Blood Moon Bride A Moretti Family Novel

Valentina's POV I stiffened at the sound of his voice. There was a time when hearing Silas say my name sent warmth flooding through my chest, a flutter beneath my ribs that I mistook for something holy. Now the sound of it landed like a fist against bruised skin. I didn't turn around. My eyes were swollen, the lids raw and tight, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me undone. I kept my gaze fixed on the window, on the dark water of the harbor visible beyond the compound walls, where the Valenti shipping boats rocked in their berths like sleeping predators. "Nothing important," I said, wiping at my cheeks with my sleeve. My voice cracked on the second word, so I cleared my throat and added, "Just making a call." Silas stepped farther into the room. The floorboards didn't creak under his weight. They never did. He moved the way men in this life learned to move, deliberate and quiet, as though sound itself owed him deference. I could feel his eyes on me, cataloging, assessing. "You look like a mess. Have you been crying?" A lump formed in my throat, hard and sharp as a swallowed stone. "Something got into my eyes," I mumbled, pressing the heels of my palms against them. "Probably dust." He didn't believe me. I could tell by the quality of the silence that followed, the particular weight of his stare. But he didn't press. Not because he was being kind. Because he simply didn't care enough to pursue it. His phone rang. I didn't need to look. I already knew who it was. Anastasia. Because of that ringtone. That soft, lilting melody he had programmed only for her, gentle as a lullaby, tender as a whispered prayer. He had never assigned a special tone to my calls. In six years, I had never warranted anything beyond the factory default. Silas glanced at the screen, and his entire face changed. The hard mask he wore, the cold authority that kept soldiers in line and rivals at bay, dissolved like frost under sudden sun. Something warm and unguarded surfaced in its place, something I had never seen directed at me. Not once. He stepped into the hallway and answered with a voice so gentle, so impossibly tender, that he might have been a different man entirely. As though he had shed one skin and slipped into another. "Hey, Ana... yeah, I just got back." I turned away, staring at the wall, pretending not to hear. Pretending I didn't care. Pretending the sound of his laughter, low and genuine, the kind of laugh he had never once shared with me, wasn't carving something vital out of my chest. I stood there, frozen in place, and wondered how I had been so blind. Six years. Six years of loving a man who had already given his heart to someone else. Someone he introduced to the Family as his distant cousin from the old country. Silas glanced back at me through the doorway, his expression already shifting back to its usual indifference, as though the warmth I'd just witnessed had been a hallucination. "Yeah, I'll be there soon. I just need to take care of something here." He hung up and slid the phone into the inner pocket of his jacket. Then he turned to me with the flat, transactional tone he reserved for household matters and low-level orders. "I need to head out for a bit. I want grilled lamb and mashed potatoes for dinner, with that rosemary sauce you make." That was it. No how are you? No what were you crying about? He had only just walked through the door, and he was already leaving. As he turned to go, I called out to him. "Hold on, before I forget." I pulled a set of papers from the drawer beside me. "The Family lawyers sent these over earlier. They've been asking for your signature all week." He groaned, impatient. "More damn paperwork?" "Just a couple of pages," I said, holding out a pen. "It won't take long." He didn't read a single line. Didn't scan the headers or check the clauses. He signed on the marked spots with the careless speed of a man who believed nothing in his world could move without his permission, and so nothing on paper could possibly threaten him. He handed the documents back. "Tell the lawyers I handled it." "I will," I said quietly, placing the papers back in the drawer. My hands were perfectly steady. "Have dinner ready by the time I get back." Silas didn't wait for a response. He strode to the door and was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor toward the front entrance of the compound, toward her. I clenched my fists so tightly my nails bit crescents into my palms. I stared at the door he had walked through and couldn't help it. A bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat, dry and broken. How hadn't I noticed? All this time. All these years. He had just signed his own annulment papers without reading a single word. As I turned, my shoulder caught the edge of the mahogany bookshelf, and a wooden box tumbled from the upper shelf. It hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud that seemed to echo through the silent room. I crouched and picked it up. I recognized that box. Silas had warned me once, months ago, never to touch it. He claimed it contained sensitive Family documents, syndicate contracts, things that were none of my concern. He had snapped at me the day I'd reached for it, his voice going cold and dangerous, as though I'd tried to break into the Family safe. Back then, I had apologized and backed away, the obedient wife, the dutiful La Donna who knew her place. But now I unlocked the box without hesitation, using the small brass key Silas thought he had cleverly hidden beneath a false bottom in his desk drawer. I had known about it for weeks. I had simply been waiting. Inside the box, documents and photographs were arranged with meticulous precision. The first thing I noticed was a folded sheet bearing an official seal. I opened it, and the blood drained from my face. Certificate of Marriage: Silas Valenti and Anastasia Ferraro. A secret marriage certificate. Already prepared. Already stamped. I stared at it until the words blurred. Silas had been planning a future with her. A legitimate union, a new La Donna for the Valenti Family. All while I was still his wife. All while I was still sleeping under his roof, cooking his meals, pressing his shirts, playing the role of the devoted spouse before his soldiers and his allies. My hands trembled as I set the certificate aside and reached for the next document. My stomach twisted so violently I nearly doubled over. The file was thick. Clinical. Thorough. It contained everything about the miscarriages. The dates. The dosages. The samples collected. Everything laid out in the precise, emotionless handwriting of a medical professional who had long since stopped seeing me as a person. My name was listed as the donor. Anastasia's as the recipient. "Termination successful... biological material harvested... womb responding to experimental fertility treatment... patient A.F. showing significant improvement..." My hand flew to my mouth. The room tilted. The walls seemed to breathe inward, pressing closer, and the faint smell of old leather and cigar smoke that permeated every room of this compound suddenly turned my stomach. I could taste bile, hot and acrid, at the back of my throat. Three miscarriages. Three children I had mourned, had wept for in the dark while Silas slept soundly beside me, had blamed my own body for losing. Three lives that hadn't failed on their own. They had been taken. Harvested. Fed to the woman he actually loved so that her damaged womb might one day carry the heir she wanted to give him. I sank to my knees on the cold floor, the documents spread before me like evidence at a trial, and my eyes blurred with tears that fell silently, one after another, onto the paper. I stayed like that for several minutes. I don't know how many. Time had stopped meaning anything. Then something shifted inside me. Something old and broken gave way to something harder, something forged in the furnace of six wasted years. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. My breathing steadied. I stood. Calmly. Deliberately. I returned every document, every photograph, every damning page back into the box exactly as I had found them. I locked it. I replaced the key beneath the false bottom of his drawer. Then I walked to the closet, pulled out a leather suitcase, and began to pack. I started with my clothes. I folded them neatly, precisely, and placed them in the bag with the careful attention of someone who understood that this was the last time she would touch anything in this room. I gathered the things we had collected over the years, the gifts, the decorations, the framed photographs, and I separated them from my life with surgical detachment. The gold necklace he gave me on our first anniversary? Into the discard box. The framed photograph from our wedding ceremony, the one where I was smiling and he was looking past me toward someone off-camera? Gone. The candle he once said smelled like me, purchased from a shop in Little Italy during the only walk we ever took together? Gone. I lost track of time until I heard the front door open again, followed by the sound of his shoes on the hardwood. "What are you doing?" Silas stood in the doorway, surveying the room with visible surprise. The suitcase on the bed. The open closet. The box of discarded memories on the floor. I didn't look up. "I'm reorganizing my closet." He stepped inside, slowly, his eyes moving from the suitcase to the box and back again. "What about these ones here?" He gestured toward the discard box. I shrugged casually, folding another blouse. "I'm getting rid of old things." "You're throwing all this out?" Genuine surprise in his voice now, as though the idea that I might discard pieces of our shared history was somehow more shocking than anything he had done to destroy it. I nodded. "Yeah. I don't need them anymore." He reached into the box and picked up a small stuffed toy, a little plush bear I used to keep by the bed. He had given it to me during our first year together, back when I still believed the coldness in him was something I could thaw. I had slept with it tucked against my chest on the nights he didn't come home. "Even this?" I nodded without looking at it. "It's old." He held it for a moment, turning it over in his hands, and something flickered across his face. Not guilt. Silas Valenti didn't feel guilt. Confusion, maybe. The disorientation of a man who had grown so accustomed to his wife's devotion that its absence registered as a malfunction rather than a consequence. "You loved this so much." He was right. I had cherished it desperately, the way starving people cherish crumbs. I shrugged. "Things change. People change. Love fades." He frowned, and for a moment it looked like he wanted to say something else. His mouth opened, a question or perhaps a command forming behind his teeth. But before he could speak, a voice drifted in from the hallway. "Silas? Where are you?" His body went rigid. A subtle tension that ran through his shoulders and down his spine, the kind of involuntary response that no amount of control could fully mask. A second later, Anastasia Ferraro stepped into the bedroom as though she owned it. She moved with the languid confidence of a woman who had already won, who was simply waiting for the formalities to catch up with reality. Her hand found Silas's arm, resting there casually, possessively, her manicured fingers curling against the fabric of his jacket. Her lips curved into a smile as her gaze settled on me. It was the kind of smile that was meant to cut. "Oh. Am I interrupting something?" Silas didn't hesitate. Not even for a breath. "No," he said smoothly, as if nothing about this tableau was strange. As if his mistress standing in his wife's bedroom, her hand on his arm, her perfume mingling with the scent of the clothes I was packing, was the most natural thing in the world. "You're not interrupting anything." I didn't react. I turned away and continued folding a shirt, pressing it down into the suitcase with deliberate care, as though the two of them were furniture. As though they weren't even in the room. Silas cleared his throat, trying to reclaim my attention. "Actually, Valentina... I meant to talk to you about something." I kept folding. My hands moved steadily. I didn't look up. He continued anyway, his tone carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a decree he expected no one to question. "Ana will be staying here with us for the time being."

Valentina's POV I paused, letting his words settle in the air between us like smoke from a cheap cigar. Then I picked up another blouse and folded it with deliberate care, pressing the creases flat with my palms. "Anastasia needs support," Silas added from behind me. "And it's better for her baby if she's somewhere stable. You know how hard it's been for her." I scoffed quietly. The sound barely left my throat, but in the stillness of the bedroom, it carried. Silas stopped talking. "Valentina." His tone shifted, the way a blade turns in its sheath before being drawn. He was getting annoyed. "Are you even listening to me?" I turned around. Slowly. And met his eyes. He stood in the doorway of our bedroom in the Valenti estate, his jacket still on, his collar loosened just enough to suggest he'd been drinking. Behind him, down the corridor, I could feel Anastasia Ferraro's presence like a draft through an open window. She was somewhere close, listening. She was always listening. "I'm listening, Silas," I said, my voice flat and even. "Do whatever you want. It's your house, after all." Silas's mouth opened slightly, then his expression darkened. The muscles along his jaw tightened, and the lamplight caught the hard edge of his cheekbone. "I don't like your tone, Valentina," he said, low and dangerous. I lifted an eyebrow. "What tone?" "You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to be civil, and you're making this harder than it needs to be," he snapped, taking half a step into the room. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight. I folded the blouse gently, smoothed it once, and placed it into the open suitcase on the bed. Then I turned to face him fully. My expression was calm. Blank. A mask I had learned to wear so well it had nearly become my real face. "She needs support," he continued, his voice carrying the rehearsed quality of a man who had practiced his justification on the drive home. "She's pregnant and alone. I'm just trying to help." "Why, Silas?" I asked quietly. The question dropped between us like a stone into still water. "Is she pregnant with your child?" Silas froze. His jaw clenched so hard I could see the tendons in his neck strain. No words came at first. His mouth opened, then closed again, and for a single, revealing instant, something flickered behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or the cold calculation of a man deciding which lie to deploy. He glanced toward the hallway where Anastasia waited, then back at me. "She's my cousin, Valentina," he said finally, his voice instantly defensive, pitched too high, as though I had accused him of breaking Omertà itself. "Does it have to be my child before I help her?" I gave him a bitter smile. It was the kind of smile that had no warmth in it, the kind that forms when the heart has been hollowed out so many times there is nothing left to wound. "No. But it would explain a lot." Silas's eyes went dark. The lamplight seemed to retreat from him. "Why are you so heartless, Valentina?" he snapped, and the word heartless landed like a slap. "I've told you several times there's nothing between us. Anastasia is just my cousin, and she has no one but me." I turned away from him, back to the suitcase. My hands moved with practiced calm, folding the last of my clothes, tucking them into neat rows. Each garment was a countdown. Each fold brought me closer to the door. "You don't need to explain anything to me, Silas," I said softly. "It's your house. You can do what you want." Silas paused behind me. I could hear his breathing, heavy and rough, the way it always got when he was struggling to contain the violence that lived just beneath his skin. "Silas..." Anastasia's voice floated in from the corridor, and then she appeared in the doorway, stepping into view like an actress hitting her mark. Her expression was soft with manufactured concern, her hand resting delicately on the slight swell of her belly. "Maybe I should go. I don't want to cause any more tension." She let her gaze drift to the floor, the picture of wounded modesty. "It's clear I'm not welcome here. And besides..." She glanced at Silas with those wide, guileless eyes. "She's your wife. La Donna of this house." Silas's arm reached out to her instinctively, his hand finding her elbow with a tenderness I had not felt from him in years. Perhaps ever. "You're not going anywhere," he said firmly. His voice had changed completely. For her, it softened. For her, the sharp edges smoothed into something almost gentle. "This is my house. You're family. I don't give a damn if she's my wife." He didn't look at me as he said it, but the words were meant for me. Every syllable. "If there's anyone who shouldn't be here, it's her." I flinched. I couldn't help it. The reaction was involuntary, a small, sharp contraction somewhere deep in my chest, as though a wire that had been holding me together had finally snapped. But I composed myself quickly, pressing my lips together, straightening my spine. They weren't going to see me cry. Not tonight. Not ever again. Then, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't just told the woman he'd married that she was less than a stranger in her own home, Silas turned to me with a frown. "Where's dinner?" I blinked. "Dinner?" "Yes," he said slowly, the way one speaks to a child or a servant, "grilled lamb, mashed potatoes, and rosemary sauce. I told you before I left." "Oh, Silas," Anastasia gasped, pressing her fingertips to her lips in a performance of pure delight. "That's my favorite meal. You remembered!" My chest tightened. My eyes burned, and I had to look away for a moment, fixing my gaze on the half-packed suitcase so that neither of them would see the moisture gathering along my lashes. Silas's face melted into a wide, warm smile. A real smile. The kind he had never once given me. "Yes. Yes, I did," he said, his voice rich with affection. "How could I forget?" Then he turned to me. The warmth vanished. "So? Where is it?" "Oh," I said, and my voice came out blank, emptied of everything. "No. I didn't make it." His eyes flashed with irritation, the familiar storm gathering behind his pupils. He scowled. "Why not?" "I was a little busy today," I said flatly. I held his gaze without flinching. "Maybe Anastasia can cook something instead. Since she'll be living here and all." Anastasia stiffened. The smug, sweet expression slid from her face like a mask knocked loose, and for one unguarded second, I saw the real woman beneath: calculating, cold, furious. Then it was gone, replaced by that wounded-doe look she wore so well. Silas's face turned a mottled red. The vein at his temple pulsed, and his eyes blazed with the kind of rage that, in this world, preceded broken bones and hospital visits. His hands curled into fists at his sides. "You ungrateful, bitter little..." he spat, the words coming out strangled, venomous. "Is this how pitiful you are? You cannot do the one thing you're good for." I clenched my jaw. My fists tightened at my sides until my nails bit into my palms, four small crescents of pain that kept me anchored, kept me from shattering. But I didn't react. I didn't give him the satisfaction. They weren't worth my pain anymore. Silas looked at Anastasia, then turned back to sneer at me. The contempt on his face was so complete, so thorough, it was as if he were looking at something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe. "Forget it," he said. "Anastasia, let's go eat out. I'm not staying here while she's like this. She can figure herself out." Anastasia nodded sweetly, slipping her hand into his with the ease of long practice. "Maybe it's best to give her some space," she murmured, her voice dripping with false compassion. The door slammed behind them. The sound reverberated through the estate, rattling the crystal perfume bottles on my vanity, sending a tremor through the silence that followed. I stood there. I stood in the middle of the bedroom I had shared with a man who despised me, surrounded by half-packed clothes and six years of accumulated grief, and I stared at nothing. The tears came slowly, tracking down my cheeks in thin, silent lines. I didn't wipe them away. I let them fall onto the collar of the blouse I was still holding, darkening the silk. It was only a matter of time. I was leaving soon. Then all of this would end. The suitcase lay open on the bed like a promise. I held onto that. I woke late in the night, throat dry, pulled from a thin and dreamless sleep by a thirst that wouldn't be ignored. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 12:43 AM. The numbers glowed a faint, sickly green in the darkness. The estate was quiet. The kind of quiet that old houses hold at night, full of settling wood and the distant hum of the heating system and the vast, breathing emptiness of rooms no one was using. I slipped out of bed, pulled a robe around my shoulders, and padded barefoot down the corridor toward the kitchen. That was when I heard it. The sounds were coming from the guest room. The one Silas had said Anastasia would stay in. Temporarily, he'd said. Just until she was settled. I froze in the hallway. The marble floor was cold beneath my feet. The corridor stretched before me, dimly lit by a single wall sconce that cast long, distorted shadows across the wainscoting. I knew what those sounds were. Every instinct told me to turn around. To go back to bed, drink water from the bathroom tap, and pretend I hadn't heard anything. But I didn't. Because a part of me, the last stubborn, aching part that still clung to some threadbare hope I hadn't yet managed to kill, needed to see it. Needed to watch that hope burn so I could sweep the ashes away and finally be free. I walked slowly toward the guest room. Each step was measured, silent, the way one learns to move in a house where making noise at the wrong time invites punishment. The thick carpet runner muffled my footsteps. The door wasn't fully shut. A thin sliver of warm light spilled into the hallway through the gap, and with it came the sounds, unmistakable now, close and raw and real. I stopped at the door. My hand trembled at my side. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes. I leaned forward and looked through the narrow opening. And instantly regretted it. Silas was on top of Anastasia.

Valentina's POV Silas's mouth was pressed against her neck, and his hands moved over her body with a hunger that made the air in the hallway feel unbreathable. "God, Ana..." He groaned. "I always loved your body. You feel so good. No one else can ever feel like this. No one can make me feel this way." That was enough. My heart didn't break. It shattered completely, like a glass dropped from a great height onto marble, each fragment too small to ever piece back together. But I didn't scream. I didn't throw open the door. I didn't confront them. Instead, I closed it softly. Gently. Like I didn't want to disturb them. I turned away. My heart pounded so violently I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes. I stumbled back toward my room, one hand braced against the corridor wall, the other pressed against my stomach as if I could physically hold myself together. I barely reached the bathroom before I dropped to my knees on the cold tile and threw up everything. I sat on the floor, shaking. They didn't just betray me. They did it in this house, under this roof, without shame, without a single locked door between their sin and my existence. Like I was nothing. Like I had never been anything at all. I leaned back against the wall, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The taste of bile sat bitter on my tongue. My mind flashed back to the last miscarriage. It had started early that morning. I woke with a searing pain low in my stomach, and when I pulled back the sheets, they were soaked through with blood. Dark, spreading, wrong. I called for Silas. He didn't come. He was busy. Anastasia's birthday, they told me. He was overseeing the preparations for her celebration, making sure the flowers were right, the cake was perfect, the champagne was chilled. For her. I managed to reach one of the household staff, a young woman who went pale at the sight of the blood and rushed me to the Family's private clinic in the back seat of a town car, holding my hand the entire way. Hours later, when Silas finally showed up, he didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't take my hand. He didn't sit at the edge of the bed. He just stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, his jacket still on, like he was already planning to leave. "Again?" he said. Cold. Flat. Like it was my fault. Like I was the problem. He didn't comfort me. He barely looked at me. When the Family doctor called it another unexplained miscarriage, Silas just nodded and walked out of the room. I heard his footsteps recede down the hallway. I heard the front door of the clinic open and close. I thought he was disappointed in me. I blamed myself for months. I took the vitamins the doctor prescribed. I ate what they told me to eat. I rested. I prayed. I apologized to Silas for failing him, for failing us. But now I knew better. He wasn't disappointed. He was satisfied. Because that baby, like the ones before it, had served its purpose. He got me pregnant. He had me drugged. He waited for the miscarriage. And then the doctor took what was needed, harvested what was left of my child, and delivered it to Anastasia Ferraro so some back-alley fertility specialist could try to repair her ruined womb. And I had apologized to him. I had actually said sorry. The bathroom tiles pressed cold against my spine. I stared at the ceiling and felt something shift inside me. Not grief. Not anymore. Something harder. Something with teeth. I didn't sleep after that. I spent the remaining hours of the night arranging everything for my departure. Documents. The few pieces of jewelry that had belonged to my mother. The single photograph of my family I'd kept hidden in the lining of my suitcase. Every trace of Valentina Serrano, sorted and boxed and ready to disappear from this house. I worked until the first pale light of dawn bled through the curtains. Eventually, when the hunger became impossible to ignore, I walked to the kitchen. The estate was silent. The soldiers on night rotation had changed shifts an hour ago. The hallways were empty. I made a simple breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, tea. Just for myself. I sat at the long dining table alone and ate in silence. The kitchen smelled faintly of coffee grounds and the lemon polish the housekeeper used on the wood. Ordinary smells. The kind of smells that belong to a home. This had never been mine. My phone buzzed against the table. A message from my father. Dad: I hope you haven't changed your mind again, because preparations have begun. Me: Never. I set the phone face-down and took another bite of toast. Footsteps came down the stairs. I didn't look up. "Mm, something smells good," Anastasia said lightly, her voice carrying that particular musical quality she reserved for mornings when she felt she'd won something. I didn't react. They walked in together, side by side, without a shred of shame. Silas in last night's shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. Anastasia in a silk robe that wasn't hers, her hair still tousled, her lips still faintly swollen. They didn't even try to hide it. "I hope you slept well, Donna Valenti," Anastasia continued, and the mockery in her tone was barely concealed beneath a veneer of sweetness. She used my title like a blade. "I had an incredible night, thanks to Silas here." Silas cleared his throat. "Valentina." His voice was stiff, uncomfortable, the way it always got when Anastasia pushed too far in front of me. "What Ana is trying to say is that she couldn't sleep alone last night. Nightmares. I had to stay with her so she could fall asleep." A small smirk crossed Anastasia's lips. Her eyes gleamed with triumph, bright and vicious. I continued eating. Completely unfazed. Anastasia glanced at the table. There was only one plate, one cup, one setting. Her brows lifted with exaggerated surprise. "Oh. No breakfast for us?" she asked, her voice sugary sweet. "Guess we're on our own now." I kept chewing. I didn't say a word. Silas looked at me now, and the discomfort in his expression curdled into irritation. "Valentina, where's our breakfast?" I took a sip of my tea. Calm. Measured. "I didn't make it," I said flatly. There was a pause. The kitchen clock ticked. "What do you mean, you didn't make it?" he asked slowly. His voice hardened. His eyes darkened, that particular shift that happened when his temper surfaced, when the violence inside him moved closer to the skin. I shrugged. Silas stepped closer. His presence filled the space between us, heavy with authority he believed was absolute. "You're the wife of the Don of this house. Your role is to support your husband and this household, and that includes making sure this kitchen functions. Or is that too much for you now?" I stood and rinsed my plate quietly at the sink, my back to him. "I said, is it too much?" His voice rose. I could feel the heat of his anger even without turning around. I turned slowly. Met his eyes. "You can always eat out. Like last night." He stepped forward, closing the distance, his jaw tight. "What is wrong with you lately? You've been acting like a spoiled brat, and it's getting very annoying." I didn't respond. I reached for the glass teapot on the counter, still filled with hot water, intending to pour it down the sink. Silas snapped. He snatched the teapot from my hand and slammed it down on the counter with a force that cracked the granite. The scalding water erupted from the spout and splashed across my hand and wrist in a sheet of liquid fire. I hissed and stumbled back. The teapot shattered on impact. A large shard of glass spun off the counter and buried itself in the soft flesh of my forearm. Blood welled up instantly, bright red against my skin, running in a thin stream down to my fingertips and dripping onto the white kitchen tile. I cried out. The pain was immediate, sharp, radiating up through my arm in waves. Silas blinked. He hadn't meant to do it. I could see that in the half-second of surprise that crossed his face. When he saw the blood, his expression softened. For one brief, stupid moment. For one stupid second, I thought maybe he would care. Maybe something buried deep beneath the cruelty and the indifference would surface. Maybe he would reach for my hand. But it didn't last. Because immediately, from behind him, Anastasia whined. "There's no breakfast, and I'm starving, Silas. I think I'm feeling dizzy." The softness vanished. Silas looked at me with cold, flat eyes, silently blaming me for the blood on the floor, for the broken glass, for the inconvenience of my pain. He glanced at my injured hand with a scowl. "You're tough enough. You'll heal," he said dismissively. He straightened his collar. "Remember that the Annual Gala is this evening at eight. Get dressed properly. I'll come for you then." He turned and walked out of the kitchen with Anastasia at his side, her hand curled around his arm, her head tilted against his shoulder. Neither of them looked back. I stood alone in the kitchen. Blood dripped steadily from my forearm onto the tile. I pressed a kitchen towel against the wound and held it there, hard, until the white cloth bloomed red. I didn't make a sound. An hour later, the moving truck came. My father had arranged it. The men were quick, professional, and silent. They knew better than to ask questions. In this world, you moved when you were told to move, and you didn't look too closely at what you were carrying or why. I stood by the window and watched as they carried out my boxes. Everything that belonged to me. Every trace of Valentina Serrano that had existed within these walls for six years. My clothes. My books. The small wooden box of my mother's earrings. The photo albums I'd kept in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. What couldn't be taken was thrown into the trash. The vitamins the doctor had prescribed. The supplements I now knew were laced with something designed to destroy what grew inside me. The monogrammed towels. The silk pillowcases Anastasia had picked out for the guest room that had somehow ended up in mine. When the movers were done, the house looked like I had never been here. Six years, erased in sixty minutes. The rooms were clean, the closets empty, the shelves bare. A ghost of a woman who had never quite existed in the first place. When Silas came back to the estate to prepare for the Gala, he barely noticed that anything was missing. He walked past my empty closet without a glance. He didn't open the drawers. He didn't see the bare walls where my mother's photograph had hung. I preferred it that way. Before we left, I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked around the room for the last time. The bed where I'd bled. The window where I'd watched the seasons change and wondered if this was all my life would ever be. The mirror where I'd practiced smiling before events so no one would see the truth. I had already made my decision. Tonight was the last night I would spend in this Family. After the Gala, I would leave. For good. He wouldn't even realize I was gone until it was too late.

Valentina's POV I endured the car ride to the Family's Grand Ballroom in silence, each mile a slow exercise in humiliation. Silas didn't say a single word to me the entire drive. Anastasia sat beside him in the front seat of the black sedan, her laughter floating back to me like perfume laced with poison. She giggled at something he murmured, leaning close to him, her fingers brushing his arm as though they were the married couple and I was the unwanted guest. No one watching through the tinted windows would have guessed I was Silas Valenti's wife. Family soldiers and associates turned their heads as we arrived at the entrance, but their eyes didn't land on me. They landed on Anastasia. She was draped in a gold gown that caught the chandelier light the moment she stepped through the doors. Her hand curled possessively around Silas's arm as they walked in together like a Don and his Donna, a portrait of power and elegance. She waved and smiled at every face they passed, nodding to capos and their wives as though this was her kingdom, her birthright. Honestly, it was the truth. I followed quietly behind them, a shadow trailing two sources of light. The murmurs started immediately. I could hear them threading through the crowd like smoke. "Isn't Valentina the Don's wife?" "Why is Silas walking in with Anastasia?" "Honestly, Valentina doesn't really look like a Donna compared to Anastasia." My jaw tightened, but I didn't react. I kept my spine straight and my eyes forward. I watched as Silas paraded her through the ballroom like she was his wife. He introduced her to the Family elders and senior soldiers with pride, his arm wrapped around her waist as though she belonged to him and he to her. The old men nodded politely, but I caught the way their gazes flickered to me and then away, uncertain, uncomfortable. No one said a word. No one dared. The moment that sealed everything came during the Don's traditional first dance. Every year at the Annual Gala, it was tradition for the Don to open the evening with a dance alongside his wife. It was more than ceremony. It was a public declaration: this is my partner, my equal, the woman who stands beside me. In a world built on symbols and rituals, that dance meant everything. I stood still at the edge of the floor, waiting. Silas's gaze drifted toward me, and for one fleeting second, I thought he might do the right thing. But before he could take a single step in my direction, Anastasia slipped her hand into his. "Dance with me, Silas," she said softly, her voice pitched just loud enough for the nearest tables to hear. "I'm sorry for asking. I just don't want to feel lonely tonight." Her eyes glistened with a delicate, practiced sadness. The performance was flawless. Silas hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded without so much as glancing back at me. And just like that, he led her to the center of the ballroom floor as the slow, orchestral music began to swell from the string quartet in the corner. Her hand rested proudly against his chest, and he held her with a gentleness I had never once felt from him. The golden fabric of her dress caught the warm light as they turned, and she looked up at him with an expression that said I belong here. My heart didn't break this time. It was already broken. There was nothing left to shatter. All I felt was shame. Deep, bone-deep shame that settled in my chest like cold stone. The ballroom watched. Whispers rippled outward from the dance floor like rings in dark water. Wives leaned toward their husbands. Soldiers exchanged glances. Everyone saw. Everyone understood. I stood there like an abandoned ornament. The real Donna, left to rot in a corner while another woman stole the show, stole the dance, stole the man who was supposed to be mine. Not because I wanted him. Because the ritual demanded it. Because my dignity demanded it. Anastasia tilted her head and rested it against Silas's shoulder, the gesture intimate and possessive, the posture of a lover who had already won. Someone near me whispered, "She fits him better, honestly." I didn't flinch. When the music faded, the room erupted in polite applause. Silas smiled faintly, a rare crack in his cold exterior, and nodded down at Anastasia. She grinned, radiant, victorious. Then, finally, he turned toward me and crossed the floor. "Valentina," he said, holding out his hand. "Let's have our dance." I looked at his face. Then at his outstretched hand. The same hand that had held Anastasia moments ago as though she were his entire world. The same hand that had rested against the small of her back while the whole Family watched. Silence fell over the people nearest to us. Conversations died mid-sentence. Crystal glasses paused halfway to lips. They were all waiting for me to take his hand. To smile. To play my part. I scoffed internally. "No, thank you," I said flatly. Surprise flickered across his face, quick and sharp, before his eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?" "I said no." My voice didn't shake, because I was calm inside. Perfectly, terribly calm. His expression hardened, the mask of civility falling away to reveal the cold authority beneath. His tone dropped to something low and dangerous. "Valentina, don't make a scene." I smiled bitterly. "You started it." Silas's lip curled. "Why are you being so jealous all the time? It was one dance. I didn't want her to feel left out. Do you have to make everything about you?" he snapped, his voice carrying just far enough to sting. I held his gaze without blinking. "You don't want her to feel left out, but you don't care that you're neglecting your own wife." He scowled, a vein ticking at his temple. "You should be glad you even have a husband, you ungrateful—" Anastasia appeared at his elbow as if summoned. "Please," she said softly, her voice dripping with rehearsed concern, "don't make a scene because of me." I scoffed, turning my gaze on her. "Stop pretending. It's irritating." She gasped, one hand flying to her chest in theatrical shock, her eyes widening as though I had struck her. But I didn't wait for the rest of the performance. I turned away from both of them, ignoring the stares that followed me like searchlights, ignoring the whispers that swelled in my wake. I pushed open the nearest door and found myself in the ladies' powder room. Marble floors. Gold fixtures. The faint scent of gardenias from an arrangement on the vanity. I needed air. I needed space. I needed to stop pretending I was okay. I slipped into one of the stalls and sat down on the closed lid, pressing my palms flat against my knees, trying to calm the storm inside my skull. The door opened. Two women entered, their heels clicking against the marble, their voices casual and careless. "Did you see how she just stood there? Like some servant." I tensed. The other woman sighed. "Poor thing. But honestly, what did she expect? Don Valenti clearly doesn't want her." "I heard she forced the marriage because she was hopelessly in love with him." One of them giggled. "It makes sense. I mean, look at Anastasia. She's practically glowing. No one in their right mind would ever choose Valentina over Anastasia." I opened the stall door and walked out quietly. The women went silent instantly. Their eyes widened, the color draining from their faces as they registered who had been listening. "Donna Valentina—" "Good evening, Donna—" They didn't wait for my response. They hurried out with their gazes cast to the floor, guilt written across their faces like a confession. I stood alone in front of the mirror, staring at my reflection. The woman looking back at me was pale, hollow-eyed, dressed in a gown that suddenly felt like a costume. My collarbone was too sharp. My cheeks were too thin. The careful makeup couldn't hide the exhaustion carved into every line of my face. Maybe they were right. I inhaled sharply, pressing my fingertips to the cool marble edge of the vanity, trying to compose myself before I walked back into that hellhole. The door creaked open again, and I turned to see who it was. Anastasia. She leaned against the doorframe, her gold dress catching the warm light, her dark eyes sweeping over me from head to toe with the slow, appraising satisfaction of someone who had already won. Her lips curled into a slow smirk. "Well," she purred, "you look like shit."

Valentina's POV I didn't answer her. I didn't even blink. My fists clenched slightly at my sides, nails pressing crescents into my palms, but I refused to give her the reaction she wanted. Instead I just stared at her, my face a mask of nothing. The restroom was all marble and low lighting, the distant hum of the gala's orchestra bleeding through the walls like a pulse. She tilted her head, clearly disappointed that I didn't react. "Really? No reply?" she teased, crossing the tile floor to stand beside me. Her heels clicked against the marble, each step deliberate and measured. I stayed quiet, washing my hands in silence. The water ran warm over my skin, and I focused on the sound of it, the way it swirled down the drain. "Oh, come on, Valentina." She leaned against the edge of the sink, one hip cocked, her red dress catching the light like a wound. "Don't act like you didn't see us that night. You were standing right there watching us." Still, I said nothing. She continued with a cruel laugh, low and intimate, as though we were sharing a secret. "You should have heard him last night. He was crazy for my body. I really hope you learned a thing or two from yesterday." I dried my hands calmly on the linen towel, folded it, set it down. Then I turned to walk away without saying a word. She was getting irritated at my lack of reaction, and that made her push harder. "Oh, I know what'll crack you," she said, and the malice in her voice shifted into something darker, something that slithered. "Let's talk about your babies." I froze instantly. The air in the restroom seemed to compress. The faint music beyond the door faded to nothing. There was only her voice and the terrible silence between her words. "Those poor little things," Anastasia Ferraro whispered from behind me. "But they didn't die for nothing, you know. Thanks to them, my womb is finally strong enough to carry his heir." I turned slowly. She leaned closer, and triumph burned in her eyes like a lit match held to gasoline. "You couldn't carry his child, but I will. And Silas will finally have what he always wanted. With me." Something inside me snapped at her words. Not thought. Not reason. Something deeper, something animal and raw that lived beneath six years of silence and swallowed grief. I shoved her hard, both palms flat against her shoulders, and she stumbled backward, gasping as she caught herself against the wall. Her back hit the marble with a dull thud. She looked at me in shock for a moment. The restroom was perfectly still, the drip of a faucet the only sound. And then, slowly, she smiled. "You'll regret that," she murmured. Before I could ask what she meant, she turned to face the wall and slammed her own head into the marble. I blinked in horror and disbelief. Then she did it again. And again. Blood bloomed against the pale stone, a dark smear that spread with each impact. She released a loud, piercing scream that shattered the silence and echoed off every surface. Then she dropped to the floor, sobbing and clutching her head as though I had done it, her body curling in on itself with practiced fragility. The bathroom door burst open almost instantly. Several of the Family's soldiers rushed in, their hands already reaching inside their jackets on instinct before they registered the scene. "Someone get the doctor!" "Anastasia!" "Signora, what happened?" I stood there, frozen, my hands trembling at my sides, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat. Silas Valenti came through the door with two enforcers flanking him, his tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, his face already hard with the look of a man expecting to dispense judgment. He saw the blood on the wall first. Then he saw her crumpled on the floor. Then he saw me. "Valentina?" His voice cut through the room, sharp as a blade and thick with fury. Anastasia whimpered weakly, curling tighter on the tile. Blood threaded through her fingers where she clutched her temple. "She attacked me," she sobbed, her voice breaking beautifully, every syllable calibrated. "I came to apologize to her for the dance, and she just snapped. She pushed me and slammed my head against the wall. I... I think I'm bleeding." Silas stared at me, his face twisted with rage. His jaw was set like stone, the cords of his neck standing taut. The two enforcers behind him shifted their weight, reading their boss, waiting for the order. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. My tongue was dry. My throat had closed. "She's lying," I croaked out when I finally found my voice. "She's lying. I didn't touch her. She's doing this to frame me." Silas's eyes blazed. "So now you're calling her a liar?" "She slammed her own head against the wall," I said, firmer this time. My voice shook but I held his gaze. "I didn't do this." "Enough!" he roared. The word hit the marble walls and came back as an echo. Every person in the room went still. The soldiers lowered their eyes. Even the air seemed to flinch. My heart pounded so hard I could hear nothing else. The Family members who had gathered in the doorway gasped and murmured. I could feel their eyes on me, the weight of their judgment pressing down like a physical thing. "She's out of her mind," someone whispered. "I always knew there was something off about her," another voice muttered from the back. "Poor Anastasia." Silas turned to his enforcers. His voice dropped to that quiet register that was worse than any shout, the tone he used when violence was no longer a question but a certainty. "Teach her a lesson." The words froze the blood in my veins. My heart stopped. The room tilted. I looked at his face for some flicker of hesitation, some trace of the man who had stood beside me at the altar six years ago. There was nothing. Before I could move, the two soldiers stepped forward and seized me by the arms. Their grips were iron. Professional. The hands of men who had done this many times before. "No, wait!" I cried, but it was too late. The first blow landed hard against my stomach. The air left my lungs in a single violent rush and I doubled over, gasping, my vision going white at the edges. Pain bloomed through my core like a detonation. Another came against my back, a fist between my shoulder blades that sent me crashing to the marble floor. My cheek hit the cold stone. I tasted copper. I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my belly. Instinct. The oldest instinct. Protect what was inside me. "Please... stop," I cried. But they didn't. They kept kicking and punching, methodical and merciless, as I screamed. Each impact sent shockwaves through my body that collapsed into the next. The marble floor was cold against my skin where my dress had torn. I could hear my own voice as though from a great distance, begging, and the sound of it was something I would never forget. I tried to shield myself, especially my belly, but it was useless. My arms were too weak. My body was too small against the force of trained men following their Don's orders. Then I felt it. A sharp, twisting pain tore through my abdomen, deeper than the blows, deeper than anything they could have inflicted with their fists. It was inside me. It was something leaving me. A familiar rush of warmth spread down my thighs. Blood. I choked on a sob as I looked down. Dark crimson soaked through the fabric of my dress, spreading in a widening stain across the white marble. The sight of it was almost peaceful in its horror, the way it pooled and caught the light. The enforcers faltered. They stepped back, their shoes leaving prints in the blood. One of them looked down at his hands. Both of them looked shaken. "Boss," one of them said, hesitating, his voice stripped of its earlier obedience, "she's bleeding..." Silas stepped forward. The rage in his face flickered, replaced for one instant by something else. Confusion. Perhaps even the faintest shadow of recognition. He saw the blood spreading across the floor, saw the way I clutched my stomach, saw what was happening. I met his eyes through the tears running down my face. "Please..." I whispered. The word was barely a sound. It was a breath shaped like prayer. He hesitated for a single moment. One moment in which something human might have surfaced. Then Anastasia whimpered from the floor, her voice soft and pitiful, threaded with just enough tremor to pull every string. "Silas... I don't feel so good..." That was all it took. Silas turned away from me and knelt beside her. "I've got you, Ana," he murmured, his voice suddenly tender, suddenly warm, as he gathered her into his arms with the gentleness of a man holding something precious. He lifted her from the floor as though she weighed nothing. She held him weakly, one arm draped over his shoulder, her bloodied fingers curling into the fabric of his jacket. As he turned toward the door, her eyes met mine over his shoulder. She smirked. It was small. Controlled. A private cruelty meant only for me. And then she pressed her face into his neck and let out another soft, broken sob. Silas didn't even glance at me as he walked out of the restroom carrying her. The soldiers parted for him. The onlookers stepped aside, their eyes lowered in deference. No one looked at me. No one knelt beside me. No one spoke my name. At the doorway, he finally spoke. He didn't turn around. "I hope you've learned your lesson, Valentina." His voice was cold, flat, emptied of everything. "Get yourself to the clinic." Then he was gone. The door swung shut behind the last of them, and the restroom fell into a silence so complete it hummed. I was alone on the bloodstained marble, my body broken, my dress ruined, the life that had been growing inside me draining away in a slow, warm tide. I tried to move, but the pain was too much. My body shook with tremors I couldn't control, and my vision blurred and swam. The overhead lights fractured into halos. The taste of blood filled my mouth. I dragged myself across the floor, inch by inch, my fingers slipping in the wet marble, until I reached the corner where my clutch had fallen earlier. Each movement sent fresh agony tearing through my abdomen. I pulled out my phone with fingers that could barely close around it. Then I called my father. "Valentina?" Don Eduardo Serrano's voice came through the line already sharp with worry, the instinct of a man who had survived decades in this world by reading danger in the smallest signals. "What's wrong? Where are you?" I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. My lips trembled as I tried to speak. The phone was slick with blood against my cheek. "Papà... please," I whispered hoarsely, fighting with everything I had left not to break down completely. "Come take me home..." "Where are you right now?" he asked immediately. I could hear movement on his end. A chair scraping back. A door opening. Orders being given in rapid, clipped Italian to someone nearby. I gave him the directions as best I could, the words coming in fragments between shallow, ragged breaths. He cursed under his breath. The sound of it, the raw fury barely contained in those whispered words, told me everything about what he would do when he arrived. "I'm sending someone right now. Don't move. Don't speak to anyone. Just hold on, okay? You'll be fine. I swear to God, you'll be fine." "Come... qu... ick..." I managed to mumble before the phone slipped from my fingers and clattered against the marble. The last thing I heard was my father's voice calling my name over and over, growing fainter and more desperate, as the darkness folded over me like a shroud and took everything away.