"Adriana, the wiring at my place gave out. Dominic worried about me sitting alone in the dark, so he asked me to stay here at the estate for a while. He changed the gate code to my birthday, afraid I wouldn't remember anything else. You don't mind, do you?"
My eyes fell on Vittoria's slipped straps. There was a clear mark high on her chest, and nothing beneath the silk.
"Adriana's the most understanding woman in the Family," came a voice from inside. "How could she mind?"
Dominic sat on the sofa, his trousers creased, his shirt turned backward, a damp stain darkening the cushion beside him.
He rose and pulled me into his arms. "You went out this late without telling me. You're carrying my child. What am I supposed to do if something happens to you?"
Something in me went cold at the tenderness in his face. On the surface he was the doting husband, guarding the woman who'd give him his heir. Underneath, he'd brought his first love into my own home and changed the code to the gate, terrified I might come back too soon.
I didn't waste words on him. I went straight upstairs.
Dominic, who never touched milk in his life, poured me a glass of it that night.
"You're in your last trimester now. You need protein, calcium. Be good and drink it, tesoro."
My eyes darkened on the glass he held out. "I don't want it."
He looked put out when I refused, but he kept his voice patient, coaxing, the way a man does when the whole thing has already been decided somewhere I couldn't see. "I'm doing this for you and the child. Be good and listen to me."
Then, without another word, he tipped the milk into my mouth.
The taste was sweet and faintly fishy, and after it the drowsiness came for me fast. In the haze I thought I saw two figures overlapping at the edge of the bed.
When I woke the next morning, the pain was so deep I could barely lift myself off the mattress.
After Dominic left for the day, I opened the video on my phone. I'd started recording the night before, after he made me drink the milk, then hidden the phone down in the flower pot where no one would think to look.
The moment the footage began to play, a sense of shame tugged at my heart.
Once I'd gone under, Dominic and Vittoria had come through the door already tangled together, kissing their way across the room until they rolled to the space beside me.
"Dominic, you don't know how sick it makes me, watching you with this woman every single day," Vittoria said, her voice all silk and complaint.
Dominic spat on my face. Then he shoved me aside with his foot.
"How could this fat cow ever compare to you? I only keep her for what she's carrying. If I hadn't wanted to spare you the disgrace, do you think I'd have ever bound myself to her? Next to you she isn't worth a single hair on your head."
Vittoria studied me with idle interest. "You're sure you gave her enough to keep her down?"
She began peeling the clothes from my body as she spoke. "What if she pieces it together after the child comes? Better we hold something over her. Insurance."
Dominic seemed to think this wise. He helped her strip me until I lay completely bare, and then the two of them dragged me to a stool and arranged me on it, legs forced open, facing the bed. He lifted a phone and kept photographing me while Vittoria adjusted my body, pose after pose, like I was nothing that could feel it.
When they'd taken enough, the two of them turned on me where I lay sleeping and did as they pleased. I watched it all play out on the small screen with tears running down my face and my heart in pain. I shut the phone off and swallowed the medication the doctor had prescribed without a moment's hesitation.
"What are you taking?"
Dominic's voice came sharp from the doorway, and I looked up into his worried eyes.
"Just an ordinary calcium tablet," I said, and fought with everything I had to keep my voice level.
