Seeing Damiano erupt like that, the men behind him didn't dare breathe a word.
In silence, they turned the freezer down to negative one hundred.
In an instant, a wave of bone-chilling wind blasted through the vents, hitting me like knives made of frost.
The cold robbed me of speech. My teeth chattered uncontrollably, and I couldn't form a complete sentence.
Then, through the haze of numbness, a sharp, tearing pain erupted from my lower abdomen.
I forced my heavy head down, and froze.
A stream of bright red blood was flowing from between my legs, winding like a small creek across the icy ground.
In the deathly cold, it steamed against the frost, raising a crimson mist.
The blood melted the ice around me, seeping through the cracks in the floor.
That's when it hit me.
I knew what was happening.
Clutching my belly, I screamed hoarse toward the glass. "Damiano! Let me out! The baby... Save our baby!"
He was still shaking with fury, but the moment he saw the blood, the same blood now melting ice and creeping toward his shoes, his face drained of all color.
Panic replaced the cruelty in his eyes.
He seized the man beside him, shouting frantically, "Hurry! Get the key! Didn't we clear this with the doctor before we locked her in? How the hell did this happen?!"
The man handed him the key.
But Damiano's hands were shaking so hard he couldn't even hold on to it. His thumb dragged raw across his knuckles, over and over, as if to prove his hands still worked.
The key fell, right at Vittoria's feet.
He spun and gripped her arm tight.
"Vittoria! Quick, unlock the door! Let Alessandra out now, hurry!"
Startled by his outburst, Vittoria scrambled up, not even bothering with her shoes.
She rushed to the freezer door, casting one glance back at him. Then, with her back to him, she slid the key into the lock.
In that instant, I caught a flash of something sinister in her eyes. Triumph. Malice. Cruelty.
And then, crack.
A sharp sound cut through the air.
Vittoria turned back and dropped to her knees in front of Damiano, crying out, "Damiano, the key... it snapped!"
His face turned ghostly pale.
He stumbled forward, snatched the broken key, and demanded, "What do you mean it snapped?! How could it break? Get someone, get a man who can open this door, now!"
By now the blood had spread across nearly the whole freezer floor, glistening warm against the icy white.
I was groaning in agony, unable to hold the pain in.
But Vittoria knelt there with crocodile tears, voice trembling with counterfeit concern. One fingertip drifted to the corner of her lower lip. "Damiano, she hasn't admitted her mistake yet... You said it yourself. This was the chance to humble her. Every man here is watching..."
"And what about what they did to me? What I lay there and suffered? Are you really going to let that go? You swore to me you'd see it made right."
Damiano hesitated. He waved off the man who had gone for another key.
Then he turned back to the glass, slapping the freezer door again and again as he called to me, this time his voice full of desperation and pleading.
"Alessandra, please. Just admit you were wrong. For the baby. All right?"
"Just say it. Say you're sorry, and I'll open the door. You don't want anything to happen to our child either, do you? I'm begging you, Alessandra. Just be a little softer, okay?"
The blood loss was blurring my vision.
My body sank into the pool of blood, and with a trembling voice I whispered toward the figure beyond the glass, "Damiano... let me out... If you don't, my father will kill you..."
Vittoria's eyes glinted with a savage smile, but her voice stayed drenched in that same false innocence. "Alessandra... are you really this far gone? Don Falcone died half a year ago. The Falcone name collapsed months back. Just admit you were wrong. No one can save you now."
Laughter and jeers rose outside the freezer, from the capos and associates of the assembled crews, men who had once lowered their eyes at the Falcone name.
"Still dreaming, eh? Gonna have your father put Damiano in the ground? Principessa, your old man's rotting somewhere by now. If anything, he's the one getting killed all over again."
They laughed and tugged at Damiano's sleeve.
"Damiano, this one clearly hasn't learned. She's faking. The kid's probably fine. Let her rot in there a while longer."
"He's right, Damiano. She humiliated Vittoria for months. You can't let her off easy."
The cold storage was already slick with blood.
They couldn't see it, but I could feel it. The faint fluttering inside my belly was growing weaker, and weaker.
I began to wail, screaming in agony.
Damiano paced outside the door. When he looked back at me again, something like helplessness crossed his eyes.
"Alessandra, stop waiting on your father to come save you. He's really dead. Just admit you were wrong, okay? Just say the words. I was wrong. And I'll let you out."
"Cara, give it up. Your father isn't coming to save you this time."
The words had barely left him when the door to the room was kicked open with a bang that stopped every breath in the place.
A squad of made men flooded in, hands already inside their coats.
And from beyond the door came a voice, low and measured, the kind of voice that made grown killers straighten their spines and go still.
"Who said her father wouldn't come save her?"
