and even the old house seemed to hold its breath, waiting to learn what kind of man its master truly was.

"Daniela is pregnant," he said coldly. "The baby comes first."

"But—"

Without hesitation, I interrupted the doctor. "Just do it." My voice came out steadier than I expected, hollowed out of everything except the exhaustion of nine years. "But after this, let me go."

Looking at my bloodless face, Dominic's eyes flashed with cold fury, the kind that preceded the worst of him, the kind I had learned to read the way sailors read weather.

He opened his mouth to scold me, ready to ask if I'd had enough of this childish tantrum, if I was really going to abandon our home over something so trivial.

Then Daniela's delicate voice drifted from the bedroom like smoke through a cracked door. "Dominic..."

And just like that, he left me behind. His footsteps didn't slow. They didn't hesitate. The study door swung shut, and I was alone with the doctor and the needle and the quiet, rhythmic sound of my blood leaving my body, filling a bag meant for the woman who had taken everything else.

—

Two days later.

I woke in a private room at the Family's clinic, the kind of room with no windows facing the street and a lock that only opened from the outside, still weak from the shock that had nearly stopped my heart on the study floor.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Dominic sitting at the side table, flipping through documents stamped with the Valente crest, his reading glasses low on his nose, the silver lighter resting beside his coffee cup like a sleeping weapon.

Our eyes locked for a long moment, and the silence between us was the silence of a room where too many things had been said and none of the right ones.

Expressionless, he set the documents aside, picked up a bowl of porridge from the tray, and moved to feed me, the spoon held with the same hand that had ordered my blood drained two nights ago.

I shook my head. "I'll do it myself."

He said nothing, just watched me quietly as I ate half the bowl, my hands trembling around the ceramic in a way I couldn't hide no matter how hard I pressed my fingers together.

Then he asked, "Do you feel unwell anywhere?"

I didn't answer the question. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger, tracing the groove where the wedding band used to sit, the skin there still slightly paler than the rest, a ghost of a promise that had never been kept. "Please give me my phone."

Perhaps my tone was too distant, too stripped of the deference he had come to expect from nine years of trained obedience, because he froze for several seconds, the lighter on the table catching the fluorescent light as if even it was surprised.

Then he called the housekeeper to bring it over.

As I checked the screen, I noticed numerous missed calls, the notifications stacked like small emergencies, each one a voice I hadn't been allowed to answer.

"Who's been calling you?" Dominic's voice cut in, sharp and sudden, the way a blade appears in a conversation that was pretending to be civil.

He never used to ask questions like this. In nine years, he had never cared enough to wonder who might want to reach me.

A hint of annoyance flitted through my eyes before I could stop it.

"Someone you don't know," I replied flatly.

He unfastened the top button of his shirt with one hand, a gesture that in another context might have been casual but here, leaning over my hospital bed with that cold gaze bearing down, felt like a predator settling into a more comfortable position before the strike.

"Seraphina, how long do you plan to keep up this spoiled act?"

"I give you an inch and you want the whole mile?"

In the past, whenever he got angry, I'd rush to reflect on my mistakes, to soothe him, to fix things, to smooth the edges of his temper with apologies I had rehearsed so many times they no longer meant anything.

But now?

I simply pointed to his buzzing phone on the side table and said, without emotion, "It's Daniela."

The moment her name left my lips, Dominic's expression softened with a hint of a smile, the first warmth I had seen on his face in days, and it wasn't for me, and it had never been for me.