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.

Inside the spacious black car, the armored sedan that ferried the Don through territory he controlled, silence hung heavily. The driver kept his eyes forward. The partition was up. The leather seats smelled of expensive cologne and something else, something faintly sweet and wrong. And then, as if right on cue, I spotted something wedged between the seat cushions.

A pair of still-damp lace panties.

"Oh my!" Daniela gasped, her hand flying to her mouth with the precision of a woman who had placed them there herself and rehearsed the discovery. "How did that end up here?"

"Dominic, didn't you say you took care of it already?"

Biting her lip, Daniela threw herself into his arms, blushing as she playfully hit his chest.

Dominic chuckled and apologized, blaming everything on himself, yet his eyes subtly shifted, watching my reaction.

But when he saw that I wasn't angry at all, the same restlessness he'd felt back in the hospital room crept back into his chest, inexplicably heavy.

"Seraphina," he said coldly, "you've been glued to your phone ever since you got in the car."

His voice carried a note of jealousy, low and controlled, the way a man accustomed to absolute authority sounds when something slips beyond his reach.

"Chatting with your cousin? Or someone else I don't know?"

I had just finished booking my plane ticket and locked my phone screen.

"Just reading the news," I replied calmly.

But rather than easing his mood, my answer only deepened the frown between his brows. The silver lighter appeared in his hand, turning end over end between his fingers, the soft click of metal filling the silence of the armored sedan.

Catching me off guard, he snatched the phone from my hand.

"What's your password?" he demanded. The lighter stopped moving.

"My birthday," I said.

Nine years of marriage. Nine years of a blood-bound union.

A six-digit password that simple, and yet, he still failed to unlock my phone before it locked itself from too many incorrect attempts.

The rest of the ride passed in silence. The enforcer behind the wheel kept his eyes on the road. The one in the passenger seat did not turn around. They knew the temperature of the air between us. Everyone in the Valente household always knew.

When we arrived at the estate, Dominic immediately helped Daniela, who was suffering from pregnancy nausea, into the master bedroom with a look of deep concern. The soldiers stationed along the hallway straightened as he passed, eyes forward, postures locked. He moved through his own home the way he moved through every room: as though it had been built around him.

Then he instructed the cook to prepare all her favorite dishes.

Coming back downstairs, he caught a glimpse of me walking alone toward the guest room. Something about my lonely silhouette made him pause. My shadow stretched long across the marble floor of the foyer, thin and solitary against the dark wood paneling and the oil portraits of Valente men who had come before him.

After a moment's thought, he said to the cook, "Prepare a couple of Seraphina's usual dishes too. Set the table for three tonight."

In the guest room, I opened my suitcase, and every piece of clothing inside had been slashed to ribbons. Silk blouses gutted seam to seam. Dresses split open like wounds. The kind of damage that required patience, a sharp blade, and hatred held at a steady simmer.

Thankfully, my passport and the documents tucked deep inside, the ones that mattered, were untouched. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band used to sit. The skin there was smooth now. Almost healed.

Just as I gathered everything and turned to leave, I found Daniela blocking the door.

She held a black bottle in her hand, eyeing me with scorn as she scanned me from head to toe. Her other hand rested on her stomach, that practiced, deliberate gesture, though no one else was in the room to perform for. Old habits. Or perhaps she simply never stopped performing.

"Wow, Seraphina. You've got some nerve," she sneered.

"Even after I waltzed in here and made you the laughingstock of every Family wife on the Eastern Seaboard, you're still shamelessly clinging to the Valente name like some parasite."

"Oh right, your grandmother died last month, didn't she?" Her tone was syrupy and cruel, the kind of sweetness that coats a razor.

"Now that your precious old woman's gone, I guess you've got no one left to rely on. Well, it makes sense you'd cling to Dominic like he's your last lifeline."

She suddenly remembered something, laughing as she brought her phone screen up to my face.