The comment section went silent, as though someone had drawn a blade across the throat of the conversation. Xavier Salvatore's name lit up my phone almost instantly.
"Mia, there's no need to misunderstand my friends. They like to joke around with Vanessa and me. Your comment made them uncomfortable." His voice carried that practiced smoothness, the same tone he used when negotiating terms at a sit-down. "I know you must be upset seeing the post, but understand, you disappointed my mother too much this time."
He let the accusation hang in the air like cigarette smoke.
"She wanted us to attend the Valducci gala together, and at the last moment you were absent. I know I couldn't make it to our anniversary dinner, but I'm busy, Mia. Unlike you. You can't throw tantrums like this."
I listened without a word. The silence stretched between us like a wire pulled taut, and I could feel it unnerving him.
"Mia, when you come home, let's sort this out first. You should apologize to my mother. Quickly."
"Okay." Horrible emotions choked my throat, and that single syllable was all I could force past my lips. The man who had killed my child was asking me for an apology.
"Mia... why aren't you asking anything about me?"
"No need." My fingers tightened around the phone until the case bit into my palm. "I already have my answers."
I did not wait for him to respond. I ended the call and the phone slipped from my hand onto the cold hospital sheets, and I broke into sobs so deep they seemed to crack open my ribs, immersing my entire being in a pain that had no bottom.
My parents had been against my relationship with Xavier from the start. Don Vittorio Valducci, the Capo di tutti Capi, the most powerful man on the Eastern Seaboard, had looked at the Salvatore Family's modest operation in the Jade Quarter and seen nothing worthy of his youngest daughter. Donna Elena had wept. My brothers had raged. Yet when they realized I loved this man too much to live without him, they gave our union a chance. They brokered the alliance. They let me go.
And it was all in vain.
I called for a car to take me back to the Salvatore compound. It was almost dawn when Xavier stumbled through the front door in a delirious state, reeking of whiskey and something else. The unsteady rhythm of his shoes against the marble foyer pulled me from the thin, restless sleep I had barely managed. When he pushed open the bedroom door and saw me wide awake, propped against the headboard with swollen eyes, he froze. I watched the gears turn behind his handsome face as he scrambled for an excuse.
Rather than explain himself, he went on the offensive. "Where were you the past three days? I came home and the house was empty."
I simply turned my body away from him, facing the wall.
"Are you pretending to be angry with me now?" His voice softened, edged with the careful charm he used when he sensed he was losing ground.
"No espresso for me tonight? You always make it when I come home late."
"I'm tired."
The cold finality of those two words made him pause. He sighed, and after a moment I heard the rustle of fabric as he adjusted the duvet over my shoulders, tucking it around me with a gentleness that might have moved me once.
"You're carrying our child, Mia. You should rest well." He settled onto the edge of the bed, and the scent hit me like a slap. Fruity. Sweet. A woman's perfume that was not mine, clinging to the collar of his shirt, woven into the threads of his jacket. It filled the room, suffocating and obscene.
I sat up. Without a word, I gathered my pillow and the blanket and moved toward the door.
"Mia?"
"I don't feel comfortable here." I pulled the door shut behind me before he could see the tears spilling down my cheeks.
Through the closed door, I could picture him staring at the empty space beside him in bewildered silence.
The next morning I left the compound before the first light had fully broken, before Xavier stirred from whatever guilty sleep had claimed him. I drove myself to the Salvatore family's legitimate front, the import-export firm that laundered the Jade Quarter's revenue through shipping manifests and customs paperwork. My desk was in the back office, far from the gilded conference rooms where the real deals were made, and that suited me fine.
"This contract is the most demanding we've taken on this quarter," the operations manager announced to the room, tapping a thick folder against the conference table. "It'll require overtime. Late nights. Weekends. But the budget allocation is generous and the bonus will reflect the effort. Does anyone want it?"
"I'll do it."
Every head in the room turned. My colleagues stared as though I had pulled a gun at a christening. The operations manager, a sharp-eyed woman named Lorena who had always treated me with quiet respect, hesitated.
"Mia, what about your husband? And you're expecting, aren't you? We assumed you'd be taking leave soon."
"Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage." The words left my mouth flat and clean, like a blade drawn from its sheath. "I won't be needing any leave."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Lorena dismissed the others with a terse nod, and one by one they filed out, none of them meeting my eyes. When the conference room door clicked shut, it was just the two of us beneath the cold fluorescent light.
"Mia." Lorena folded her hands on the table, her expression careful. "I'm sorry if I'm overstepping, but is everything alright between you and your husband?"
She studied me for a moment, then continued.
"You're an exceptional worker. I've wanted to recommend you for a promotion for some time, but I assumed you wouldn't want to be separated from the family here. There's a position at the main office in the capital. The Valducci-adjacent operations." She said the name carefully, unaware of the bitter irony it carried. "I was wondering if you'd want to relocate."
A gentle, broken smile touched my lips. "Thank you for considering me. I would love to."
Surprise flickered across her face, but she pressed on, and something in her expression shifted to reluctance.
"Actually, my husband was at the Southwest lounge last night. He overheard Don Xavier talking with his crew."
I saw her hesitate, her fingers tightening around the pen she held. I nodded for her to continue.
"He was talking about the baby." She lowered her voice as though the walls themselves were listening. "Saying that since you're an orphan, you probably wouldn't know how to raise a child properly. He told his people he'd asked someone, a woman named Vanessa, to help him with the baby when it came."
She paused, and the regret in her eyes was genuine.
"I'm sorry, Mia. I just thought that if I were in your place, I would want to know if my husband spoke about me that way to outsiders."
The words landed like a bucket of ice water poured over my skull, seeping through skin and bone until it reached the marrow. My vision blurred. My hands went numb in my lap.
So this was what my husband truly thought of me.
I gave a teary smile and shook my head slowly.
"Thank you."
At that moment my phone rang. Xavier Salvatore's name glowed on the screen like a warning.
"Mia, did you leave early today?" His voice carried the veneer of concern, thin as gold leaf over rot. "You're working too much when you're already in your second trimester. Didn't I tell you to step back from the office? I'm not even sure you ate breakfast this morning, because when I woke up there was nothing prepared for me."
The concern curdled into displeasure by the end of the sentence. I offered nothing but a quiet hum, and he continued, filling my silence with his own noise.
Then he paused, and his tone shifted, almost tentative.
"Even though I couldn't make it to the anniversary dinner, I got a gift for you."
"Did you." It was not a question. It was a stone dropped into still water.
"You love diamonds in a heart shape, don't you? I bought a pendant for you." There was the sound of movement on the other end, drawers opening, fabric rustling. "Strange. Where did I put it..." His voice dropped to a mutter, distracted and incoherent, as I heard him searching through jacket pockets and nightstand drawers.
"Strange, it's not here."
The words trailed off into nothing, swallowed whole as the realization struck him. In yesterday's photograph, Vanessa Lestari had been smiling at the camera with a diamond heart pendant glittering against the hollow of her throat. The image seared across my mind, and the tears came before I could stop them.
He scrambled to cover the silence.
"I must have lost it somewhere."
"No need." My voice was steady despite the tears sliding down my face. "I forgot to get you anything anyway."
"Mia, you've been like this since yesterday." His patience cracked, and beneath it was the cold authority of a man who ran the Jade Quarter, a man unaccustomed to being challenged in his own house. "Since you can't do much, the least I expect from you is to take care of the household, cook, and look presentable for me. Stop behaving as though any of this was a big deal."
"Yes." I pressed my knuckles against my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing. "It was unimportant."
Yes, he had bought me a gift. One that had first adorned the neck of his childhood flame, worn against her skin, warmed by her pulse. And only when it went missing from his pocket would he have thought to offer it to me. A hand-me-down dressed up as devotion. Charity wrapped in a velvet box.
"I can never make you happy, no matter how hard I try." The tears fell freely now, but my voice held. "Also, Xavier. My favorite gemstones have been sapphires since I was a child. Never once in my life have I worn diamonds."
I ended the call and set the phone face-down on the conference table. The screen went dark. The room was silent.
And I sat there, alone, in the empire that was never mine.
