When I was eight months pregnant, carrying the Marchetti heir, someone pushed me from the second-floor landing of the estate. I crashed to the marble below, pain searing through me as blood pooled around my body.

In a frenzy, my husband, Salvatore, the Don himself, carried me out to the car and summoned the surgeons the Family kept on quiet retainer, men who asked no questions and signed no records. By some mercy, they saved the baby.

When I woke, however, neither the baby nor Salvatore was at my side.

I struggled to rise, limping through the sterile corridors, searching every room. It was not until I reached the cold storage at the end of the wing that I overheard my husband speaking low with the doctor.

"Don Marchetti, the child was still breathing. How could you smother him? He is your own blood."

"Better he goes early and finds another life. He never should have drawn breath in this one." Salvatore's voice came flat and cold. "Vittoria gave me a son yesterday. I gave her my word that our boy would be the only heir to the Marchetti name. I will not have anyone contest what is his."

Hearing it all, I felt my blood run cold. The happy family I had dreamed of was only my delusion. The union I had been so proud of, the pact sworn before the whole famiglia, was nothing but a cold hell.

If that was the truth of it, then it was better to leave.

……

The doctor hesitated, his face torn. "But Don Marchetti, if you mean to pass Vittoria's child off to your wife, what happens when she learns the truth?"

"Newborns all look the same. She won't see it. I'll bring the boy to her shortly." Salvatore answered as though discussing a shipment. "Dispose of the body the way we dispose of things. And give me the sterilization drug your people have been developing. I'll see that Adriana takes it."

The doctor went still, then spoke in an urgent rush. "Don Marchetti, you've already taken your wife's child to seat Vittoria's in the bloodline. Why sterilize her too? Isn't that too cruel?"

The chill of that cold room seemed to bleed out into the hall, yet Salvatore's words were colder still.

"I promised Vittoria our son would never want for anything in this life, and that no other child of mine would ever rise to compete for his place. She belongs to another man's house now. I want her to rest easy all the same."

The doctor's reluctance did not fade. "Don Marchetti, I must warn you. This drug is still in trials. It has never been given to a living patient. The side effects are severe. Can you truly carry that?"

Salvatore paused, and let out a slow breath. "I have no choice. Adriana will wake soon. If I have them take her womb now, she'll grow suspicious."

"She'll have to endure it. I'll make it up to her after. But I cannot allow Adriana to carry again."

Just then his phone rang. He pressed the speaker, and a man's pleased voice crawled out into that cold room.

"Don Marchetti, the five million came through. Don't trouble yourself, I'm leaving New York tonight. Your wife will never know it was your order that put her down those stairs. Heh."

Then footsteps came toward the door.

Ignoring the pain screaming through my leg, I staggered back to the ward.

Thinking of my dead child, I clutched my chest, trying to hold in the anguish as tears fell on my bandaged leg.

So it had been no accident, that fall down the stairs. It was my own husband clearing an obstacle from the path of the woman he loved and the child she'd given him.

My baby had been saved on that table, only to be smothered by the hands of his own father.

To Salvatore, we, mother and child both, were nothing but stones in his road.

"Adriana, you're awake?"

Salvatore came in cradling an infant and sat beside me with a smile. "Look at our son. Doesn't he look just like us?"

"Cara, thank you for giving me such a beautiful boy. I'll be a good father to him." He grinned.

I looked at the baby sleeping peacefully in his arms, and my heart ached.

Salvatore was wrong. No mother mistakes her own child. The boy had his brow and his eyes, but the nose, the chin, were Vittoria's, near enough to be traced.

That was their child.

But my son was now a cold and lifeless corpse!

"Adriana, does your leg still hurt? Here, take something for the pain." Salvatore looked at me, his thumb rolling that heavy signet ring in slow circles the way it always did when he was calm, in control, sure of every card on the table. His eyes were filled with the same tenderness as always, but I knew now. It was all just an illusion meant to deceive me.

I looked at the pills in his hand and recalled what I had just overheard through the door of this quiet estate room, where even the walls kept the Family's secrets.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "Salvatore, the medicine is too bitter. Can I take it later?"

'You've already killed my child. Can't you at least leave me the right to be a mother?'

Salvatore hesitated for just a second before smiling and patting my head. "You're a mother now, yet you're still acting like a child? Giving birth was already hard on you, and now your legs are hurting. I couldn't sleep all night worrying about you, Adriana. Just take pity on your husband, will you? I still have a son to raise like a proper father."

"Don't worry. I put honey in the water. It's sweet. Come now, let me feed you."

'No. That is not my baby. It's yours and Vittoria's!' I screamed inside.

He brought the pill to my lips, leaving me no room to refuse, the way a Don leaves no room in a sit-down once he has already decided.

A chill spread through my body. I closed my eyes and swallowed the pill dry, refusing the honeyed water.

I didn't want that kind of fake sweetness.

The drug hit quickly. A searing pain burned through my lower abdomen, as though flames were consuming me from the inside, or as if someone were slicing me open with a knife. Blood gushed from between my legs.

"Adriana, what's wrong?!"

Salvatore shouted for the doctor, the Family's own man, the one who kept his mouth shut for a price. The pain was unbearable, and I passed out.

In my daze, I heard the doctor's voice.

"Don Marchetti, the drug has completely corroded her uterus. She will never carry a child again."

Salvatore let out a long, slow breath of relief.

When I woke again, his eyes were red, his face filled with grief as he gazed at me. "Adriana, the doctor said you lost too much blood after the birth... He said you won't be able to have children anymore."

"Don't be sad. Thank God we already have Matteo. He'll grow up to be a good son to you."

Matteo?

He had already given Vittoria's child a Marchetti name, this fast?

Salvatore wouldn't let the nurse clean me. Ignoring the fastidious cleanliness the whole Family knew him for, he fetched the hot water himself and carefully wiped away the blood.

He told me the matriarch, his mother, wished to see her firstborn grandson, the heir to the bloodline, and had already taken the baby to the main house.

By the time the estate went quiet, it was deep in the night.

I looked at his faintly tired face and forced a weak smile. "I'm fine. You've been on your feet all day. You should rest now."

Salvatore kissed my forehead. "All right. If you need anything, wake me. Tomorrow I'll take you to see Matteo. From now on, the three of us will live happily, as one famiglia."

After he fell asleep, I quietly picked up his phone.

To prove his devotion to me, Salvatore had never set a lock on it. That, too, had been part of the performance.

But I had never known he kept a second life inside it, a hidden system, and the code to open it was Vittoria's birthday.

The moment the screen changed, the wallpaper became a photo of the two of them from their university days, back before the vows, back before the alliance he'd sworn to me before the Family.

His messenger held a single contact. Vittoria.

I opened their thread. The first thing to load was a photo of her cradling a newborn.

[Salvatore, look at our beautiful boy. He's going to be as handsome as you when he grows.]

That baby looked exactly like the one Salvatore had carried to my bedside earlier that night.

The further I scrolled, the colder my heart became.

Through all eight months I carried his child, Salvatore had been forever away on "the Don's business." The days he had actually spent at my side I could count on my fingers.

I hadn't wanted to pull him from the work of the Family, so I bore the sickness and the exhaustion alone, going to every checkup by myself.

And now I knew. Those errands, those long shadow nights away, had only ever been the road to Vittoria, to her side, to her and the child growing in her.

Among the thousands of photos buried in that phone, every single one recorded Vittoria's journey from the first swell of pregnancy to the birth.

Salvatore cooked for Vittoria himself every day, rich broths and hand-rolled pasta carried up to her rooms. He walked her through the estate gardens, took her into the city to spend without limit, and when the morning sickness came he cupped his own hands beneath her chin without a flicker of disgust.

He never missed a single visit from the family physician, staying at her side, his gaze filled with devotion as though she were the most precious thing the Marchetti bloodline had ever guarded.

I had begged Salvatore more times than I could count to choose a name for our child. He always took a long time to answer.

"Adriana, a name is just a label. Pick anything. I have business at the club. We'll settle it after the baby comes."

Yet the moment Vittoria was carrying his child, Salvatore already had a hundred names ready.

"Vittoria, what about Asha for our baby? It means a bright road ahead."

"Or Ethan? It carries wisdom, and a future that answers to no one."

"No. We'll call him Matteo. I don't care if he ever sits at the head of the table. I only want him safe. I want him to live a long life."

After every visit from the physician, he gave Vittoria a gift. A necklace off a jeweler's private tray. A limited car that never touched a showroom floor.

"Our Vittoria came through another checkup without harm. That calls for a celebration."

He gave her a castle in Europe when she was delivered of the child, safe and whole.

And me?

All I was ever given was a single line. "Adriana, thank you for the trouble you've gone to. I have a sit-down to attend."

So this was the distance between love and indifference.

I set the phone down, my heart cold and numb. Without a second thought, I booked passage out of the country three days from now.

I lay back against the hospital bed and stared at the ceiling, my chest filled with an unbearable emptiness.

I didn't sleep a single moment that night.

The next morning Salvatore, as always, had one of his associates bring me a proper meal.

I used to be touched by such thoughtfulness, believing that even when he wasn't beside me, he still cared whether I ate, whether I healed.

It wasn't until I remembered him moving around that kitchen the night before, cooking for Vittoria with his own hands, that I understood it was all for show.

I finally understood. This was not love. It was routine. A gesture that meant nothing.

Set against real affection, blood money was worthless.

Seeing that I hadn't touched a bite, Salvatore frowned, his voice filled with concern. "Adriana, why aren't you eating? Is it not to your taste?"

"It's nothing. I just miss the baby," I answered coldly.

Salvatore gave a low laugh. "You mean Matteo? I miss him too. I never understood it before, but now that I'm a father I can't stand to be away from him even a moment. Our Matteo is the most beautiful child in the world."

"My mother is beside herself now that there's a grandson to carry the name. She's been holding court at the old estate. We'll go and collect Matteo later."

I said nothing. I had already decided to leave, so none of it reached me anymore.

When we came to the old Marchetti estate, the moment we crossed the threshold I saw the matriarch and Vittoria at ease with the child, the two of them playing with Matteo like women who owned the place.

Vittoria wore something limited and expensive, her face bright, no trace of the exhaustion that childbirth leaves behind.

Carmela, doting on her grandson, was feeding Vittoria spoonfuls of bone broth from a good bowl, treating her like a daughter of the blood.

The moment Vittoria saw me she let a small smile cross her lips and turned to the matriarch, her voice dripping false modesty. "Zia, you really shouldn't spoil me like this. People will take me for your son's wife. Adriana might grow jealous. You ought to give her the broth instead. She's weak. She needs it more than I do."

Following her glance, Carmela looked at me, and her expression soured at once.

I was still in the bloodstained clothes from the day it all went wrong.

Disgust crossed her face. "Has my son ever let you go without food or clothing? Why do you present yourself like this? It's an ill omen. Are you trying to shame this family before everyone?"

"Look at Vittoria. She's only just given birth, and she carries herself better than you do. You're making a spectacle of nothing."

"You couldn't even conduct yourself properly while you were carrying, running around like a fool. It's a wonder that fall didn't kill you. And now you dare play the wounded one? If anything had happened to my grandson, I'd have had Salvatore sever the pact with you where you stood."

"You knew you were to nurse him, and still you took your medicine as you pleased. If Vittoria hadn't stepped in to feed him, my grandson would have starved because of you. You bring bad luck into this house."

The rosary in her hand snapped shut with a sharp click. "I'll say it plainly, here and now. Vittoria is my goddaughter. From this day she calls me 'Mother,' the same as Salvatore does."