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.

"Oh right, remember the day you begged Dominic to send the helicopter to take you to the hospital to see your grandmother one last time?"

"Wanna know why he didn't take you?"

"Because he had promised to take me to the beach to watch the sunset. Look, the photo of us kissing on my phone screen was taken during that moment."

The room went very still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence in houses like this one.

Unable to endure it any longer, I slapped the phone out of her hand and grabbed her by the throat.

The black bottle in her hand slipped and fell. Glass shattered against the hardwood floor.

The sharp, acrid stench of gasoline instantly filled the air. It soaked into the slashed remains of my clothes, pooled between the floorboards, and the guest room became something else entirely. Not a room. A trap.

In the chaos, Daniela hastily lit the gasoline on the floor.

Thick smoke filled the air, and flames erupted violently, climbing the curtains, devouring the bedframe, turning the guest room into an inferno that roared against the old walls of the Valente estate. The fire moved with a hunger that felt almost personal.

Having just been discharged from the hospital, I quickly succumbed to the fumes, my body growing weak as I collapsed to the ground. The smoke was everywhere. In my lungs, behind my eyes, pressing down on my chest like a hand.

Through the haze, I heard Dominic's voice.

"Seraphina!"

Then came the sounds of soldiers and household staff trying to stop him.

"Boss, it's too dangerous! Wait for the extinguishers, we've got men coming from the south wing—"

"Move! Seraphina is still inside!"

His voice cut through the chaos like a blade. For one moment, one fraction of a second that I would carry with me across an ocean, I heard something in it that I had not heard in nine years. Something raw. Something real.

In the end, he ignored their warnings and rushed into the flames.

What he didn't expect was to find Daniela inside too.

"Dominic... help..." Her voice was thin and trembling, and her hand found her stomach again, the choreography flawless even through smoke and fire. The gesture that had shielded her for months. The gesture that had rewritten the hierarchy of this house.

She hadn't even finished her sentence before he scooped her up in his arms, never once glancing at me.

Without hesitation, he turned and walked away. The flames closed behind him like a curtain falling. And I lay on the floor of the guest room, alone, the heat pressing against my skin, watching the doorway where he had stood. Where he had chosen. The way he had always chosen.

Thirty minutes later, after calming Daniela down, he searched the entire house, but I was nowhere to be found. Every room. Every hallway. The wine cellar, the east wing, the garden perimeter where the soldiers kept watch. He sent Marco to check the cameras. He called the gate. Nothing. I had vanished from the Valente estate like smoke clearing after a fire, and the house felt different without me in it, though he would not have been able to say how.

Late that night, at the airport.

After mailing a package at the terminal counter, I boarded a flight to the UK, coughing as I made my way down the aisle. My lungs still burned from the smoke. My throat was raw. The bruise on my wrist from where I had dragged myself across the floor was already darkening. But my passport was in my hand, and the documents were in my bag, and the ring finger on my left hand was bare.

Just before the plane took off, my phone buzzed with a text from Dominic.

[I don't have time to play hide-and-seek with you.]

[Daniela has a prenatal check-up tomorrow at 10 a.m. Come with her, and get your lungs checked too.]

I didn't reply. Instead, I removed the SIM card and powered off the phone, dropping it into my coat pocket like something dead.

'Dominic. From this day forward, you and I are done. We will never see each other again.'

The next day, at the Family's private clinic on the Upper East Side.

"Dominic, is our baby okay?"

Meeting Daniela's pitiful, anxious eyes, Dominic immediately pulled her into his arms, speaking to her in a soft, reassuring voice.

"The doctor said the baby is perfectly healthy. No signs of trauma from what happened yesterday."

"That's such a relief," she breathed out, her voice trembling slightly. Her hand drifted to rest over her stomach, fingers splayed in that careful, practiced way she had perfected, always when he was watching.

"I saw how serious and quiet you've been ever since we arrived. I thought something was wrong with the baby."

Her unintentional comment made Dominic pause.

An uncontrollable image surfaced in his mind: standing amidst roaring flames, Seraphina stared back at him with eyes as cold as ice.

Frowning, he pulled out his phone and reopened his messages. There was still no reply. Not even a word from her.

It annoyed him. No. It infuriated him.

After all, no matter how cold or neglectful he'd been in the past, Seraphina had always come when he called. Always giving in. The way people in this world always answered when the Don summoned them.

But now? Now she had the nerve to ignore him?

He let out a bitter, humorless laugh. The sound was quiet enough that the two soldiers stationed outside the clinic door exchanged a glance but said nothing.

Silently, he escorted Daniela out of the physician's wing, took her to a quiet restaurant the Family owned on Mulberry Street, made sure she got home safely with a driver and an armed escort, and only then headed to the social club.

The moment he stepped through the back entrance, Marco Benedetti fell into step beside him.

"Boss. Don Salvatore has returned to the country. He's called an emergency sit-down with all the Capos in the back room. They're waiting."

Without much reaction, Dominic turned and began walking toward the meeting room. His silver Zippo appeared in his hand, turning end over end between his fingers in that slow, meditative rhythm.

As he walked, he instructed casually, "Buy a few of the latest luxury handbags and some jewelry. The high-end pieces."

Marco nodded, checking his watch with a brief, mechanical glance before giving a single nod.

"Of course, Boss. I'll have someone deliver them to Miss Ferraro's residence right away."

Dominic stopped walking. The lighter went still. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Send them to the old Rossetti estate."

In his mind, after leaving the compound, Seraphina couldn't possibly have anywhere else to stay except the Rossetti family home. That crumbling monument to a name that no longer carried weight in any room that mattered.

One week later, late at night.

After finally wrapping up a territorial negotiation that had dragged on for days, Dominic returned to the Valente compound.

He walked into the living room, past the two soldiers posted at the foyer who straightened as he passed, only to see a slender, graceful figure curled up on the sofa in a silk nightgown, like a little shrimp.

"Seraphina, how many times have I told you, when I'm done working, I'll come back. There's no need for you to keep—"

His voice trailed off as he got closer and realized it wasn't Seraphina.

It was Daniela.

His mocking tone immediately vanished. The warmth drained from his face like water through a crack in stone.

Being stared at with such cold indifference, Daniela shivered. She looked pitiful and wronged, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Her hand moved to her stomach again, settling there with the timing of someone who had rehearsed the gesture a thousand times.

"Dominic... Seraphina hasn't returned for days."

"I've sent her so many apology texts, but she hasn't responded to a single one."

"Maybe... maybe I should move out?"

Watching her on the verge of tears again, Dominic frowned and pulled her into his arms.

He placed a light, perfunctory kiss on her forehead. "Don't think too much. Take care of your health."

"Whether Seraphina likes it or not, from now on, this will be your home and our child's."

Half an hour after making that promise, Dominic stood alone on the open-air balcony of the compound's top floor, wrapped in a silk robe, quietly smoking a cigarette. Below him, the city sprawled out in cold light, and somewhere beyond the property line, a car idled with its headlights off. One of his own, keeping watch. There was always someone keeping watch.

He hadn't smoked in a long time.

But tonight, for some reason... he couldn't resist.

On impulse, he opened his contacts and scrolled all the way to the bottom. Seraphina's number was still there. The name sat on his screen like an accusation.

His thumb hovered over the call button for a long time.

After two cigarettes, he didn't dial. Instead, he sent a message.

[Seraphina, tomorrow is Grandpa's 80th birthday. I suggest you don't try any stunts at the celebration. Don't cause trouble for Daniela or her baby.]

He stared at the screen for a full minute after sending it. No typing indicator appeared. No read receipt. Nothing. He locked the phone and set it face-down on the railing, then lit a third cigarette with the Zippo, the flame catching in the wind before holding steady.