"Let me take you to the hospital first. You're already fragile, and yesterday I... nothing else can happen to you."
Luca didn't look at me once when he said it.
Arianna clutched the front of his shirt, her voice small. "But what about Bianca..."
"I'll come back for her."
He carried Arianna out without looking back.
His footsteps faded down the hall.
I was the only one left, lying on the cold floor.
I stared at the ceiling. My vision blurred, slowly, then all at once.
I laughed.
It came out hoarse and hollow.
My hand found my stomach. My fingers were shaking.
"Baby, did you see that?"
"Your daddy doesn't love Mommy. He doesn't love you either."
"How could Mommy... ever dare bring you into this world."
I don't know how long I lay there before my phone buzzed beside me.
The car I'd called earlier had arrived.
I pressed my palms against the floor and pushed myself up, inch by inch. My body felt like it had been taken apart and put back wrong. Every movement sent tremors of pain through me.
But I stood up.
One step at a time, I walked toward the door. Past the chair where the rope still hung loose. Past the threshold that smelled of his cologne and her perfume and something copper underneath.
Blood ran down my legs. I couldn't feel it anymore.
By the time they wheeled me into the operating room, my consciousness was already slipping.
Voices drifted in and out.
"Miscarriage... she needs a D&C..."
"Where's her family?"
"There's no family."
I don't know how much time passed before I opened my eyes again.
Before I could figure out where I was, the door slammed open.
"Bianca!"
Luca stormed in, breathing hard. Two of his soldiers flanked the doorway but didn't follow. They knew the look on his face. Everyone who worked for the Barone Family knew what that look meant.
He crossed the room in three strides and seized my wrist. His grip was so tight I thought the bones would splinter.
"You have the nerve to just lie here?"
His voice was low, but the fury in it was unmistakable. His signet ring dug into my skin where his fingers locked around me, and it wasn't moving. It wasn't rolling. The ring was perfectly, terribly still.
"Arianna's spleen ruptured because you pushed her. Massive hemorrhaging. She's in emergency surgery right now. You're the same blood type. You're giving her a transfusion."
The fog in my head cleared instantly.
What he was accusing me of was so absurd that for a moment I forgot the pain entirely.
"I didn't push her." I wrenched my hand free, my voice raw and cold. "Luca, have you lost your mind? You want me to give blood? I just had a—"
"You're still denying it!"
He cut me off, his eyes darkening with something vicious.
"I saw it with my own eyes. You pushed her down those stairs. Arianna is the one covering for you because she's too kind, afraid I'd blame you. She protected you, and you won't even save her life?!"
I watched him construct his own version of reality and convict me with it. It was so ridiculous I almost laughed. "Who asked for her kindness? I didn't do it, and I didn't do it!"
"If something happens to Arianna, how are you going to keep your place with the Romanos? Is that what you want? For them to cut you off? Would that make you happy?"
He wasn't listening to a single word I said. His brow furrowed like he genuinely believed he was looking out for me.
"You and Arianna have the same blood type," he said. "You're donating. Consider it your apology."
Something lodged in my chest. I couldn't breathe.
"I told you. I didn't push her." Every word was deliberate. "And I just—"
"Stop pretending to be sick." Luca's frown deepened, his patience visibly fraying. "Bianca, when did you become like this? You won't own up to what you did, and now you're playing the victim?"
I lost every last shred of desire to communicate with him.
When someone has already decided you're guilty, nothing you say will ever be the right thing.
Luca grabbed me and dragged me off the bed, hauling me toward Arianna's operating room. The soldiers in the corridor flattened against the wall as we passed, eyes down, mouths shut. Omertà ran both ways in the Barone house. They saw nothing. They would say nothing.
A doctor stood by the entrance. The moment he saw Luca, he straightened. A bought physician knew which family paid his salary and what the cost of hesitation was.
"Draw her blood." Luca didn't waste a single word.
The doctor glanced at me, hesitation flickering across his face. "But this young woman's complexion..."
"She's fine." Luca cut him off. "Draw it."
I was pushed into a chair. My sleeve was rolled up. When the needle pierced the vein, the cold spread up my arm like ice water filling my veins.
The blood left me drop by drop.
I'd just had a miscarriage. I had no strength to fight back. All I could do was let my head fall against the chair and stare up at the white light overhead, watching the halo pulse and expand, pulse and expand.
My consciousness began to drift.
Luca suddenly took my hand. His voice softened. His signet ring rolled once against his knuckle, slow and deliberate, as the words came.
"Bianca, as long as Arianna pulls through, everything that happened these past two days... we'll pretend none of it ever happened."
I didn't look at him.
"I know you have a problem with her. It's because she has feelings for me."
"But I've told you so many times. What I feel for Arianna is the bond of growing up together. She's no different from a little sister to me."
"My wife will only ever be you."
"Once you're feeling better, we'll have the ceremony. I'll give you the grandest wedding. The Barone name, the feast, all of it."
"So, Bianca, be good. Stop making trouble."
A sister he'd slept with and still called pure?
What if Arianna got pregnant with his child?
Still a sister then?
But those thoughts barely flickered through my mind.
They were gone almost as soon as they came.
None of it mattered anymore.
I was leaving.
Seven years of propping Luca up, plus this blood I was giving now. That was more than enough to repay the debt of him pulling me out of the parish home.
After this, whoever Luca loved, married, or took to bed had nothing to do with me.
When the transfusion was over, I could barely stay on my feet.
My vision went black. I nearly collapsed right there on the floor.
But Luca didn't notice. He was already gone, checking on Arianna.
I pulled out my phone. My fingers trembled as I sent my location to Serafina.
"Can you come get me?"
The reply came almost instantly.
"On my way."
I turned and walked back to my hospital room.
I left the miscarriage report on the bed.
All I took was my ID, my personal documents, and the broken watch that had belonged to Sister Bellandi.
One step at a time, I climbed to the hospital rooftop.
A private jet was already waiting. Its engine hummed low against the night, the Falcone crest barely visible on the tail fin.
The cabin door opened. A doctor Serafina had arranged stood inside and rushed over the moment she saw me, checking my vitals.
Clouds churned outside the window.
When I arrived at the private hospital on Falcone-controlled ground in New York and saw my new husband lying there in his coma, the first thing I did was hold our ring-bearing hands together, take a photo, and post it with a caption:
"Taken."
From that moment on,
Luca Barone had nothing to do with me.
