The baby inside me shifted, very lightly.
I already knew my own answer.
After leaving the hospital, I headed to the compound by myself.
I started going through the holdings. Sorting the operations, splitting the territories and resources under my control. Anything I could settle clearly, I handled right away. Anything I couldn't finish yet, I placed into lists, noted with risks, figures, and plans for division, packed together, and sent to the consigliere that Nonna Ravenna had quietly retained on my behalf.
As for the Valente Family assets, I could not take a single part of them.
But this operation was something Zeno and I built from nothing, and I had to take what belonged to me.
Not for my own sake, but for the child inside me.
Since I had already decided she would not be born into the Valente Family, I needed to lay out every step for her myself. Her name, her assets, her future. I would arrange them one by one.
Even if she no longer carried the Valente name under their roof, she still had to grow up secure and free, never having to rely on anyone's pity.
After I confirmed the last file, my trusted courier lowered his voice and asked, "Signora Morani, for 'La Confessione,' do you want the payout or the operation itself?"
I didn't reply right away.
Instead, I walked into the back office and opened the leather-bound ledger for La Confessione again.
When the familiar columns of figures and floor plans spread before me, my fingers stopped for a moment.
This underground casino and speakeasy, from the concept to the interior design to every rotation of dealers and performers and the private rooms reserved for the highest-ranking guests, was almost completely built during the best years between Zeno and me.
Many nights staying awake, many times tearing everything down to redo it. Those busy, focused, working-together days had truly existed.
I thought I had already settled my feelings, but right then, I still felt a small bit of hesitation.
I naturally turned to the private suite that Zeno and I had designed together. The one tucked behind the velvet curtain on the top floor, accessible only by a key we both carried. But when I reached the door, the lock had already been changed.
The woman whose name was etched into the reservation ledger for that suite had already been switched, at some unknown time, to "Maeva Lazzari."
Zeno clearly knew I had come.
He didn't give a single word of explanation.
The next moment, a note arrived through one of his runners, requesting a two-million-dollar wire.
One of the lounge girls performing at La Confessione needs a proper stage setup for her residency.
The private suite. Let me borrow it for now.
He really knew how to "borrow" things. He took over the secret place we spent more than half a year building in a single second.
I turned and walked out without another word.
Then I looked toward my courier and said, "I want the La Confessione operation itself."
And I wanted full say over it. I didn't want Zeno and another woman ruining what we had built.
During the next two days, I fully moved my attention away from Zeno.
But he showed up everywhere.
Inside La Confessione, Zeno and the singer Maeva were always together.
Her lounge act ran nearly every night, the billing growing more provocative each time, the crowds swelling. Word on the street traveled fast.
I never set foot inside, but people kept "accidentally" passing me photographs.
The latest one showed Zeno ordering a cascade of imported fireworks launched from the rooftop terrace of La Confessione. He kept them burning for a full hour and a half just to celebrate Maeva winning some petty wager against a rival performer.
I curved my mouth slightly and told the man who delivered it never to bring me another. Then I lowered my head again to sort the arrangements for my mother's memorial.
Everyone kept talking about how Maeva was the woman Zeno kept beside him the longest. They guessed whether she might one day take my place.
But no one noticed that I no longer wished to fight anyone for the title of "Donna Valente."
On my mother's death anniversary, I dressed in all black, a single white lily pinned to my chest, standing in the center of the great room of the Valente estate.
The guests all wore somber expressions, lowering their voices while speaking. After offering their respects, they nodded at me one after another. Capos. Associates. Old friends of my mother's family. They filed past the shrine with its flickering candles and bowed their heads.
Everything should have ended calmly and with dignity.
Until just as I was telling the staff to guide the guests to their seats, a purposely softened but still pointed voice came from beyond the doorway.
"Ya… why is everyone wearing black?"
I lifted my head and saw Zeno standing at the entrance.
Behind him stood a woman dressed in bright red with heavy makeup, dark curls spilling over her shoulders.
She carefully leaned half her body forward, her eyes moving across the room, finally stopping on the framed photograph of my mother at the center of the shrine, the votive candles casting her face in warm, trembling light. As if she only just understood.
"Ah… today… Someone passed away?"
Then she seemed to realize she had spoken out of place, quickly pulling a red flower from her hair, holding it between her fingers as she walked toward my mother's memorial.
"Sorry, sorry, I didn't know… can I put this flower here?"
Seeing her reach toward my mother's shrine, the blood in my body went cold. I almost acted on instinct and pushed her away.
"Leave! Who told you that you could come in!"
The woman stumbled back, almost losing her balance, but Zeno caught her with his hand.
I stared at Zeno, my voice shaking from trying to hold myself together. "Zeno, didn't I tell you not to bring those cheap women from outside into this house, disrespecting everything under this roof!"
"And today is my mother's death anniversary!"
All the guests went still, their eyes turning toward that woman.
Maeva clearly hadn't expected me to actually push her. She stared at me for a few seconds, looking lost, then her eyes turned wet right away, tears dropping as if on command.
"I… I didn't try to cause trouble. It's my birthday today, so I wore red… just hoping for a bit of luck…"
"I really didn't know today was your mother's death anniversary. I just… I just came home with Zeno because he told me to…"
Her voice got weaker and weaker, and in the end, she leaned straight into Zeno's arms, acting like she'd been hurt badly.
Zeno's face had already darkened completely.
He lowered his head first, checking her carefully, then eased his voice. "Were you scared?"
Maeva shook her head, then nodded, tears falling even faster, but she still held onto him as she whispered, "I'm okay."
Only then did Zeno lift his head and stare at me, his eyes cold and empty.
"Natalia, I assumed you had finally matured and learned to think. I didn't expect you to still act like this."
"Your mother has been gone for so long. I only learned today that her death anniversary falls on the same date as Maeva's birthday."
"I brought her in because I thought adding a bit of warmth might lighten the day for your mother's memorial. It's not like I did anything wrong. And even that bothers you?"
"So childish."
