They found me twenty minutes later.
Two auction house guards, both young and twitchy, probably more used to breaking up rich men's fistfights than rescuing frozen women from storage rooms.
I heard the door creak open like it was underwater. I couldn't lift my head anymore, couldn't move my lips. My body was stiff, my skin cold and damp, and my fingers wouldn't uncurl.
"Miss — miss, we need medics down here now!"
Voices blurred. Arms lifted me. Heat touched my skin, and I whimpered without meaning to.
Everything after that came in pieces.
Flashing lights. Tubes. Machines. Warm blankets. And then the beeping slowed, and the shouting faded, and someone said the word trauma like it was just another item on a chart.
Not a single word from Dominic.
Not a call.
Not even a fucking text. I waited, just once, to hear his voice.
But nothing.
Later I learned that Ginevra told him I'd checked into a hotel to be alone and "cool off."
And he believed her. Of course he did.
Because whatever she fed him, he swallowed without question. Always had. Always would.
By the time I came home, my bones ached.
I looked like a ghost and I moved like one too.
The compound was too clean. Too still. The guards at the gate had waved me through without a word, but I'd felt their eyes track me all the way up the gravel drive, the way soldiers watch something they've already been briefed about.
And there he was. Waiting.
Dominic.
Or Alessio.
Or whoever the hell he was pretending to be today.
He stood in the middle of the living room, back straight, face unreadable, jaw set like he'd been practicing this confrontation in his head all damn day. Two of his men lingered near the doorway to the hall, close enough to hear everything, professional enough to pretend they couldn't.
I barely made it three steps in when he stepped forward and shoved a piece of paper into my face.
A medical form.
My fingers didn't even need to unfold it.
I knew exactly what it was.
Abortion paperwork.
I'd left it in my drawer. Tucked away. Hidden.
Ginevra must've gone through my things while I was gone and handed it to him like a trophy.
"You wanna tell me what the fuck this is?" he snapped.
His voice wasn't calm. It wasn't cold. It was furious. The signet ring on his right hand caught the lamplight as his fist tightened around the paper.
I said nothing. I just stared at him while he held that form like it personally bled.
"You killed my brother's child?" he barked. "You just — what? Got rid of it like it was trash? Like it meant nothing?!"
I blinked slowly.
"You don't even look sorry," he snarled. "You look proud. Are you proud, Seraphina? Is this your big revenge? You really think this makes you strong?"
Then his hand came down hard.
Crack.
He slapped me across the face. My head jerked sideways and I tasted blood at the corner of my lip. The sound cut through the room like a gunshot, and I felt the two soldiers in the doorway go absolutely still.
I didn't fall.
But I staggered.
And before I could find balance again —
Another hand hit me.
His mother.
Patrizia stepped forward with fury in her eyes, her pearl rosary rattling against her wrist like it could feel the wrath in her.
"You murderer," she spat. "You evil little snake. That baby was our blood. You just threw it away like some street rat's mistake."
She slapped me again, sharp and loud. "How could you? How could you take an innocent child just because you wanted to hurt Dominic?"
"Ginevra told us everything," she hissed. "You're ungrateful. You were always just a pretty little project. And now look at you. Empty womb, empty soul."
Tears were falling now.
But not from pain.
They just fell because my body didn't know what else to do. I stood still while they cursed me. While they threw fire at my skin and called it justice.
Then I straightened slowly.
I wiped the corner of my mouth, smearing the blood away with the back of my hand. And I looked him dead in the eyes.
"Why are you mad if I aborted the baby?"
My voice was soft. Too soft. "You're not Dominic. You're only his brother, remember?"
His face paled. His mouth parted. But I didn't stop.
I stepped forward.
"Don't act like him."
The room had the silence of a sit-down gone wrong. Nobody breathed. One of the soldiers by the door shifted his weight, just barely, like he was recalculating the geometry of the room.
Ginevra made a sound behind him — an unhinged laugh, sharp and manic. She stepped forward with that fake sweetness dripping from her fangs.
"You hear that, baby? She finally gets it. You're not Dominic. You're mine. She's just bitter because she lost her little fantasy."
She leaned against the wall like she was relaxing into her victory. "Besides, we both know she never wanted that baby. She just needed an excuse to play the grieving little widow."
That was when I smiled.
Not with warmth.
With venom.
"Or maybe…" I said slowly, locking eyes with Dominic, "you are Dominic. And you've just been pretending to be Alessio."
The whole room went still. Even Ginevra stopped smiling. The kind of silence that falls in a room when someone says the unsayable, when Omertà itself holds its breath.
"But either way…" I took one last step, standing in the center of the mess they built, "…I don't care anymore."
My voice didn't rise.
It didn't need to.
"I am no longer tied to this Family."
I looked at the matriarch who once hugged me like her own.
I looked at the man who once held my hair while I cried from morning sickness.
I looked at the woman who crawled into his bed and wore my perfume to spit on my memory.
And I smiled.
"Whatever love I had left in me died in that cold room."
Dominic's face cracked.
The way his brows knit, the way his mouth trembled slightly — it was panic. The kind of panic you don't show in war. The kind that slips out when you realize you went too far and there's no undoing it. His right hand had gone to his signet ring without his knowing, and it was perfectly, terribly still.
"Ginevra —" he started, his voice unsteady.
But I was already walking away.
