Hearing Lorenzo's words, a flicker of unease crossed Bianca's delicate face. She shrank her neck slightly, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as she fell silent. Her thumb moved once against the pads of her fingers, smoothing some seam only she could feel.
Bitterness welled up inside me, familiar and almost comforting by now. Half a year ago, Bianca had suddenly returned from her years in exile abroad. Lorenzo told me she was all alone, with nowhere left to run, no Family left to shelter her. Without even a word to me, he brought her behind the walls of our estate, past the soldiers at the gate, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
At first, I didn't mind. I even felt sorry for the fragile girl and cared for her in every way I could—seeing her plate was full at the long table, that she had warm clothes, that the stewards treated her as one of the blood. I wanted to be kind. I wanted to be a good wife to the Don.
Until the night everything changed. Bianca picked up a glass of red wine, poured it over herself, then collapsed onto her knees in front of me, trembling and pleading for mercy. Her voice was so soft, so pitiful, that any soldier passing the door would've sworn I'd been tormenting her for days.
From that moment on, the way Lorenzo looked at me shifted. That night, he didn't even give me a chance to explain. His fury broke like a storm, and before I understood what was happening, two of his enforcers dragged me to the attic and locked the door. He left me there, hungry and freezing, for three full days. When he finally came back, his voice was colder than I'd ever heard.
"Adriana, you've really disappointed me," he said, his gaze filled with disgust. "You have no idea what Bianca means to me. If you dare lay a hand on her again, wife or not, I'll make you pay in blood."
After that, incidents like that kept happening—small, carefully staged moments where Bianca was the victim and I was the cruel villain. Each one chipped away at Lorenzo's patience, until his eyes held nothing but icy contempt whenever he looked at me.
I had planned to endure it, at least until the baby was born. Once our child arrived safely, I was going to ask him to dissolve the union and slip away quietly. But before I could, Bianca threw herself from a rooftop.
The reason for it? Hateful messages and vicious voice recordings—supposedly from me.
The words were brutal, cruel enough to drive anyone to the edge. But they weren't mine. Yet no matter how I pleaded, Lorenzo didn't believe me. All he could see was Bianca's pale, trembling form lying in the bed the Family physician had made for her, her tears falling one after another. His heart ached so much for her, his eyes turned red with rage.
Even with our baby almost ready to be born, his only concern was avenging his beloved.
"Don... the Signora, she... she seems... You should see for yourself."
Lorenzo's fingers froze around the pen in his hand. His brow furrowed, his expression a mix of irritation and indifference. "She's still throwing a tantrum after all this time?"
The soldier hesitated, his hands clasped nervously before him. After several seconds, he finally forced it out. "No, Don... It's not that. It's just... the Signora seems to have stopped breathing."
Lorenzo's large hands, the ones that had been holding Bianca so tenderly a moment ago, went still. For a moment, there was silence—too long to be casual, too short to mean anything real. Then a cold, careless laugh escaped his throat.
"She's really going that far to get out of an apology? Playing dead, just to avoid facing Bianca?"
His voice sharpened to an edge. "Tell her—even if she's dying, she apologizes first. If she refuses, don't say I didn't warn her."
Sweat glistened on the soldier's forehead. He wanted to say more, but the fury carved into the Don's face pressed the words back down his throat. In the end, all he could do was step back and withdraw, quiet as a man leaving a wake.
In Lorenzo's arms, Bianca tilted her head, her innocent eyes wide with concern.
"Lorenzo, maybe you should let it go," she whispered. "Even if Adriana hates me and makes things hard, she's still your wife. As long as I can stay at your side, I can endure it."
Lorenzo's arm tightened around her slender waist, drawing her closer against him.
"Bianca, you don't need to fear that petty woman. Adriana isn't worth a single one of your worries." His voice softened into something almost gentle. "This time, I'll make certain she learns her place. Only then will she understand exactly what she is in this house."
"But..."
"No buts. Just trust me."
A teardrop landed on the back of my hand, cold and weightless, yet cutting deeper than any blade. That was when I realized—I was already crying.
So even souls can feel pain.
Lorenzo said nothing more after that, but for the rest of the afternoon his mind was somewhere else. His fingers drummed restlessly against the desk, and every few minutes his eyes cut toward the door. By the time an hour had passed, he had looked more than ten times.
Finally, with a low, frustrated breath, he shut the ledger before him and pushed back from the desk. Running a hand through his hair, he forced a gentle smile onto his face and stroked Bianca's hair.
"I don't know what game Adriana thinks she's playing this time," he said softly, "but I'll go drag her back myself to apologize."
At the gates of the abandoned carnival on the edge of Moretti territory, Lorenzo's long strides carried him forward, impatience coming off him like heat in the still air. Even from a distance, his sharp gaze locked onto the drop tower rising against the grey sky.
Its rusted frame gleamed coldly in the sunlight—but the ground beneath it was soaked in red.
