A laugh tore itself from my throat, ugly and raw.
When my mother had still been alive, she had treated Zeno as if he were her own blood. She had fed him at her table, pressed her hand to his cheek, whispered blessings over him in the old language. And now he had walked through her shrine room with another woman draped in red silk at his side, stood before the candles I had lit for her memory, and still had the nerve to call me narrow-minded.
I lifted my chin. I looked Zeno Valente directly in the eye, and when I spoke, my voice did not waver.
"Zeno. On the anniversary of my mother's death, you brought your mistress into this house. Into her shrine. Tell me, is that what you call being broad-hearted?"
The words landed like a slap across polished marble.
His face darkened. The candlelight caught the hard edge of his jaw, the dangerous stillness that settled over him the way it always did before something inside him turned cruel. He stared at me for several long, silent seconds. Then he let out a short, cold laugh, the kind that carried no warmth at all.
"Natalia. You're unbelievable." His voice dropped to something low and dismissive. "You wouldn't recognize kindness if it kissed your hand."
He reached for Maeva Lazzari without looking at her, pulling her into the shelter of his arm, his palm spread possessively across the small of her back. He turned them both toward the door, shielding her with his body as though she were the one who had been wronged, as though saying even one more word to me was beneath him.
I drew in a breath so deep it burned.
Then I turned around. I forced a proper smile onto my face, the kind the Matriarch herself had taught me to wear. I walked through the remaining guests, the old associates, the wives and cousins and distant allies who had come to pay their respects, and I offered each one a gracious farewell, a warm clasp of the hand, a murmured thank-you.
No one would say Natalia Morani had disgraced herself at her own mother's memorial.
After the last guest left, after the heavy front door of the Valente compound closed behind them and the house fell into that particular silence that only old money and old grief can produce, I walked slowly back to my mother's shrine.
I knelt before the small altar. The photograph. The candles. The single white lily I had placed there that morning.
And I let every wall I had built that evening collapse.
"I'm sorry, Mama."
My whisper barely stirred the candle flames.
"Today was your day, and I ended up making a scene. I'm sorry. Let's not talk about things that hurt anymore." I pressed my fingers to the cool edge of the frame that held her face. "Mama, I set up a room for the baby. Will you come see it?"
I lifted the framed photograph gently and carried it with me down the corridor toward the small room at the end of the hall, the one I had spent weeks preparing.
But the moment I pushed the door open, I went still.
The room was destroyed.
Not violently. Worse. It had been emptied with precision. The baby clothes I had folded and arranged in the dresser drawers were gone. The small toys I had lined up on the shelf, each one placed with care, had vanished. The crib linens I had washed and pressed three times to get them soft enough. Gone. All of it.
My first thought was that someone had broken in. A rival family sending a message. A threat.
I called the compound's security detail, my fingers barely steady enough to hold the phone.
The guard's voice came back hesitant, strained with the particular discomfort of a man who knew he was delivering bad news to the wrong person.
"Signora... this... it wasn't anyone from outside."
A pause. I heard him swallow.
"It was the Don. He had his men come and take everything."
I stood in the center of that empty room, and the world reduced itself to a single high-pitched ringing in my ears.
After I hung up, I opened the grapevine. Maeva Lazzari's social feeds, the ones she maintained with the careful vanity of a woman who wanted to be seen. I scrolled through her posts one by one, my thumb moving with mechanical precision.
It did not take long.
In a series of photographs styled to look casual, artlessly arranged, I found what I was looking for.
The dog in Maeva's apartment was wearing the tiny outfit I had prepared for my baby.
The soft cotton, which I had washed by hand and pressed with a warm iron, had been chewed shapeless. It hung from the animal's body, dark with saliva, stretched beyond recognition.
On the carpet behind the dog, torn into bright, unrecognizable pieces, were the toys.
My baby's toys.
I clenched my jaw so hard that a sharp ache bloomed through my chest, stealing my breath.
If these had been things I had picked up at random from some shop, perhaps the pain would have been bearable.
But they were not.
Those clothes had been gathered through quiet, careful asking. Favors called in. Borrowed from the children of respected people across different families and allied circles. Hand-me-downs passed along with warm hands and warmer words. I had mended each piece stitch by stitch, washed them, dried them in sunlight, pressed them flat, pouring into every fold my hopes and prayers for the child growing inside me.
The toys had come from old friends. From family. Each one a heartfelt gift placed into my hands the moment they learned I was carrying an heir. Each one chosen with thought and love.
And Zeno had personally ordered them taken.
To give to his mistress's dog.
Every last thread of composure I possessed snapped.
I held my belly with one hand and left the compound.
The social club occupied the top three floors of a building in the financial district, its legitimate front so polished that the uninitiated would never guess what moved through its back rooms. I pushed through the entrance. The courier stationed at the front desk, a young man in a fitted dark suit, startled when he saw me. He rose from his chair so fast it rolled back and struck the wall.
"Signora, the Don can't see anyone right now."
I walked past him as though he were furniture.
He rushed after me, stepping into my path, his voice dropping low with unmistakable urgency.
"You really can't go in right now."
I did not answer him. I did not need to.
From the far end of the corridor, through the office door that had been left carelessly ajar, the sounds reached me on their own.
A woman's strained, breathless gasps. A man's low, suggestive laughter, dark and unhurried. The muffled thud of heavy furniture shifting against the floor.
All of it tangled together and poured down that hallway like poison.
The blood rushed to my head in a scalding wave, then drained away just as fast, leaving my hands and feet ice-cold.
I did not look at the courier again.
I lifted my hand and pushed the door wide open.
It struck the wall with a sound like a gunshot.
The scene inside the office presented itself without mercy, without a single shadow to hide behind.
The desk in disarray. Documents scattered across the floor like shed skin. The leather chair shoved aside. Zeno leaning back against the edge of his desk, his shirt pulled loose from his trousers, his collar undone. Maeva half-draped against him, her skirt creased and bunched, her face flushed a deep, damning rose.
The air in the room carried a sickening, unmistakable scent.
Maeva flinched at the sound of the door. In the next instant, her eyes filled with tears as if by reflex, and she curled herself into Zeno's arms, pressing her face against his chest like a wounded thing seeking shelter.
I stood in the doorway. My fingers dug into the frame until the wood bit into my skin. A tight, pulling pain spread low across my belly.
"Zeno." My voice shook. I could not stop it from shaking.
"Why did you take the clothes I prepared for my baby and give them to this woman's dog?"
The moment those words left my mouth, Maeva's tears spilled over.
"Sorella... Sorella..." Her tone was feather-soft, wounded, perfectly calibrated. "I just... I saw those little outfits on Zeno's phone a few days ago, and I thought they were so adorable... so I said, just casually, how sweet it would be if my little dog could try one on..."
She pressed closer to him, her lashes wet and trembling.
"And Zeno brought me the clothes and the toys the very next day. I honestly had no idea they were meant for your baby. If I had known, how could I possibly have taken them?"
A sharp, throbbing pain lanced through my temples. I had barely opened my mouth to respond when Zeno let out a quiet, dismissive laugh.
He lowered his head to look at Maeva. His tone turned gentle. Indulgent. The voice of a man soothing something precious.
"Why bother explaining yourself to her?"
Then he glanced at me, and the gentleness evaporated like steam off a barrel.
"How could she not take them?" His tone was careless, almost bored. "Those worn-out old hand-me-downs. Letting a dog have them is about right."
A roar of white noise flooded my skull.
Worn out.
Good enough for a dog.
My voice scraped out of my throat like a blade dragged across stone. "Zeno, those clothes were things I begged for. I called in favors. I mended every single—"
"Enough." He cut me off, his impatience sharp as a backhand.
"Can you stop making everything into a spectacle?"
His hand moved in a slow, soothing circle against Maeva's back, and his voice carried the flat dismissal of a man discussing an inconvenience already forgotten.
"What you pulled at your mother's memorial upset Maeva. I took a few old outfits and some toys to make it up to her. What exactly is the problem?"
He looked at me then. Directly. His expression was cold, his eyes the color of a winter sea.
"And now you come storming into the social club to scream at me in front of my people?"
Make it up to her.
Using our baby's clothes. Our baby's toys. To compensate his mistress.
