The Don's small son pointed at me and burst into tears. "Signora Moretti's bleeding so much."
Only then did I feel the pain tearing through my belly. My face went bloodless, and I sank to the floor of the estate's east wing.
While the capos' women stood frozen, not knowing what to do, Lorenzo's capo finally arrived. Too late.
And he'd brought barely more than a dozen soldiers.
Celia Romano saw it and struck him hard across the face. "Where is your underboss? Where is Moretti?"
Marco Greco's fingers drifted to his sternum, to the old scar beneath his shirt, and his mouth opened on nothing. The Donna understood at once. "So that's the kind of man Lorenzo Moretti is. He left his own wife to die and went chasing after another woman."
"When we walk out of this house alive, I will see to it that he pays."
The fire the Sabini men had set was already crawling along the carpets toward us. I caught Celia Romano's arm and pleaded with her through her fury.
Only then did she let Marco lead us out.
There were too many of the family's women and too few of Marco's soldiers. The cordon barely held, so I bit down on the agony, took a fallen blade off the floor, and guarded the rear of our line.
Marco fired flare after flare through the broken window into the night. Nothing answered them.
The Donna's face grew colder by the moment. "Your underboss certainly keeps his soldiers well in hand."
Marco's hand pressed to his sternum again, then he scrambled to explain. "Underboss. The underboss went to reach the Don. The fighting on that side of the compound may be deadlocked."
But before he could finish, Lorenzo stepped out of the corridor across from us, Vittoria Falcone cradled in his arms.
Marco opened his mouth and called to him. Lorenzo didn't spare him a single glance.
The enforcer at his side sneered. "Only Capo Greco is soft enough to swallow that woman's lies."
"She must have faked another injury and forced the capo to come fetch you."
The smoke and the shadow of the far doorway hid our group from where they stood.
The women went white with rage. The Donna was about to erupt when a wave of Sabini gunmen poured through the breach.
I shouted for Marco to shield the others and move first, and ended up cut off alone.
Stumbling through the chaos, I somehow ran straight into Lorenzo's party again.
Seeing Vittoria without a scratch on her, I clung to one last sliver of hope and begged.
"Lorenzo, I'm begging you. The child inside me is yours too."
Lorenzo saw me drenched in blood, and the ice in his eyes thawed a little. "Didn't I send men to find you? How did you end up in such a state?"
Beside him, Vittoria spoke as though it were nothing, her answer arriving a half-second too quick, her lashes lowering. "That's right. Capo Greco was with her just now. He called you over."
"How strange that he's nowhere to be seen. Oh. Surely my dear sister didn't harm Capo Greco just to win sympathy?"
The hand hidden in her skirts curled into a fist no one but me thought to watch.
Lorenzo's face went black as ink in an instant. He rolled his right shoulder once, the old street-fighter's habit, and slapped me hard. "Adriana Vitale, you'd stoop to something this vicious just to put on a show!"
The blow knocked me to the marble floor, my head ringing.
The accusations from Lorenzo's enforcer came crashing down on me.
"What a vicious woman. Opening the gates to the Sabinis to claw for the underboss's favor wasn't enough. Now you've gone and harmed Capo Greco!"
"If not for the underboss, I'd put you down right here to settle the debt for him."
I coughed up a mouthful of blood. "No. I didn't."
Lorenzo's eyes turned colder still, and he kicked me hard. "You still won't admit it."
I slammed into the wall and curled into a ball, the pain wringing me hollow.
The agony in my belly grew sharper and sharper. As they turned to leave, I forced the words out through gritted teeth.
"The baby. The baby."
Lorenzo didn't waver. At his signal, the enforcer stepped forward, the knuckles of his right hand cracking one at a time, and drove his foot hard into my stomach.
"Still trying to use the child to put a leash on the underboss. A poisonous woman like you. Who would ever want the cursed thing you'd bring into this family?"
A wail tore out of me. The blood beneath me gushed faster, soaking into the expensive rug, into the silence where the gunfire had finally stopped.
My mind blurred. The breath inside my belly grew fainter and fainter.
The tears spilled out of me, and I couldn't stop them.
Why. Why. This life, I'd given up fighting Vittoria for anything, and still Lorenzo wouldn't let me go.
My Matteo. Mama is useless. In the end, I couldn't keep you safe.
