Elara POV:
I woke to the smell of antiseptic and the grim set of my cousin's jaw. Ayla was sitting by my hospital bed, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
"The baby is gone, Elara," she said, her voice rough with unshed tears.
The words were a confirmation, not a revelation. I already knew. I had felt our child, our legitimate Moretti heir, slip away from me on that cold ballroom floor.
I told her everything: the secret family in Chicago. The allergy. The perfume. The public humiliation at the gala. The bracelet. The shove. The final, unforgivable abandonment.
Ayla's fury was a thing of the Falcone family-cold, lethal, and ancient. "I'll kill him," she hissed. "This is a blood debt. I will have my Vendetta."
"Not yet," I said, my voice eerily calm. The grief was a hollowed-out cavern inside me, too vast for tears. "I have a plan."
For five days, I lay in that sterile, private room.
Emilio never came.
He never called, sent no flowers, no messages. He broke the Omertà of the heart, the unspoken code that a man protects his wife above all. In the eyes of our world, he had left me for dead.
The day I was discharged, Ayla picked me up. She handed me a thick manila envelope. The annulment papers.
"It's time," I said.
A moment later, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. Coffee. La Colombe. Now.
It had to be Hayden. A gloating victory lap.
I found her at a small table in the back, sipping a latte. She looked radiant.
"I planned it all, you know," she said, not bothering with a greeting. "The gala was perfect. A little push, a little drama. Now everyone sees you for what you are. The cold, barren wife who couldn't give him an heir."
I said nothing. I just slid the manila envelope across the table.
Her eyes lit up as she scanned the first page. "An annulment." A slow, cruel smile spread across her lips. "He won't even care. You're an obligation he's desperate to be free of."
I just stared at her, my face a carefully constructed mask of ice.
She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr as she delivered the final, killing blow. "He promised me. After Leo was born," she said, her eyes glittering with triumph, "he swore he'd never have another child. Leo was always going to be his only heir."
And with those words, the last, microscopic thread of hope I didn't even know I was holding onto finally snapped.
