Valentina's POV
I didn't answer her.
I didn't even blink.
My fists clenched slightly at my sides, nails pressing crescents into my palms, but I refused to give her the reaction she wanted. Instead I just stared at her, my face a mask of nothing. The restroom was all marble and low lighting, the distant hum of the gala's orchestra bleeding through the walls like a pulse.
She tilted her head, clearly disappointed that I didn't react.
"Really? No reply?" she teased, crossing the tile floor to stand beside me. Her heels clicked against the marble, each step deliberate and measured.
I stayed quiet, washing my hands in silence. The water ran warm over my skin, and I focused on the sound of it, the way it swirled down the drain.
"Oh, come on, Valentina." She leaned against the edge of the sink, one hip cocked, her red dress catching the light like a wound. "Don't act like you didn't see us that night. You were standing right there watching us."
Still, I said nothing.
She continued with a cruel laugh, low and intimate, as though we were sharing a secret. "You should have heard him last night. He was crazy for my body. I really hope you learned a thing or two from yesterday."
I dried my hands calmly on the linen towel, folded it, set it down. Then I turned to walk away without saying a word.
She was getting irritated at my lack of reaction, and that made her push harder.
"Oh, I know what'll crack you," she said, and the malice in her voice shifted into something darker, something that slithered. "Let's talk about your babies."
I froze instantly.
The air in the restroom seemed to compress. The faint music beyond the door faded to nothing. There was only her voice and the terrible silence between her words.
"Those poor little things," Anastasia Ferraro whispered from behind me. "But they didn't die for nothing, you know. Thanks to them, my womb is finally strong enough to carry his heir."
I turned slowly.
She leaned closer, and triumph burned in her eyes like a lit match held to gasoline. "You couldn't carry his child, but I will. And Silas will finally have what he always wanted. With me."
Something inside me snapped at her words.
Not thought. Not reason. Something deeper, something animal and raw that lived beneath six years of silence and swallowed grief. I shoved her hard, both palms flat against her shoulders, and she stumbled backward, gasping as she caught herself against the wall. Her back hit the marble with a dull thud.
She looked at me in shock for a moment. The restroom was perfectly still, the drip of a faucet the only sound.
And then, slowly, she smiled.
"You'll regret that," she murmured.
Before I could ask what she meant, she turned to face the wall and slammed her own head into the marble.
I blinked in horror and disbelief.
Then she did it again. And again.
Blood bloomed against the pale stone, a dark smear that spread with each impact.
She released a loud, piercing scream that shattered the silence and echoed off every surface. Then she dropped to the floor, sobbing and clutching her head as though I had done it, her body curling in on itself with practiced fragility.
The bathroom door burst open almost instantly.
Several of the Family's soldiers rushed in, their hands already reaching inside their jackets on instinct before they registered the scene.
"Someone get the doctor!"
"Anastasia!"
"Signora, what happened?"
I stood there, frozen, my hands trembling at my sides, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Silas Valenti came through the door with two enforcers flanking him, his tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, his face already hard with the look of a man expecting to dispense judgment. He saw the blood on the wall first. Then he saw her crumpled on the floor. Then he saw me.
"Valentina?" His voice cut through the room, sharp as a blade and thick with fury.
Anastasia whimpered weakly, curling tighter on the tile. Blood threaded through her fingers where she clutched her temple.
"She attacked me," she sobbed, her voice breaking beautifully, every syllable calibrated. "I came to apologize to her for the dance, and she just snapped. She pushed me and slammed my head against the wall. I... I think I'm bleeding."
Silas stared at me, his face twisted with rage. His jaw was set like stone, the cords of his neck standing taut. The two enforcers behind him shifted their weight, reading their boss, waiting for the order.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. My tongue was dry. My throat had closed.
"She's lying," I croaked out when I finally found my voice. "She's lying. I didn't touch her. She's doing this to frame me."
Silas's eyes blazed. "So now you're calling her a liar?"
"She slammed her own head against the wall," I said, firmer this time. My voice shook but I held his gaze. "I didn't do this."
"Enough!" he roared.
The word hit the marble walls and came back as an echo. Every person in the room went still. The soldiers lowered their eyes. Even the air seemed to flinch.
My heart pounded so hard I could hear nothing else.
The Family members who had gathered in the doorway gasped and murmured. I could feel their eyes on me, the weight of their judgment pressing down like a physical thing.
"She's out of her mind," someone whispered.
"I always knew there was something off about her," another voice muttered from the back.
"Poor Anastasia."
Silas turned to his enforcers. His voice dropped to that quiet register that was worse than any shout, the tone he used when violence was no longer a question but a certainty.
"Teach her a lesson."
The words froze the blood in my veins. My heart stopped. The room tilted. I looked at his face for some flicker of hesitation, some trace of the man who had stood beside me at the altar six years ago. There was nothing.
Before I could move, the two soldiers stepped forward and seized me by the arms. Their grips were iron. Professional. The hands of men who had done this many times before.
"No, wait!" I cried, but it was too late.
The first blow landed hard against my stomach. The air left my lungs in a single violent rush and I doubled over, gasping, my vision going white at the edges. Pain bloomed through my core like a detonation.
Another came against my back, a fist between my shoulder blades that sent me crashing to the marble floor. My cheek hit the cold stone. I tasted copper.
I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my belly. Instinct. The oldest instinct. Protect what was inside me.
"Please... stop," I cried.
But they didn't.
They kept kicking and punching, methodical and merciless, as I screamed. Each impact sent shockwaves through my body that collapsed into the next. The marble floor was cold against my skin where my dress had torn. I could hear my own voice as though from a great distance, begging, and the sound of it was something I would never forget.
I tried to shield myself, especially my belly, but it was useless. My arms were too weak. My body was too small against the force of trained men following their Don's orders.
Then I felt it.
A sharp, twisting pain tore through my abdomen, deeper than the blows, deeper than anything they could have inflicted with their fists. It was inside me. It was something leaving me.
A familiar rush of warmth spread down my thighs.
Blood.
I choked on a sob as I looked down. Dark crimson soaked through the fabric of my dress, spreading in a widening stain across the white marble. The sight of it was almost peaceful in its horror, the way it pooled and caught the light.
The enforcers faltered. They stepped back, their shoes leaving prints in the blood. One of them looked down at his hands. Both of them looked shaken.
"Boss," one of them said, hesitating, his voice stripped of its earlier obedience, "she's bleeding..."
Silas stepped forward. The rage in his face flickered, replaced for one instant by something else. Confusion. Perhaps even the faintest shadow of recognition. He saw the blood spreading across the floor, saw the way I clutched my stomach, saw what was happening.
I met his eyes through the tears running down my face. "Please..." I whispered. The word was barely a sound. It was a breath shaped like prayer.
He hesitated for a single moment. One moment in which something human might have surfaced.
Then Anastasia whimpered from the floor, her voice soft and pitiful, threaded with just enough tremor to pull every string. "Silas... I don't feel so good..."
That was all it took.
Silas turned away from me and knelt beside her. "I've got you, Ana," he murmured, his voice suddenly tender, suddenly warm, as he gathered her into his arms with the gentleness of a man holding something precious. He lifted her from the floor as though she weighed nothing.
She held him weakly, one arm draped over his shoulder, her bloodied fingers curling into the fabric of his jacket. As he turned toward the door, her eyes met mine over his shoulder.
She smirked.
It was small. Controlled. A private cruelty meant only for me. And then she pressed her face into his neck and let out another soft, broken sob.
Silas didn't even glance at me as he walked out of the restroom carrying her. The soldiers parted for him. The onlookers stepped aside, their eyes lowered in deference. No one looked at me. No one knelt beside me. No one spoke my name.
At the doorway, he finally spoke. He didn't turn around.
"I hope you've learned your lesson, Valentina." His voice was cold, flat, emptied of everything. "Get yourself to the clinic."
Then he was gone.
The door swung shut behind the last of them, and the restroom fell into a silence so complete it hummed. I was alone on the bloodstained marble, my body broken, my dress ruined, the life that had been growing inside me draining away in a slow, warm tide.
I tried to move, but the pain was too much. My body shook with tremors I couldn't control, and my vision blurred and swam. The overhead lights fractured into halos. The taste of blood filled my mouth.
I dragged myself across the floor, inch by inch, my fingers slipping in the wet marble, until I reached the corner where my clutch had fallen earlier. Each movement sent fresh agony tearing through my abdomen. I pulled out my phone with fingers that could barely close around it.
Then I called my father.
"Valentina?" Don Eduardo Serrano's voice came through the line already sharp with worry, the instinct of a man who had survived decades in this world by reading danger in the smallest signals. "What's wrong? Where are you?"
I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. My lips trembled as I tried to speak. The phone was slick with blood against my cheek.
"Papà... please," I whispered hoarsely, fighting with everything I had left not to break down completely. "Come take me home..."
"Where are you right now?" he asked immediately. I could hear movement on his end. A chair scraping back. A door opening. Orders being given in rapid, clipped Italian to someone nearby.
I gave him the directions as best I could, the words coming in fragments between shallow, ragged breaths.
He cursed under his breath. The sound of it, the raw fury barely contained in those whispered words, told me everything about what he would do when he arrived. "I'm sending someone right now. Don't move. Don't speak to anyone. Just hold on, okay? You'll be fine. I swear to God, you'll be fine."
"Come... qu... ick..." I managed to mumble before the phone slipped from my fingers and clattered against the marble.
The last thing I heard was my father's voice calling my name over and over, growing fainter and more desperate, as the darkness folded over me like a shroud and took everything away.
