For my baby, I swallowed my pride. I turned and dropped to my knees.

I let out two shaky barks. “I’m… cheap.”

Sophia leaned down, a triumphant smirk on her face.

“Ravenna, do you remember when I knelt before you, begging you to give Marcus to me? Did you ever think you’d see this day?”

She had come to me back then, telling me she and Marcus were in love, asking me to call off the wedding.

But the marriage between a Castellano and a Delacroix was a union of two powerful families. My father had made it clear that if I backed out, he would snap my neck with his own hands. So I refused her.

I never imagined she would hold onto that grudge for so long.

But I had no strength left to argue about the past. I looked up at them and pleaded, “Please, call a doctor…”

Marcus brought his heel down hard on my back.

“Ravenna, you really are pathetic! You’d do anything for that bastard!”

I was slammed flat against the floor, my belly hitting the hard ground. He grabbed a silver candlestick from a nearby table and brought it crashing down on my belly.

“You said… you’d spare the baby…” I mumbled.

Sophia’s tone was casual. “I said I’d spare the child. Marcus didn’t.”

“You dare use that child and my name to claw your way into the Castellano family’s power. You think I’d let you off that easy? Dream on!” Marcus snarled.

Pain, sharp as lightning, ripped through me. Bright red blood began to run down my legs.

I could feel the baby inside me slowly stop moving. Despair flooded my heart, and the look I gave them was filled with a hatred as sharp as a blade.

“Marcus, Sophia, you will both burn in hell for this!” I screamed.

Sophia stood beside Marcus, her expression venomous.

“She’s still cursing us, Marcus. It looks like she hasn’t learned her lesson.”

Marcus let out a cold laugh. “We’ll see who goes to hell. Sophia, go get the cord from the curtains.”

She understood immediately, returning with the heavy, coarse rope.

I dragged my bloodied body backward, my eyes wide with terror. “What are you doing?”

Their twisted, gleeful faces were my only answer.

They tied my hands and feet together. Then they dragged me by the rope, all the way down to the estate’s cold, damp wine cellar.

They threw me onto the stone floor. Marcus picked up a bottle of aged red wine, ready to bring it down on my head.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the end as the shadow of death fell over me.

Just then, the heavy cellar door was kicked open with a thunderous bang.

Vincent rushed in, his gray eyes a raging storm. “Stop!” he roared.