Ashes of the Valdori

I was about to speak when I looked up and saw Cassius standing behind Eloise. Those cold, imperious eyes, unchanged in ten years. Not by a fraction. When I didn't respond, Eloise ground her teeth and snapped: "I knew it! You've been playing hard to get this whole time! You say you don't want anything, you don't compete for anything, but the second I tell you to go to the Gate House, you won't do it! Liar!" "Eloise." Cassius said her name, just once, and every sharp edge on her smoothed out in an instant. She burrowed into his arms, small and pitiful. The room had gone still the moment he appeared. Two bodyguards flanked the doorway behind him, but they might as well have been furniture. When the Don entered a room, the air itself deferred. Even though I had given Cassius a daughter five years ago, Eloise was still the only child who existed in his eyes. He'd even sent my baby away the day after I gave birth, afraid that having my own child would make me less devoted to Eloise. A baby I had nearly died delivering. Handed off to distant relatives at the Family's upstate property before my stitches had closed, carried out of the house in the arms of a woman I'd never seen before while I screamed into a pillow that Margherita Solano held against my face. The agony of labor was nothing compared to the pain of being separated from my daughter. But for the honor of my family, for my parents and brother running Marconi operations along the coast, I had pulled myself together and gone back to pleasing this father and daughter. The alliance had to hold. The Marconi name depended on my silence, my compliance, my perfect performance as the Don's wife in everything but standing. Ten years, though. I was done. For the first time, I did not lower my eyes or greet Cassius with the deference the household expected. I looked him straight in the face. "I've dishonored Isabelle's memory and failed in my care of Eloise. I'm requesting the Gate House." My right hand drifted to the silver reliquary at my throat. The metal was warm from my skin. I held it there, steady, while his gaze tracked the gesture. Cassius walked toward me, slow and deliberate. Those deep-set eyes betrayed nothing. His wedding band caught the light as his thumb found its edge and began the slow rotation that everyone in the household had learned to fear. "Are you throwing a tantrum?" "But you did dishonor Isabelle today." I lowered myself to one knee and bowed my head. In this house, before this man, it was the old way. "The fault is mine. I'm asking you to send me to the Gate House." I had said I, not your wife. Not even Angelica Valdori. Just the bare pronoun, stripped of any claim to his name. The same way I'd spoken ten years ago, before the alliance, before any of this began. Cassius's brow furrowed tight. "Eloise spoke out of anger. Why must you hold it against her? Besides, she can't do without you." "Apologize to her nicely, right now, and I'll pretend I never heard any of this." He assumed I would do what I had always done: lower my head and beg their forgiveness. The Don's word delivered like a verdict, and the room waited for me to comply the way every room always waited. I didn't move. Eloise, tired of waiting for her apology, balled her fists and charged at me, pounding blow after blow against my body. "You're the one who wants to take my mother's place! Why won't you apologize to me!" "You promised you'd never have children of your own besides me! You lied! You're the one who wronged me!" Her fists struck the exact spot where I'd been injured half a month ago, saving her when she fell from a horse on the estate grounds. Pain tore through me so fast my face contorted. Cassius only looked annoyed. "She's a ten-year-old girl. How hard can she possibly hit?" Then the blood began seeping through my shoulder, staining the fabric dark. Only then did his expression shift. He reached out and caught Eloise's arm. The rotation of his ring stopped. Eloise stared at the spreading red, startled, but she still lifted her chin in defiance. "You were already hurt. Don't you dare blame me for that!" I looked at Eloise with a bitter half-smile. "The girl is absolutely right." I had no desire to argue with a child. All I wanted now was to get away from this father and daughter as fast as I could. I had promised Cassius I would never bear a child of my own. Every time I was called to his room, I took the contraceptive the household physician provided without fail. Obedient. Controlled. A wife in name who existed to serve someone else's daughter and warm someone else's bed and never, ever produce a complication. But five years ago, Cassius had been drugged at a sit-down that went wrong. That night he was relentless, and I couldn't escape him. I didn't wake until the following evening. I took the dose immediately. Two weeks later, the routine check still came back pregnant. Cassius said nothing at the time, but his brow stayed knotted, and it didn't ease. The coast was in crisis then. Marconi operations were bleeding money and men. Morale among the crews had collapsed. Cassius, still seething, had been withholding shipments and supply lines that the Marconi family depended on to hold their territory. To rally the crews, to give my parents and Tristan something to hold on to, I had no choice. I let word of the pregnancy spread. Cassius had no sons. For a dynasty built on blood and succession, there was no greater vulnerability. So when news broke that I was carrying the Don's child, every allied family on the Eastern Seaboard believed the Valdori line finally had an heir.

Morale had never been higher. My father and brother had crushed the rival families that had bled our territory for years, even taking their underboss alive. From that moment on, the two of them saw me as a woman of calculating ambition. Even when the child I bore turned out to be only a girl, she was sent away from the compound the very next day. The memory of that tiny face, glimpsed for barely a second, sent a dull ache through my chest. I had done what I knew I shouldn't have. I had wanted too much. I met Cassius's dark, unreadable gaze and spoke with all the sincerity I possessed: "If you still hold any regard for what we were, and you can't bring yourself to send me to the Gate House, then let me leave the estate. Let me go to Rosalind. Tell the Family I left of my own will, to light candles and pray for the Valdori name." A crease of anger had already settled between Cassius's brows: "I've already shown you more kindness than you deserve. I even sent for Rosalind to be brought to the estate. What more do you want?" "Even if Eloise went too far today, you raised her for ten years. That she turned out this way is your failure. What right do you have to be dissatisfied?" My voice remained steady, earnest: "I have no dissatisfaction. I only ask for your grace." Cassius was silent for a long moment before his voice turned cold: "No wife has ever left this compound. Since you've begged to be thrown into the Gate House, I'll grant your wish." His tone shifted: "If you regret it, I can still revoke the order. The word hasn't gone out to the rest of the household yet." I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and bowed my head. "I thank you for your grace." "Angelica." Cassius ground out my name through clenched teeth, then turned and swept from the room. Two bodyguards fell into step behind him without a sound. The Gate House was bleak and desolate, yet I felt lighter than I had in years. If I hadn't come here, Eloise would only have grown more furious seeing me close to Rosalind. She didn't love me, but she was fiercely possessive of me. To embroider the perfect blessing charm for her, I had stitched a hundred and seventy-seven before she finally picked the one she liked. The rest she burned in a single fire. At the time, Eloise had said: "I know you wanted to save one for Rosalind. But she doesn't deserve to have the same things as me." Her smile was innocent. Her eyes were as cold and deep as her father's. A plate of stale bread and half-raw greens was set before me. The woman who brought it looked vaguely familiar. She smiled and said: "You're no alliance bride now. You should count yourself lucky to get even this." "If you hadn't served the Don all those years, you probably wouldn't get anything at all." When I gave no reaction, she let out a theatrical sigh: "Really, all you'd have to do is bow your head to the Don, and you could have any meal you wanted. You were a Marconi. You grew up with silver on the table. Why ruin yourself over a moment of stubbornness?" Behind the crumbling door, a sliver of charcoal wool peeked into view. The edge of a hand-tailored suit. I understood. This was Cassius's way of offering me a way out. He had always used other people's mouths to remind me that I was nothing without him. And I had always followed meekly behind him and his daughter, without a word of complaint. Ten years of being hollow. I was done. I fixed my gaze on that sliver of dark fabric and spoke: "No feast in the world compares to this simple meal. These days in the Gate House have given me more peace than I ever knew before." Here, I didn't need to please anyone. I didn't need to carry the weight of my family's honor. And no one stood over me every waking moment to remind me I was a replacement, a cuckoo in another woman's nest. The door slammed shut. The flash of wool vanished. I had no interest in chasing after him. I turned back to my meal. But a small figure came darting out from behind the door. She had her hair tied in two little buns, and the moment she saw me, she called out for her mother, over and over. We had never met before. Yet I knew her at a single glance. This was my flesh and blood, separated from me for five long years.

"Mama... Daddy..." Rosalind kept pointing in the direction the man had gone. The woman who'd been bringing my meals raised her brows, looking at me as though I were the most ungrateful creature alive. "The Don brought Rosalind here the moment she arrived at the compound, all so you'd agree to leave this place. And you threw his kindness back in his face!" I finally recognized her. She was Cassius's personal attendant, Margherita Solano. Ten years ago, she'd come to the estate as part of the late Isabelle Valdori's dowry retinue. She bore a faint resemblance to Isabelle, and Eloise used to cling to her as a small child, calling her "Mother." Margherita claimed she stayed by the Don's side to care for the people the late wife couldn't bear to leave behind. But her real feelings slipped through the cracks often enough. I wasn't jealous. I wasn't even irritated. I only said, quietly: "Since you care so much about the Don, why don't you go comfort him on behalf of me and your beloved Isabelle?" She smoothed the front of her dress with both palms, a slow downward stroke, and glared at me. "I just can't stand the way you act, taking his affection for granted. You know perfectly well that the Don cares for you, yet you insist on playing these games!" She stamped her foot and stormed out. She called herself a servant to my face, but there wasn't an ounce of respect behind it. It didn't matter. I'd already stopped caring about Cassius himself. The opinions of the people around him mattered even less. I gathered Rosalind into my arms and held her close, savoring every second of this brief, borrowed time together. The dark circles under her eyes were impossible to miss. She'd clearly been struggling to sleep for a long while. My heart ached. I found the softest fabric I had and sewed a small sachet filled with lavender and rosemary for her, stitching it tight the way my mother had taught me. I'd just started to rock her to sleep when the warped door of the Gate House was kicked open with a crash. The bodyguard stationed outside didn't even flinch. Eloise Valdori was the Don's daughter. No one stopped the Don's daughter. The moment Eloise saw Rosalind cradled in my arms, something wild flared in her eyes. She rushed forward, reaching to tear Rosalind away. I frowned and raised my hand to block her. Her eyes rimmed red instantly. "You haven't held me like that in so long. Why are you holding her?" "I knew it. You only care about your own child. You never really loved me!" Like a small, starving animal denied the one thing it craved, Eloise's tears fell in fat, heavy drops. But I could only furrow my brow in confusion. "Eloise, have you forgotten what you said to me?" From the time Eloise was still in swaddling clothes, I'd held her in my arms every night and rocked her to sleep. Then one day, when she was four and old enough to form memories, she suddenly burst into tears and accused me of pinching her. She said she was afraid I'd pinch her to death in her sleep. Someone in the household had clearly whispered those words into her ear. One of Isabelle's old retainers, filling a child's head with poison. But Cassius never investigated. He dismissed it as the fragile outburst of a child mourning her birth mother. Worse, he blamed me for failing to raise Eloise well enough, claiming my negligence had made her so insecure. After that, Eloise was no longer just a child to me. She was also the Don's daughter. I never dared overstep again. Holding her was out of the question. Eloise seemed to remember all of this too, but she doubled down regardless. "Then you still can't hold her!" Rosalind, startled awake by the noise, didn't cry. She just burrowed deeper into my arms, trembling. The sight only enraged Eloise further. She lunged forward and grabbed at us. I didn't see it coming. She shoved me, and I fell. Rosalind screamed. I wrapped myself around her, shielding her with everything I had. My arm struck the stone floor and I heard the crack before I felt it. The color drained from my face. But Eloise acted as though she'd seized on some unforgivable offense. She ripped the sachet I'd sewn for Rosalind right off her clothes and held it up. "Why does she get the same sachet as me?!" I looked into Eloise's eyes, brimming with hatred, and let out a weary sigh. "The sachet I made for you? You threw it into the fire a long time ago." "Besides, she's my daughter. Is it so wrong for me to make something for her?" If Eloise cared to remember, she would know that what I'd done for her went far beyond a single sachet. Sewing her winter clothes through the bitter cold. Making ice for her in the sweltering heat. I taught her music, chess, calligraphy, painting. I taught her needlework and embroidery. Every last skill I had, I poured into that child without reservation. Yet she still glared at me with those hateful eyes. "I knew it. You only ever cared about your own daughter!" She hurled the sachet to the ground and stamped on it, grinding it into the dirt until it was filthy and ruined. Only then did she whip around and storm off. That rigid, retreating back was identical to her father's. Rosalind had gone white with shock, but she still blinked back tears and helped me to my feet. Then, with careful fingers, she wiped the sachet clean and tucked it against her chest. "Don't cry, Mama..." My heart ached so badly I pulled her into my arms. Before I could say a single word, Cassius's men came and took her away. As they led her off, Rosalind turned and waved, smiling. "I'll come see you again tomorrow, Mama!" Tomorrow never came. Wailing tore through the estate and ripped me from sleep. My chest seized. I ran out without shoes, without a coat, without stopping.