But not a single person noticed the blood pooling beneath me.
I lay on the floor, screaming in agony. The marble was cold against my back, and the sound of my own voice echoed off the corridor walls and came back to me distorted, animal, the kind of sound that makes strangers look away.
No one answered.
"Help... please, save my baby..."
My mother had told me I could keep the child and take her abroad. Leave the husband, keep the baby. Those words had been carved into my mind for weeks. Donna Valente did not make offers lightly. She had laid it out in the private study of the Monaco estate with her fingertips pressed together, her voice carrying the weight of a woman who had brokered alliances between Families and never once been wrong. Come home. Bring the child. Leave the Rossetti name at the door.
I'd already decided to keep this child.
So why was this happening?
The blood was warm and spreading beneath me and I could feel my body giving up something it was supposed to protect, and the hallway was empty because every soldier, every enforcer, every man sworn to the Rossetti name had followed Tomasso out the door with Catarina and her stolen performance, and I was alone on the floor of a hospital that the Rossetti Family funded, and not a single person in this building knew I was dying.
As consciousness slipped away, I saw a nurse passing by. She froze, then rushed in.
"What happened? Someone help! Miss, don't be scared. Why are you here alone? Where's your husband? Do you remember his number? I'll call him for you!"
"I... don't have a husband..."
Then everything went black.
My baby was gone.
Four months along. Just barely formed.
The doctor said it was a girl.
I stayed in the hospital for three days. A private room on the fourth floor. The blinds drawn. The machines beeping in a rhythm that meant nothing except that I was still alive, which felt like the cruelest possible outcome.
In those three days, Tomasso didn't call me once. Not a message. Not a soldier sent to check. Not even Nino Basile with his careful glasses-cleaning and his rehearsed condolences. Nothing. As if I had already ceased to exist inside the Rossetti world.
But I saw his social media post.
Blessed with a baby boy.
Four words. Accompanied by a photo of a woman and child sleeping, shot from behind. Catarina's dark hair fanned across a pillow. The infant tucked against her chest. The angle chosen with the same deliberate care she used when she tucked her hair behind her left ear before a lie. Even in sleep, she was performing.
The comments were flooded with congratulations. Associates. Allied Family heads. Men whose names I recognized from sit-downs and territory negotiations, men who owed their positions to Valente protection they didn't even know about, falling over themselves to celebrate the Rossetti heir.
I stared at that photo. The tears came anyway.
Some things are simply cruel.
The girl I'd lost didn't even have a name yet. I'd been saving that. Waiting until she was further along, until it felt safe to say it out loud. In this world, you learned not to name things you loved too early. The Families taught you that. Name it, and someone can take it from you.
But I was grateful, at least, that I'd found out before it was too late. I could still walk away.
The day I was discharged, a nurse helped me pack my things. My hands were steady. My face was washed. I had put myself back together the way my mother had taught me, the way a Valente woman does it: from the inside out, so that by the time anyone sees you, there is nothing left to pity.
"Ms. Valente, how come no one's visited you these past few days? Are you sure you'll be okay going home alone?"
"I'm fine. Thank you all for taking care of me. I'm feeling much better."
I managed a smile and walked out of the room.
I hadn't gone more than a few steps when I heard the nurses whispering behind me. Their voices carried in the tiled hallway, bouncing off the walls the way secrets do in places that are supposed to be sterile.
"Poor thing. A miscarriage, and not a single person by her side. Where's her husband?"
"She said she doesn't have one. Probably passed away. Life really isn't fair, is it? You know the woman in the next room? Her husband adores her. He's at her bedside every single day, holding the baby. You can tell he's absolutely smitten."
"Oh, I know. That room's been a revolving door of visitors. And they're all gorgeous men, too. How come I never get that kind of luck?"
They didn't know.
The devoted husband they were gushing about was mine. The gorgeous men filing through that room were Rossetti soldiers and capos paying tribute to their Don's household, kissing Catarina's hand like she was the Donna, bringing gifts wrapped in silk for a child that wasn't even Tomasso's blood. And three doors down, the actual wife of the Don of the Rossetti Family had bled out a daughter alone on the floor and no one had come.
I walked to Catarina's door. The hallway smelled of flowers. Lilies and roses, dozens of arrangements from well-wishers, crowding the corridor outside her room like an altar. I stopped in the doorway.
Sure enough, Tomasso was lying beside her, asleep.
He looked peaceful. His jaw was slack, the tension gone from his shoulders, one arm draped across the mattress. The blood-oath scar on his right palm was visible, the one from his fratellanza with Fausto, and even in sleep his fingers were curled loosely around Catarina's wrist as if she were something precious he was afraid to lose.
Catarina had her phone out, leaning against his chest, snapping photo after photo. Her expression was the careful blankness of a woman composing a frame. She tilted her chin. Adjusted the angle. Made sure the light caught the curve of the baby's cheek.
Tomasso rolled over and pulled her into his arms, his voice low and groggy. "I thought you said you were tired. Go back to sleep."
"I'm not tired."
She looked up at him, then undid the buttons of her top and climbed on top of him.
"I want you. Give it to me."
His Adam's apple bobbed as his eyes traced her body.
"You just had a baby. Rest. Don't start something."
"I don't care. I want you."
She leaned down and kissed him.
He pushed at her a few times, halfheartedly. Within seconds, they were tangled together.
The sight made my stomach turn.
I could still feel where my body had emptied itself three days ago. I could still feel the absence. And here was my husband, the man who had built his entire empire on the name I gave him, wrapped around the woman who had put me on that floor.
I spun around and ran out of the hospital. I grabbed the tree by the entrance and threw up until there was nothing left. My knees buckled against the trunk and I stayed there, bent over, my forehead pressed against the bark, breathing in gasps that tasted like bile and cold air. A black sedan idled at the curb. Rossetti plates. The driver glanced at me without recognition and went back to his phone.
I never imagined the man I'd loved all these years could be this person.
The moment I got home, I went straight for my documents. The marriage certificate. The formal alliance papers. Every piece of evidence that bound the Valente name to the Rossetti Family.
I was going to end this. Formally. Irrevocably. A severance of the blood-alliance so complete that every territory, every arrangement, every ounce of protection the Valente name had ever extended to Tomasso Rossetti would be withdrawn in a single stroke.
When my parents had returned to Monaco, I'd stayed behind for Tomasso. I had chosen him over the Family. Over the compound. Over my mother's steepled fingers and my father's single tap of his signet ring that meant the conversation was over.
Now it was time to go.
