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.

Without another glance at me, he rose from the chair and stepped into the corridor to take her call, the door clicking shut behind him with the soft finality of a man choosing, again, the same thing he always chose.

As soon as he left, my phone rang, the vibration loud against the metal tray in the quiet room.

Taking a deep breath, I answered the call.

Before I could say anything, the voice on the other end broke through, anxious and urgent, the sound of someone who had been pacing for days.

"Weren't you supposed to meet me? Seraphina, did you change your mind?"

"No... I didn't. Something just came up," I said, and my voice cracked on the last word in a way I couldn't control, the way a wall cracks before it falls.

"Something came up? What happened? No, this won't do. I'm coming back. I'm flying home myself!"

I cut off the person on the other end of the secure line, my voice barely above a whisper as I lowered my gaze and pressed my lips together.

"Just give me a few more days. That's all I ask."

When Dominic returned to the hospital ward, I had just ended the call.

Noticing the faint smile tugging at the corner of my lips, a smile he hadn't seen in a long time, something in his chest twisted uncomfortably. I could tell by the way he paused in the doorway, his hand still on the frame, the silver Zippo frozen mid-turn between his fingers.

But he had just promised Daniela he'd be home soon, back to the Valente penthouse to sing lullabies for her and the baby.

So he didn't have time to ask who I'd been talking to.

He assumed it was probably my cousin, the only Rossetti woman still willing to speak to me since the alliance marriage. After all, I no longer had anyone of my own. The Family had made sure of that. Nine years inside the Valente household had stripped me of every connection that wasn't his to control.

Without turning back, he gathered his files from the bedside table and said coldly, "Seraphina, something came up at the social club. I'll come again tomorrow."

In the blink of an eye, tomorrow had passed and the day after.

And the day after that. He never showed up. The soldier stationed outside my door changed shifts three times. None of them spoke to me. None of them had orders to.

Instead, thanks to wives of associates, women who circled the Family's orbit like satellites, I kept receiving videos of him and Daniela. Sent to my phone with no commentary. Just the footage. Just the evidence of what everyone already knew and no one would say to my face.

He took her to dinner at Family-owned restaurants where the staff cleared the room for them. He brought her to charity galas where the Valente name bought silence and admiration in equal measure.

He looked like a giddy young boy in love, showing her off to every Capo and associate like she was the greatest prize he had ever claimed. His hand on the small of her back. His mouth at her ear. The Don of the most powerful syndicate on the Eastern Seaboard, reduced to a fool by a woman with no family name and a talent for performance.

On the day I was discharged from the hospital, Dominic posted a nine-grid photo on his social media, the public-facing account that maintained the Valente family's image of legitimate wealth and domestic bliss.

In the golden hues of sunset, he stood on a romantic hot air balloon platform, gently cupping Daniela's rosy cheeks as they kissed passionately. The city sprawled beneath them. He looked free. He looked like a man who had never made a blood oath to another woman.

I left a comment.

[Wishing you two a lifetime of love, and a healthy baby on the way.]

Ten minutes later, my phone rang. It was Dominic. The screen lit up with his name, and the soldier outside my door glanced in through the window as if even the phone ringing was an event that required surveillance.

I didn't pick up.

Thirty minutes after that, I finished the discharge process alone. No escort. No driver waiting at the curb. The Don's wife, walking out of a hospital with a plastic bag of belongings and a heart monitor still taped to the inside of her wrist, and not a single soul from the Valente Family there to witness it.

And just as I walked past the OB-GYN department, I saw Dominic, and beside him was Daniela. Her hand rested on his arm with practiced ease, and her other hand sat over her stomach. Always over her stomach. Always when he was looking.

I overheard a young nurse at the consultation desk say sweetly to Daniela.

"Mrs. Valente, your husband really adores you. He comes with you every time, and even warms the ultrasound gel himself so you won't feel cold during the checkup."

The surrounding pregnant women looked at her with open admiration. The Don's wife. They thought she was the Don's wife. And why wouldn't they? He stood beside her like a man guarding something precious. He had never once stood beside me that way. Not in nine years.

My hand moved subconsciously to my stomach.

I remembered...

There had been a child here once. A heartbeat inside me that I had spoken to in the dark of the Valente estate when the hallways were empty and the soldiers had changed shifts and no one was listening. A small, impossible thing that had made the blood-bound union feel, for one brief season, like something other than a cage.

On the day of the car accident, the hit that everyone in the Family called an accident but that I knew in my bones was something else, I suffered a miscarriage due to blood loss. I cried while making a video call to Dominic on the encrypted line.

But all I saw was a naked Daniela on the screen, smiling as she said, "Mrs. Valente, your husband lost a game to me, so as punishment, he's currently tied to the bed. Is there something you need from him?"

I said nothing and hung up. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that was supposed to mean something, against the metal that had become nothing more than a shackle I couldn't remove.

Not even a minute passed before Dominic called back.

Holding a teary-eyed, wronged-looking Daniela in his arms, he exploded at me. "You're so petty and pathetic, Seraphina. Always making trouble!" His voice carried the particular cruelty of a man who has never been told no, who has confused authority with righteousness, who believed that volume alone could make him right.

And then, with disgust in his voice, he added, "You couldn't even hold on to your own baby. What can someone like you possibly do right?"

"Honestly, I wish that truck had finished the job and killed you." The words landed the way a bullet lands. Not with heat. With finality. With the understanding that the man who had sworn a blood oath to protect me had just wished me dead, and meant it, and would not remember saying it by morning.

Snapping back to the present, I was about to take a detour and walk away, to disappear down the corridor before either of them noticed me standing there like a ghost in their perfect picture, but Dominic walked toward me with that cold expression and snapped, "Why are you just standing there like an idiot?"

Startled, I instinctively tried to explain. "I wasn't following you. I really just ran into you by coincidence. I'm sorry if I disturbed you." The words came out before I could stop them. Nine years of conditioning. Nine years of apologizing for existing in a house that was supposed to be mine.

"Wait."

He frowned, and at the sound of that single word, I caught the flicker of jealousy in Daniela's eyes. It was quick, controlled, the way a woman who has survived on performance learns to manage every micro-expression. But I saw it. I had spent nine years learning to read the danger in that woman's face the way soldiers learn to read a room.

She clutched his arm a little tighter and smiled at me sweetly, her hand drifting back to her stomach with choreographed precision. "Mrs. Valente, thank you again for the blood donation. Without you, I'd still be so dizzy today. You saved me and my baby!"

"Dominic, won't you bring Mrs. Valente home with us? Please?" Her voice was silk over a blade. The request sounded like generosity. It was territory. She wanted me in the car. She wanted me to see.

Dominic dotingly tapped the tip of her nose and gently replied, "My sweet angel, whatever you say goes." The Don of the Valente Family. The man who decided which soldiers lived and which ones disappeared. Reduced to a puppet by a woman who placed her hand over her stomach like a shield every time the light shifted.

Since I had to return to the estate to gather my things anyway, I didn't refuse Daniela's "kindness." There were documents I needed. Things hidden in places she hadn't thought to look. A passport she didn't know I still had.