Zeno's face tightened for a fraction of a second, the muscles along his jaw turning to carved marble.
But he didn't notice my reddened eyes. He didn't hear the fracture running through my voice like a crack through thin ice.
All he saw was that I had questioned him in front of others. That I had offered no deference, no retreat.
The next moment, his entire expression darkened, the way a sky goes black before a storm rolls in off the harbor.
Zeno, burning with a fury that radiated off him like heat from a furnace, lifted Maeva into his arms and walked away.
He left behind only one cold, hard line, tossed over his shoulder like a blade discarded after use. "You better not regret this."
The pain radiating from my back made my pulse hammer against my ribs. I didn't even have time to ask where he was going. He clearly still had a list of obligations waiting for him, people to meet, debts to settle, the endless machinery of the Valente Syndicate grinding on without pause. I could only go to the hospital by myself first.
Only when the results came back, and the doctor said the baby was safe, did I finally let out a breath.
The fear that had been crouching inside me like a caged animal broke loose all at once. I sat on the bench in the hospital corridor, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, and pressed both hands over my face. I cried until my lungs burned, until the sobs came in ragged, airless heaves that shook my entire body.
I didn't dare think about what I would have done if something had truly happened to the baby.
When I returned to the Valente compound, Nonna Ravenna already knew what had happened.
She took my hand in both of hers. Her fingers were thin, cool, weighted with the heavy rings she never removed. Her eyes had gone red, raw with a pain that mirrored my own.
"There are only two days left before the dissolution documents are finalized."
"Natalia, you've suffered."
I sniffed and forced a small smile onto my face, though it sat there like something borrowed. "I'm okay."
Nonna Ravenna sighed, the sound carrying the weight of decades spent holding this Family together. She murmured, "Tomorrow is your grandfather's eightieth birthday."
"He doesn't have much time left. Could you… at least for these last two days, let him feel at ease?"
I still agreed.
Calogero Valente's birthday gathering was held at the old house, the original Family estate on the hill overlooking the harbor. The place where the Valente name had first been carved into the bedrock of the Eastern Seaboard. Stone walls. Iron gates. Cypress trees standing like sentinels along the gravel drive.
Ravenna and I arrived first.
Calogero sat in the main hall's high-backed armchair, the one that had always served as his throne. His energy wasn't good. His skin had thinned to parchment over the sharp architecture of his bones. Yet he still pushed himself upright when he heard our footsteps on the marble. When he saw me walk in, he gave a single, dignified nod.
He looked toward the arched doorway and couldn't help the sigh that escaped him.
"Where's that brat? On a day like this, he still refuses to show his face."
Clearly, the old Don was not unaware of Zeno's recent behavior. Word traveled fast in the Family. It always did.
I only gave a faint smile and didn't reply.
Soon after, there was movement at the entrance. The heavy oak doors groaned open.
Zeno walked in. And Maeva Lazzari trailed right behind him.
In that instant, the air in the hall froze solid. Every candle flame on the mantelpiece seemed to hold still.
Calogero's expression turned dark immediately, a storm gathering across features that had once made grown men beg for mercy. His cane struck the stone floor with a crack that echoed off the vaulted ceiling like a gunshot.
"You still dare bring some shameless girl into this house?!"
The next moment, the cane was already swinging down.
"You ungrateful brat!"
Zeno stumbled back a step, his face rigid, but he didn't raise a hand. He didn't fight back. And Maeva suddenly rushed forward.
She lifted her arms, shielding Zeno's body with her own, tears spilling down her cheeks on cue, perfect as stage rain.
"Grandfather, please don't hit him…"
"It's all because of me."
"It's because I'm not good enough, because I'm carrying Zeno's child, that he brought me here."
"I understand I come from nothing. That I have no name, no blood worth speaking of. That I don't deserve to stand in a place like this…"
She bit her lip, then added softly, her voice trembling with practiced fragility, "But the baby is innocent…"
Baby?
I stared at Maeva, unable to believe it.
Zeno's face shifted, something flickering behind his eyes. He reached out and pulled Maeva into his arms, one hand settling possessively against the small of her back.
"Maeva is pregnant. It's my child. I need to take responsibility."
He paused. Then, almost as if giving himself courage, as if saying the words fast enough would make them less monstrous, he continued, "And also, Maeva's baby is a boy. Natalia's baby is a girl."
"Grandfather, I'm doing this for the bloodline."
For the bloodline.
Those words were like an old, dull knife pushed straight into my chest and twisted.
A family like the Valentes had known the gender of my baby the moment I'd had the prenatal examinations. The Family physician reported everything.
But whether it was Ravenna, Calogero, or Zeno's parents across the Atlantic overseeing the European operations, not one of them had ever cared. Not one of them had treated it as anything less than a blessing.
Back then, Zeno had held me close in the dark of our bedroom, his lips against my hair, swearing again and again. "No matter boy or girl, as long as the baby is yours, it's precious to me. The one who carries on the Valente name."
This past year, there had been plenty of women who tried to get close to him, who schemed and maneuvered and offered themselves up in hopes of carrying a Valente heir.
He turned all of them away.
But now Maeva was pregnant. And she was carrying a boy.
And this child was being thrust in front of me by my own husband, justified with those words, "for the bloodline," as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if the code of honor that bound this Family together was nothing more than decoration to be discarded when it no longer served him.
I drew in a deep breath. The air tasted of old wood and candle wax and something bitter underneath.
That almost-breaking collapse, that scream clawing its way up from the bottom of my soul, I forced it down. Pressed it deep into the lowest chamber of my chest and sealed it shut.
Calogero, furious, kept shouting, his voice cracking with age and outrage, his cane striking the floor again and again until the stone seemed to ring with the ghosts of every oath ever sworn in that hall.
Ravenna's eyes were red too. She struck Zeno across the back, once, twice, her palm landing hard enough to echo. She called him a fool. A disgrace. A stain on the name his grandfather had built from blood and nothing.
Everyone in that room thought I would lose control.
Cry. Scream. Question him. Fall apart like a woman shattered.
But I didn't.
I only stood, and my voice, when it came, was so calm it felt cold. Cold as the marble under my feet. Cold as the harbor water in January.
"Today is the Don's eightieth birthday. It's a day of celebration. Let's not ruin it over these things."
"As for the baby… we'll talk when it's time."
The whole room went still. The silence was absolute, the kind that settles over a room when someone has said something that cannot be unsaid.
Nonna Ravenna opened her mouth, but in the end, she could only swallow her anger. She forced herself to hold the scene together, to steer the evening forward, guiding the banquet onward while everyone at the table hid their own thoughts behind careful masks and raised glasses of aged wine from the Family vineyard.
During the dinner, I said I wasn't feeling well and left early.
Seeing me not argue and not cry, a sudden, strange fear rose in Zeno's chest.
Was she planning to dissolve the pact?
But he quickly brushed the idea away.
How could she ever bring herself to leave him?
