Valentina's POV
Silas's mouth was pressed against her neck, and his hands moved over her body with a hunger that made the air in the hallway feel unbreathable.
"God, Ana..." He groaned. "I always loved your body. You feel so good. No one else can ever feel like this. No one can make me feel this way."
That was enough.
My heart didn't break. It shattered completely, like a glass dropped from a great height onto marble, each fragment too small to ever piece back together. But I didn't scream. I didn't throw open the door. I didn't confront them.
Instead, I closed it softly. Gently. Like I didn't want to disturb them.
I turned away. My heart pounded so violently I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes. I stumbled back toward my room, one hand braced against the corridor wall, the other pressed against my stomach as if I could physically hold myself together. I barely reached the bathroom before I dropped to my knees on the cold tile and threw up everything.
I sat on the floor, shaking.
They didn't just betray me. They did it in this house, under this roof, without shame, without a single locked door between their sin and my existence. Like I was nothing. Like I had never been anything at all.
I leaned back against the wall, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The taste of bile sat bitter on my tongue.
My mind flashed back to the last miscarriage.
It had started early that morning. I woke with a searing pain low in my stomach, and when I pulled back the sheets, they were soaked through with blood. Dark, spreading, wrong.
I called for Silas. He didn't come. He was busy. Anastasia's birthday, they told me. He was overseeing the preparations for her celebration, making sure the flowers were right, the cake was perfect, the champagne was chilled. For her.
I managed to reach one of the household staff, a young woman who went pale at the sight of the blood and rushed me to the Family's private clinic in the back seat of a town car, holding my hand the entire way.
Hours later, when Silas finally showed up, he didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't take my hand. He didn't sit at the edge of the bed. He just stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, his jacket still on, like he was already planning to leave.
"Again?" he said. Cold. Flat.
Like it was my fault. Like I was the problem.
He didn't comfort me. He barely looked at me. When the Family doctor called it another unexplained miscarriage, Silas just nodded and walked out of the room. I heard his footsteps recede down the hallway. I heard the front door of the clinic open and close.
I thought he was disappointed in me. I blamed myself for months. I took the vitamins the doctor prescribed. I ate what they told me to eat. I rested. I prayed. I apologized to Silas for failing him, for failing us.
But now I knew better.
He wasn't disappointed. He was satisfied. Because that baby, like the ones before it, had served its purpose.
He got me pregnant. He had me drugged. He waited for the miscarriage. And then the doctor took what was needed, harvested what was left of my child, and delivered it to Anastasia Ferraro so some back-alley fertility specialist could try to repair her ruined womb.
And I had apologized to him. I had actually said sorry.
The bathroom tiles pressed cold against my spine. I stared at the ceiling and felt something shift inside me. Not grief. Not anymore. Something harder. Something with teeth.
I didn't sleep after that. I spent the remaining hours of the night arranging everything for my departure. Documents. The few pieces of jewelry that had belonged to my mother. The single photograph of my family I'd kept hidden in the lining of my suitcase. Every trace of Valentina Serrano, sorted and boxed and ready to disappear from this house.
I worked until the first pale light of dawn bled through the curtains.
Eventually, when the hunger became impossible to ignore, I walked to the kitchen. The estate was silent. The soldiers on night rotation had changed shifts an hour ago. The hallways were empty.
I made a simple breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, tea. Just for myself. I sat at the long dining table alone and ate in silence. The kitchen smelled faintly of coffee grounds and the lemon polish the housekeeper used on the wood. Ordinary smells. The kind of smells that belong to a home. This had never been mine.
My phone buzzed against the table. A message from my father.
Dad: I hope you haven't changed your mind again, because preparations have begun.
Me: Never.
I set the phone face-down and took another bite of toast.
Footsteps came down the stairs. I didn't look up.
"Mm, something smells good," Anastasia said lightly, her voice carrying that particular musical quality she reserved for mornings when she felt she'd won something.
I didn't react. They walked in together, side by side, without a shred of shame. Silas in last night's shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. Anastasia in a silk robe that wasn't hers, her hair still tousled, her lips still faintly swollen. They didn't even try to hide it.
"I hope you slept well, Donna Valenti," Anastasia continued, and the mockery in her tone was barely concealed beneath a veneer of sweetness. She used my title like a blade. "I had an incredible night, thanks to Silas here."
Silas cleared his throat. "Valentina." His voice was stiff, uncomfortable, the way it always got when Anastasia pushed too far in front of me. "What Ana is trying to say is that she couldn't sleep alone last night. Nightmares. I had to stay with her so she could fall asleep."
A small smirk crossed Anastasia's lips. Her eyes gleamed with triumph, bright and vicious.
I continued eating. Completely unfazed.
Anastasia glanced at the table. There was only one plate, one cup, one setting. Her brows lifted with exaggerated surprise.
"Oh. No breakfast for us?" she asked, her voice sugary sweet. "Guess we're on our own now."
I kept chewing. I didn't say a word.
Silas looked at me now, and the discomfort in his expression curdled into irritation. "Valentina, where's our breakfast?"
I took a sip of my tea. Calm. Measured. "I didn't make it," I said flatly.
There was a pause. The kitchen clock ticked.
"What do you mean, you didn't make it?" he asked slowly. His voice hardened. His eyes darkened, that particular shift that happened when his temper surfaced, when the violence inside him moved closer to the skin.
I shrugged.
Silas stepped closer. His presence filled the space between us, heavy with authority he believed was absolute. "You're the wife of the Don of this house. Your role is to support your husband and this household, and that includes making sure this kitchen functions. Or is that too much for you now?"
I stood and rinsed my plate quietly at the sink, my back to him.
"I said, is it too much?" His voice rose. I could feel the heat of his anger even without turning around.
I turned slowly. Met his eyes. "You can always eat out. Like last night."
He stepped forward, closing the distance, his jaw tight. "What is wrong with you lately? You've been acting like a spoiled brat, and it's getting very annoying."
I didn't respond. I reached for the glass teapot on the counter, still filled with hot water, intending to pour it down the sink.
Silas snapped.
He snatched the teapot from my hand and slammed it down on the counter with a force that cracked the granite. The scalding water erupted from the spout and splashed across my hand and wrist in a sheet of liquid fire.
I hissed and stumbled back.
The teapot shattered on impact. A large shard of glass spun off the counter and buried itself in the soft flesh of my forearm. Blood welled up instantly, bright red against my skin, running in a thin stream down to my fingertips and dripping onto the white kitchen tile.
I cried out. The pain was immediate, sharp, radiating up through my arm in waves.
Silas blinked. He hadn't meant to do it. I could see that in the half-second of surprise that crossed his face. When he saw the blood, his expression softened. For one brief, stupid moment.
For one stupid second, I thought maybe he would care. Maybe something buried deep beneath the cruelty and the indifference would surface. Maybe he would reach for my hand.
But it didn't last. Because immediately, from behind him, Anastasia whined.
"There's no breakfast, and I'm starving, Silas. I think I'm feeling dizzy."
The softness vanished. Silas looked at me with cold, flat eyes, silently blaming me for the blood on the floor, for the broken glass, for the inconvenience of my pain. He glanced at my injured hand with a scowl.
"You're tough enough. You'll heal," he said dismissively.
He straightened his collar. "Remember that the Annual Gala is this evening at eight. Get dressed properly. I'll come for you then."
He turned and walked out of the kitchen with Anastasia at his side, her hand curled around his arm, her head tilted against his shoulder. Neither of them looked back.
I stood alone in the kitchen. Blood dripped steadily from my forearm onto the tile. I pressed a kitchen towel against the wound and held it there, hard, until the white cloth bloomed red.
I didn't make a sound.
An hour later, the moving truck came.
My father had arranged it. The men were quick, professional, and silent. They knew better than to ask questions. In this world, you moved when you were told to move, and you didn't look too closely at what you were carrying or why.
I stood by the window and watched as they carried out my boxes. Everything that belonged to me. Every trace of Valentina Serrano that had existed within these walls for six years. My clothes. My books. The small wooden box of my mother's earrings. The photo albums I'd kept in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.
What couldn't be taken was thrown into the trash. The vitamins the doctor had prescribed. The supplements I now knew were laced with something designed to destroy what grew inside me. The monogrammed towels. The silk pillowcases Anastasia had picked out for the guest room that had somehow ended up in mine.
When the movers were done, the house looked like I had never been here. Six years, erased in sixty minutes. The rooms were clean, the closets empty, the shelves bare. A ghost of a woman who had never quite existed in the first place.
When Silas came back to the estate to prepare for the Gala, he barely noticed that anything was missing. He walked past my empty closet without a glance. He didn't open the drawers. He didn't see the bare walls where my mother's photograph had hung.
I preferred it that way.
Before we left, I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked around the room for the last time. The bed where I'd bled. The window where I'd watched the seasons change and wondered if this was all my life would ever be. The mirror where I'd practiced smiling before events so no one would see the truth.
I had already made my decision.
Tonight was the last night I would spend in this Family.
After the Gala, I would leave. For good.
He wouldn't even realize I was gone until it was too late.
