The pain was a living thing, and it would not let me stand. It folded me down into the cold marble of the private room until I was curled on the floor of the Castellano social club like something already dying, my cheek against the obsidian tile that had been polished to mirror the chandeliers above. Somewhere beyond the door the New Year's revelry went on, the clink of crystal, the low murmur of made men and their women, but in here the only sound that mattered was my own ragged breathing.
"I'm really going to give birth. The baby's only seven months old, it's very dangerous." My voice broke against the floor. "This is your baby too. Please, let me go to the hospital..."
An intense pain surged through my stomach, white and merciless, and I was not sure if the fall had harmed the baby. I could not let myself think it. If I thought it, I would stop fighting, and I could not afford to stop fighting.
For the sake of the child in my belly, I swallowed every shred of pride I had left, every ounce of the woman who had built this man's crew from nothing while he took the bows. I reached out and grabbed the hem of his trousers, the expensive Italian wool sliding through my fingers, and I begged in desperation, the way I had sworn on my mother's grave I would never beg anyone.
"Give me your phone. I'll call an ambulance myself. Please..."
"This is your own flesh and blood," I whispered, as though reminding him of it could conjure a soul where there was none.
Lorenzo kicked me aside. The toe of his polished shoe caught my shoulder and rolled me half over, and he stepped back from the amniotic fluid soaking into the priceless carpet as though it were something filthy washed up from the harbor. He sneered down at the dark stain, his lip curling, his disgust more genuine than any tenderness he had ever shown me.
The pain drained the last of my strength, and I collapsed against the marble like a lifeless animal, like one of the strays I used to feed in the alleys before any of this, before I was foolish enough to think love could make a wolf into a husband.
Then Lorenzo crouched down beside me, slow and deliberate, the way a man crouches when he wants you to understand he is in no hurry at all. He pinched my neck between his fingers, tilting my face up to his, and his voice came out colder than I had ever heard it, colder than the floor beneath me.
"Why are you pretending?" His thumb pressed into the soft hollow beneath my jaw. "You're so addicted to acting. If I don't teach you a lesson today, you'll think you can sit on my head and piss on me forever."
The words landed harder than the kick. I had given him everything. I had whispered the strategy that made his name feared in three territories, and he spoke to me as though I were a soldier who had skimmed from the tribute.
He rose, smoothed his palm slowly down the back of his slicked hair, and turned to the room as though I were already cleaned up and forgotten.
"Put her in the toilet," he ordered. The room went still around the command, the way it always did when Lorenzo gave one. His authority filled the space like cold air pouring in from a cracked window, and not one of them met my eyes. "Get two of the boys to clean up the stains on the carpet. It's disgusting to look at."
Two low-level associates seized my arms, their grips bruising, and dragged me across the slick floor toward one of the restrooms set into the private room. My heels skidded uselessly. The chandeliers swam above me.
I screamed for help, but the scream came out thin, scraped raw, barely a voice at all. "Call an ambulance, please. Someone. Someone call an ambulance for me..."
There was a young girl among them, one of the club girls brought in to pour the wine and laugh at the men's jokes, and she looked at me with something like fear in her eyes. She spoke softly, the way a person speaks when they already know it will cost them.
"Mr. Castellano, she really doesn't look well. Maybe we should just let her go, no? She's pregnant, after all."
Vincent set down his glass. He cracked the knuckles of one hand, slowly, one finger at a time, the sound small and wet in the quiet, and the men nearest him eased back without seeming to decide to. The girl did not know to watch for it. She did not understand the ritual she was witnessing until his hand was already in her hair, twisting it back, and his palm cracked across her cheek so hard her head snapped sideways.
"What's it to you?" Vincent snarled. "Who are you to question my buddy's call?"
The girl did not dare argue. She pressed her hand to her reddening face and offered up a nervous, trembling smile, the smile of someone who has learned that in this world apology is the only safe currency.
Several of the older women, the ones who had survived years on the arms of made men, laughed at her softly behind their glasses.
"Honey, you're still too green," one of them said, swirling her wine. "These are the tricks wives use to keep their men on a leash. Believe me, if Mr. Castellano sends her home, she'll be fine by morning. They're all fine by morning."
Gianna was full of herself, and she rose from where she had been draped over the leather to come stand above me, pretending to offer kindness the way a cat pretends to ignore a wounded bird. Her fingers drifted to the diamonds at her throat, the necklace Lorenzo had clasped there himself, and she stroked the stones as she spoke.
"Mrs. Castellano, Lorenzo is doing this for your own good." Her voice was syrup and venom in equal measure. "He just wants you to stay in there and clean yourself up so you don't embarrass yourself in front of the whole Family on New Year's."
Then she turned her graceful waist and settled back down onto Lorenzo's lap, fitting herself against him like she belonged there, like she had always belonged there. She looked at me over his shoulder, and her smirk was silent and complete, every gem at her throat catching the light as she flaunted a victory she had spent two years stealing.
You lose, her eyes said. She did not need to speak it. The whole room had already agreed.
Outside the door there was music and laughter, the warmth of the Family's New Year's feast carrying on without me, and I was dragged the last few feet and left behind it, isolated and defeated, a thing put away where the guests would not have to see it.
I sat on the cold tile floor of the restroom, my back against the wall, the marble leaching the heat from my body. I gathered what strength I had left into my fist and slapped it against the door.
"Help..."
The door swung shut. The latch caught. And my small cry was abruptly silenced, swallowed whole by the lacquered wood and the fireworks beginning to crackle somewhere over the city to mark the turning of the year.
Pain coursed through my body like a thousand iron nails driven in all at once. I bit down on it. I made myself breathe. And through the red haze I reached, helpless and instinctive, for the lessons from the pregnancy classes I had taken alone, in the quiet hours, dreaming of a child who would have a mother who never, ever begged.
