Dante accompanied Serena and her mother back to the ward immediately.
He summoned every doctor on the Family's private retainer for a group consultation. Two full hours. I waited and waited, no doctor ever coming, until the dizziness and vomiting dragged me under completely. I'd gone into shock by the time a passing nurse found me slumped against the corridor wall, my skin the color of old wax, and wheeled me into the emergency room where I barely received treatment. The off-book clinic operated on Falcone money, and Falcone money moved according to Falcone priorities. I was not one of them.
By the time I dragged myself back to the estate, the hallways were dim and quiet, the night guards barely glancing at me as I passed. Inside the master suite, warm light bled under the door. I could hear the low whir of a blow-dryer. Dante was drying Serena's hair, his fingers moving through the damp strands with a tenderness I had never once been given. They'd just gotten out of the bath, both wearing the matching silk pajamas I had bought for us the week after our betrothal was announced. I remembered choosing the fabric. I remembered running my thumb over the monogram and thinking the letters looked right together.
The neckline sat low. It didn't hide the kiss marks on Serena's skin. Small, deliberate bruises pressed into the hollow of her throat and along her collarbone, displayed as casually as jewelry.
"Miss Valenti, please don't misunderstand." Serena's voice floated toward me, sweet and careful, her eyes wide with rehearsed alarm. "Dante and I weren't doing anything naughty in the bedroom..."
Her fingernail dragged once across the inside of her wrist, a tiny, practiced reset, before she pressed herself closer against Dante's side and let a convincing tremor run through her shoulders.
Feeling Serena tremble against him, Dante turned a cold glare on me. The warmth drained from his face so fast it might never have been there. "Where are your manners? Didn't your parents teach you to knock before walking in?"
"Sorry. They died too early. Never got around to it."
That shut him up. For once, the man had nothing to say. The blow-dryer kept running. Serena's gaze flickered between us, measuring the silence, cataloguing who had drawn blood. Somewhere below the window, a soldier on perimeter duty coughed quietly into his fist, the only sound in the estate besides the hum of warm air and my own unsteady pulse.
I opened the closet, pulled out a change of clothes, and offered a courtesy he didn't deserve. "I'll take the guest room."
He froze for a second, then let out a contemptuous scoff. "Bianca, quit the melodrama. Quit making a scene over nothing. I just brought Serena back for dinner. Nobody's fighting you for that lousy bed of yours."
Running a low fever and in no mood to argue, I took myself to the guest room at the far end of the corridor, swallowed my medicine with water that tasted metallic from the old pipes, and lay down. The sheets were cold. Nobody had thought to prepare the room. I pulled the quilt to my chin and stared at the ceiling until the plaster blurred.
Serena didn't leave that night.
The next morning, the moment I stepped out, I caught the household staff whispering at the foot of the staircase, their voices low but not low enough. In a house run on omertà, even the maids understood hierarchy, and the hierarchy had shifted overnight in a way everyone could feel.
"All these years serving the Falcone household, and I've never once seen Mr. Falcone treat a woman this way. Ms. Bellini mentioned while watching TV that she'd never ridden a carousel, and he had an entire amusement park moved into the back garden. Played with her the whole night..."
"That's nothing. Just now he cooked for Ms. Bellini himself. Even the warm milk, he tested the temperature first before holding it to her lips."
Their voices dropped when they noticed me, but neither apologized. That told me everything. In the Family's domestic world, deference flowed toward power, and the staff had already decided where power lived in this house. It was not with me.
Through the floor-to-ceiling window, I saw the rare flower field I'd spent years cultivating in the estate's south garden. Every last bloom had been destroyed. The soil was churned and rutted, littered with the crushed skeleton of a mechanical ride, its painted horses lying on their sides like small, garish casualties. Years of careful tending, of coaxing delicate roots through the coastal soil, reduced to mud and wreckage for one night of carousel lights.
I pressed my thumb to the inside of my wrist and held it there for one measured breath.
Then I called my accountant, calm and steady, and told her to sell the cathedral on the west side of the city.
The second I hung up, a voice came from behind me.
"Bianca, why are you selling the engagement gift I gave you?"
Dante stood at the end of the hallway, face dark with anger for a reason I couldn't fathom. He was still in his robe, hair pushed back, the casual ease of the morning stripped away by whatever he'd overheard. His jaw was tight. One hand hung at his side; the other rested against the doorframe as though blocking a path I hadn't tried to take.
"Weren't you the one who insisted on having the ceremony there?"
I kept my voice flat. "I changed my mind."
Changed her mind? What was that supposed to mean? Their alliance ceremony was ten days away. The invitations had already gone out to every allied family from the Valentis to the Russos, the cathedral blessed and prepared by a priest who owed the Falcones three generations of favors. Switching venues now would be impossible. Unless she wasn't planning to marry him at all. The thought was so absurd it almost made Dante laugh. His fingers moved toward his tie before he remembered he wasn't wearing one, and the aborted gesture hung in the air like a misfire.
He was about to ask which new venue I had in mind when Serena appeared barefoot on the marble, her steps soundless, her timing immaculate. She hooked her arms around his and rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, letting her lips linger a beat longer than affection required.
"Oh my, Miss Valenti's already awake..."
She pretended to notice me only after the kiss landed, ducking behind Dante in exaggerated shyness, her face the picture of innocence. Her fingernail found the inside of her wrist again, the small drag so quick it might have been nothing, and then she was smiling, warm and guileless.
"Um, Miss Valenti, Dante cooked so much delicious food. I ate until my tummy hurt and there's still so much left. Could you maybe help me finish it?"
Dante pinched the tip of her nose, voice dripping with indulgence. "Silly little piggy. No more stuffing yourself like that. Take a digestion tablet. I'll rub your tummy."
I was starving, so I didn't refuse Serena's invitation. The kitchen still smelled of garlic and good olive oil, the counters wiped clean, a single plate left out with a cloth napkin folded beside it as though the staff had been instructed to set exactly one extra place. I sat and ate without tasting anything, my fingers steady around the fork, my breathing even. I would not give them the satisfaction of watching me unravel over a meal.
But I'd barely taken a few bites when I heard her breathy, coy giggling from the next room, drifting through the open archway with the precision of a performance pitched to carry.
"Dante, you're so mean~ You said you'd only rub my tummy..."
"Ahh, bad hands! You really can't touch there~"
Dante sat across from me, nibbling Serena's ear and murmuring a teasing apology, while his gaze drifted to me as if by accident.
