Valentina's POV
I paused, letting his words settle in the air between us like smoke from a cheap cigar. Then I picked up another blouse and folded it with deliberate care, pressing the creases flat with my palms.
"Anastasia needs support," Silas added from behind me. "And it's better for her baby if she's somewhere stable. You know how hard it's been for her."
I scoffed quietly. The sound barely left my throat, but in the stillness of the bedroom, it carried.
Silas stopped talking.
"Valentina." His tone shifted, the way a blade turns in its sheath before being drawn. He was getting annoyed. "Are you even listening to me?"
I turned around. Slowly. And met his eyes.
He stood in the doorway of our bedroom in the Valenti estate, his jacket still on, his collar loosened just enough to suggest he'd been drinking. Behind him, down the corridor, I could feel Anastasia Ferraro's presence like a draft through an open window. She was somewhere close, listening. She was always listening.
"I'm listening, Silas," I said, my voice flat and even. "Do whatever you want. It's your house, after all."
Silas's mouth opened slightly, then his expression darkened. The muscles along his jaw tightened, and the lamplight caught the hard edge of his cheekbone.
"I don't like your tone, Valentina," he said, low and dangerous.
I lifted an eyebrow. "What tone?"
"You know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to be civil, and you're making this harder than it needs to be," he snapped, taking half a step into the room. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight.
I folded the blouse gently, smoothed it once, and placed it into the open suitcase on the bed. Then I turned to face him fully. My expression was calm. Blank. A mask I had learned to wear so well it had nearly become my real face.
"She needs support," he continued, his voice carrying the rehearsed quality of a man who had practiced his justification on the drive home. "She's pregnant and alone. I'm just trying to help."
"Why, Silas?" I asked quietly. The question dropped between us like a stone into still water. "Is she pregnant with your child?"
Silas froze.
His jaw clenched so hard I could see the tendons in his neck strain. No words came at first. His mouth opened, then closed again, and for a single, revealing instant, something flickered behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or the cold calculation of a man deciding which lie to deploy.
He glanced toward the hallway where Anastasia waited, then back at me. "She's my cousin, Valentina," he said finally, his voice instantly defensive, pitched too high, as though I had accused him of breaking Omertà itself. "Does it have to be my child before I help her?"
I gave him a bitter smile. It was the kind of smile that had no warmth in it, the kind that forms when the heart has been hollowed out so many times there is nothing left to wound. "No. But it would explain a lot."
Silas's eyes went dark. The lamplight seemed to retreat from him. "Why are you so heartless, Valentina?" he snapped, and the word heartless landed like a slap. "I've told you several times there's nothing between us. Anastasia is just my cousin, and she has no one but me."
I turned away from him, back to the suitcase. My hands moved with practiced calm, folding the last of my clothes, tucking them into neat rows. Each garment was a countdown. Each fold brought me closer to the door.
"You don't need to explain anything to me, Silas," I said softly. "It's your house. You can do what you want."
Silas paused behind me. I could hear his breathing, heavy and rough, the way it always got when he was struggling to contain the violence that lived just beneath his skin.
"Silas..." Anastasia's voice floated in from the corridor, and then she appeared in the doorway, stepping into view like an actress hitting her mark. Her expression was soft with manufactured concern, her hand resting delicately on the slight swell of her belly. "Maybe I should go. I don't want to cause any more tension." She let her gaze drift to the floor, the picture of wounded modesty. "It's clear I'm not welcome here. And besides..." She glanced at Silas with those wide, guileless eyes. "She's your wife. La Donna of this house."
Silas's arm reached out to her instinctively, his hand finding her elbow with a tenderness I had not felt from him in years. Perhaps ever.
"You're not going anywhere," he said firmly. His voice had changed completely. For her, it softened. For her, the sharp edges smoothed into something almost gentle. "This is my house. You're family. I don't give a damn if she's my wife." He didn't look at me as he said it, but the words were meant for me. Every syllable. "If there's anyone who shouldn't be here, it's her."
I flinched.
I couldn't help it. The reaction was involuntary, a small, sharp contraction somewhere deep in my chest, as though a wire that had been holding me together had finally snapped. But I composed myself quickly, pressing my lips together, straightening my spine. They weren't going to see me cry. Not tonight. Not ever again.
Then, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't just told the woman he'd married that she was less than a stranger in her own home, Silas turned to me with a frown.
"Where's dinner?"
I blinked. "Dinner?"
"Yes," he said slowly, the way one speaks to a child or a servant, "grilled lamb, mashed potatoes, and rosemary sauce. I told you before I left."
"Oh, Silas," Anastasia gasped, pressing her fingertips to her lips in a performance of pure delight. "That's my favorite meal. You remembered!"
My chest tightened. My eyes burned, and I had to look away for a moment, fixing my gaze on the half-packed suitcase so that neither of them would see the moisture gathering along my lashes.
Silas's face melted into a wide, warm smile. A real smile. The kind he had never once given me. "Yes. Yes, I did," he said, his voice rich with affection. "How could I forget?"
Then he turned to me. The warmth vanished. "So? Where is it?"
"Oh," I said, and my voice came out blank, emptied of everything. "No. I didn't make it."
His eyes flashed with irritation, the familiar storm gathering behind his pupils. He scowled. "Why not?"
"I was a little busy today," I said flatly. I held his gaze without flinching. "Maybe Anastasia can cook something instead. Since she'll be living here and all."
Anastasia stiffened. The smug, sweet expression slid from her face like a mask knocked loose, and for one unguarded second, I saw the real woman beneath: calculating, cold, furious. Then it was gone, replaced by that wounded-doe look she wore so well.
Silas's face turned a mottled red. The vein at his temple pulsed, and his eyes blazed with the kind of rage that, in this world, preceded broken bones and hospital visits. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
"You ungrateful, bitter little..." he spat, the words coming out strangled, venomous. "Is this how pitiful you are? You cannot do the one thing you're good for."
I clenched my jaw. My fists tightened at my sides until my nails bit into my palms, four small crescents of pain that kept me anchored, kept me from shattering. But I didn't react. I didn't give him the satisfaction.
They weren't worth my pain anymore.
Silas looked at Anastasia, then turned back to sneer at me. The contempt on his face was so complete, so thorough, it was as if he were looking at something he'd scraped off the sole of his shoe.
"Forget it," he said. "Anastasia, let's go eat out. I'm not staying here while she's like this. She can figure herself out."
Anastasia nodded sweetly, slipping her hand into his with the ease of long practice. "Maybe it's best to give her some space," she murmured, her voice dripping with false compassion.
The door slammed behind them. The sound reverberated through the estate, rattling the crystal perfume bottles on my vanity, sending a tremor through the silence that followed.
I stood there.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom I had shared with a man who despised me, surrounded by half-packed clothes and six years of accumulated grief, and I stared at nothing. The tears came slowly, tracking down my cheeks in thin, silent lines. I didn't wipe them away. I let them fall onto the collar of the blouse I was still holding, darkening the silk.
It was only a matter of time. I was leaving soon. Then all of this would end.
The suitcase lay open on the bed like a promise.
I held onto that.
I woke late in the night, throat dry, pulled from a thin and dreamless sleep by a thirst that wouldn't be ignored. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 12:43 AM. The numbers glowed a faint, sickly green in the darkness.
The estate was quiet. The kind of quiet that old houses hold at night, full of settling wood and the distant hum of the heating system and the vast, breathing emptiness of rooms no one was using. I slipped out of bed, pulled a robe around my shoulders, and padded barefoot down the corridor toward the kitchen.
That was when I heard it.
The sounds were coming from the guest room. The one Silas had said Anastasia would stay in. Temporarily, he'd said. Just until she was settled.
I froze in the hallway. The marble floor was cold beneath my feet. The corridor stretched before me, dimly lit by a single wall sconce that cast long, distorted shadows across the wainscoting.
I knew what those sounds were.
Every instinct told me to turn around. To go back to bed, drink water from the bathroom tap, and pretend I hadn't heard anything. But I didn't. Because a part of me, the last stubborn, aching part that still clung to some threadbare hope I hadn't yet managed to kill, needed to see it. Needed to watch that hope burn so I could sweep the ashes away and finally be free.
I walked slowly toward the guest room. Each step was measured, silent, the way one learns to move in a house where making noise at the wrong time invites punishment. The thick carpet runner muffled my footsteps.
The door wasn't fully shut.
A thin sliver of warm light spilled into the hallway through the gap, and with it came the sounds, unmistakable now, close and raw and real.
I stopped at the door. My hand trembled at my side. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes.
I leaned forward and looked through the narrow opening.
And instantly regretted it.
Silas was on top of Anastasia.
