Dominic looked almost relieved when the words left me, and then he rose and crossed toward the staircase.
"I forgot to take a document from the study."
I watched his back climb the stairs of the estate, and my eyes went to the phone he'd left on the table.
I keyed in Vittoria's birthday, and in a breath the screen bloomed to life — a photograph of Dominic and Vittoria wrapped around each other, mouths locked. The phone ran a second, hidden system. It always had.
I opened his messages fast. The top thread was Vittoria's avatar. The second was a group thread he kept with his men. I opened the second, and what waited there made my heart tremble so hard the phone nearly slipped from my hand to the marble floor.
It was full of the photographs. The ones they'd taken of me last night, when I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't stop them.
"Dom, this one's an animal — Adriana still looks charming, eh?"
"Tell you the truth, there's something about a pregnant woman. Shame I don't know how she tastes."
"Don't. Adriana looks like a whore in these. She'd be the top earner in any club we run."
The filth from Marco and the others emptied my mind, as if I were some naked thing paraded on a chain, pointed at and laughed over through a screen.
"Cara, why are your eyes red?"
By the time Dominic came back down with a folded paper in his hand, I had already settled back into the sofa. He took a blanket and draped it over me.
"The nights still run cold. You're carrying. You need to be more careful," he said lightly, as though the tenderness cost him nothing.
He went on. "It's Vittoria's birthday tonight. I'm having something at the house for her. A few of the men will come by after dark. Wear something that suits the occasion."
At the sound of her name I trembled, just slightly, and something in my face went to ice.
"I want to stay in tonight," I said, my voice low. "I don't want to be disturbed."
Dominic's face darkened at once. "Vittoria has one birthday a year. I've only just marked it. Are you truly going to use the child to squeeze me? I've made room for you through this whole pregnancy. This is where the accommodation ends."
I hadn't even finished a sentence, and already he was standing guard over his first love. I should have understood it long ago. In him, love and hate were never hidden things. They wore his face plainly.
In the end, Dominic brought his men into the house to celebrate Vittoria's birthday all the same.
The moment I came down the stairs I felt every eye in the room fix on me. There was a little amusement in those looks. A little contempt. And beneath it, an ill intent that made the skin on my arms tighten.
"Adriana, we're wearing the same dress! We're truly of one mind!"
Vittoria came to me and took my hand as if we were sisters. Only then did I see that the red dress on my body was cut exactly like hers.
"It sits better on you, Vittoria," Dominic said, sparing no chance to lower me while he lifted her. "Adriana's heavy and plain now with the belly. How could she have half your charm?"
"Dom, you can't talk that way. To my eye, your wife's more striking than ever, carrying like that."
Marco caught my hand and dragged his palm slow across the back of it, his eyes full of that loose, grasping heat. I tried hard to pull free, and found his grip only tightened. He raised his brows at me, unhurried, and I heard the small dry crack of his knuckles going one by one.
"I like the Don's wife just like this. Feels good under the hand."
I cast a look at Dominic. A plea, the last one I had. He met it with nothing at all.
"You are what you are now. My brother pays you a compliment, that's your good fortune. Don't be ungrateful."
I gritted my teeth, and the words scraped out through the gap in them. "Dominic. I am your wife."
Then, slowly, he stood from the sofa and pulled me toward him.
