When I came to again, the sharp sting of antiseptic filled my nostrils. I frowned, the smell alone enough to make my stomach turn.
I struggled to sit up, but Riccardo's voice cut through the silence before I could manage it. "You're hurt. Rest. What are you squirming around for?" A pause, then a sigh heavy with irritation. "You never make anything easy."
I clenched my fingers into the bedsheet. "And whose fault is it that I ended up like this?"
Riccardo's expression froze for a split second before hardening over. His signet ring caught the overhead light as his hand tightened around the arm of the chair. "You brought this on yourself. Don't blame anyone else."
His words drove through my chest like a blade, buried themselves deep in my heart. The pain stole every word I might have said.
When I stayed silent, he opened his mouth to speak again, but a shrill ringtone cut him off.
He answered, and just like that, his voice softened without him even seeming to notice.
"Serafina... yeah... I'll pick some up for you on my way over..."
He hung up and the warmth vanished, replaced by ice. "Serafina is being generous this time. She's not making a formal complaint to the Capos. Her birthday is in two days. Don't show your face there."
Two days. That was exactly when I'd planned to leave.
I lowered my gaze and said nothing.
The moment Riccardo walked out, my phone buzzed with a text from Serafina.
Don't kid yourself into thinking Riccardo actually cares about you. He's planning to propose to me at my birthday gala. You're welcome to come watch, of course, but he'd really rather you didn't.
I turned off the phone and stared out the window at the blue sky and drifting clouds. My mind pulled me back to the day Riccardo had proposed to me.
After I'd said yes, he'd lifted me off my feet and spun me around, laughing, again and again. He'd even had fireworks set off over Barone territory for nine straight nights to celebrate.
Back then, he'd been so happy he wanted the whole world to know I was his.
But after that... everything changed. The compound was the same. The man was not.
The next day, I was discharged and went back to the estate. I punched in the gate code, and the panel flashed red. Incorrect password.
I tried again. And again. Each time the same cold rejection blinked back at me, until the system locked me out entirely.
That code, the one my fingers had entered thousands upon thousands of times, now told me I didn't belong here.
I remembered the day I'd first moved into this house. Riccardo had taken my hand, and together we'd set the password.
"Just in case a certain someone forgets," he'd said with a grin, "I picked the day we got together."
That date was also my birthday. There was no way I'd gotten it wrong.
Yet the alarm kept blaring, each beep a slap across my face.
I was still standing there, frozen, when the door swung open from inside.
Serafina stood in the doorway wearing my silk nightgown. She yawned, slow and lazy, as if she'd just rolled out of bed.
Then she swept her hair to one side, deliberately baring a neck mottled with hickeys. Her eyes glittered with satisfaction she didn't bother to hide.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetie. Riccardo brought me home last night, and I threw a little fit, so he changed the code." She tilted her head, lips curling. One lacquered nail tapped lightly against the doorframe. "Guess he forgot to tell you."
