He let go. I collapsed, gasping, my vision spinning.
"You're not off the hook," he muttered, then turned to the doctor. "Drain her. All of it. Leave just enough to keep her alive."
The doctor hesitated. "Sir, her vitals aren't stable. She's not strong enough after what happened yesterday. The blood bank—"
Dominic grabbed him by the throat and shoved him hard against the wall. "I said drain her. You work for me, not the fucking Red Cross."
The doctor didn't argue after that. His men held me down as they jabbed a needle in. I felt the blood leaving, slowly. Cold, dizzy, fading.
And then… darkness.
I woke to a bucket of ice water crashing down on me. Gasping, soaked, shaking. My head was heavy. My vision was blurry.
"Get up!" Dominic snapped.
I tried to stand but my knees buckled and I hit the floor hard. He grabbed me by the hair, yanking me up like a rag doll. I cried out.
"Dominic! Stop, please! I'm cold—" I begged.
"You think I give a shit?" he barked. "You think I don't know what you did?"
I stared at him, confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You had someone snatch my daughter!" he shouted in my face. "Lucia is missing! And while you're here pretending to be dying, your dogs are out trying to get revenge."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was ugly and broken.
"You really just said that to me," I whispered. "You really said your daughter. The same kid you had while married to me."
He sneered. "Valentina is the mother of my children. You knew about her. You just didn't like being second place."
"And you think I'd hurt a child?" I snapped. "Did you remember what innocence meant when my baby died in that garbage bin?"
He didn't flinch.
"Spare me the drama. I've got proof."
His soldiers dragged in a skinny, bruised man who looked like he hadn't eaten in a week. The kind of man the Family kept on retainer for exactly this purpose — disposable, desperate, willing to recite whatever script kept him breathing another hour.
"She paid me," he sobbed, pointing at me. "She said take the kid… kill him if you have to. I didn't know he was yours, Boss. Please, don't kill me."
I stared. "I've never seen this man in my life."
"You never stop lying, do you?!" Dominic yelled. He grabbed my arm so hard I felt something pop. "You'll confess or you'll pay," he growled.
"I didn't do anything."
Next thing I knew, we were on the jet. His private one. The Castellano family plane — the kind people only boarded once when they crossed him. He didn't say a word for the first hour. Then, two thousand feet up, he stood, unlocked the door, and yanked it open. Wind howled inside.
"Last chance," he said, voice like death. "Say you did it."
My heart slammed against my ribs. "Dominic, I didn't! Please, close the damn door!"
He smirked. "You always said you were scared of heights." He stepped closer.
"Dominic. Dominic, please!"
He leaned in. "Then scream for me, sweetheart."
And with a shove… I was falling.
The roar of the sky swallowed my scream.
I woke up screaming.
My throat was raw, my hands flailing as if I was still falling, still reaching for something that never caught me.
Then everything snapped into focus.
The white ceiling. The sharp scent of antiseptic. The steady beep of a monitor beside me.
I was in a hospital. One of the Castellano-owned clinics, from the look of it — no questions asked, no records filed. The kind of place where men came in on stretchers and left in body bags, and nobody ever called the law.
"You're safe now, Mrs. Castellano," the doctor said softly beside me, but I barely registered him.
Because I wasn't alone.
Dominic stood near the door, arms crossed, cold as ever. Valentina was curled up in a chair beside my bed, fake tears glistening on her lashes. And of course, his mother — Ginevra Castellano, the Queen of Hell herself — stood with her nose in the air like the place reeked of me. Her fingers rested against the strand of pearls at her throat, already adjusting them, already preparing whatever cruelty she'd brought to deliver.
"How are you feeling?" Valentina asked gently, her voice trembling. One hand rested flat against her stomach, pressing there as though protecting something. She was always protecting something that wasn't real.
I ignored her and turned to the doctor. "What the hell happened?"
Before he could speak, Dominic stepped forward, jaw tight with rage. "What happened?" he scoffed. "Valentina saved your damn life, that's what. I shoved you, yeah, and she, this angel you hate, threatened to blow her head off if I didn't grab you before you hit the ground. So I did. And you still passed out. She hasn't slept in two days, watching over you. And this is how you repay her?"
I laughed. A bitter, cracked laugh that bubbled out of me until tears rolled down my cheeks. "You're really gonna stand there and act like you care?"
I turned to him slowly, my voice sharp enough to cut bone. "You tried to kill me, Dominic. You almost fucking killed me. And now you want applause because you almost let me die?"
"You ungrateful little bitch," his mother spat. "You should've been left on that ground. Would've saved us all some trouble."
"Yeah," I snapped, eyes locked on Dominic. "Maybe you should've let me die. You and Valentina wouldn't have to lie anymore about what you did to my baby."
Silence.
Heavy. Suffocating. The monitor beeped into nothing. Even the soldier posted outside the door seemed to go still, the way men in this world went still when the air in a room turned to something they didn't want to witness.
Dominic finally scoffed and turned away. "She's clearly high as shit on morphine. Let's go, Valentina."
But Valentina didn't move. Instead, she clutched my hand like we were childhood best friends.
"This is all my fault," she whispered through crocodile tears. "I'm sorry, Sofia. I never meant for things to go this far."
I jerked my hand away so fast she stumbled. "Get the hell away from me."
Dominic caught her like a knight saving his queen, then turned to me with that look — the one that made men in his own Family flinch. "You better be grateful, Sofia. If Valentina wasn't so soft, I would've broken every bone in your body for how you speak to her."
They left without another word. Ginevra followed, pearls gleaming under the fluorescent light, not sparing me a backward glance.
The doctor cleared his throat awkwardly.
"I want to go home," I said, my voice hollow.
He nodded and quietly prepared my release.
When I got back to the compound, the first thing I saw waiting for me was the thick envelope. The divorce papers. They'd finally come. I went inside and grabbed my resignation letter too — the document severing me from every legal tie to the Castellano name and its operations. All I needed now was Dominic's signature. And he'd never sign them if he knew what they were.
Just as I was strategizing, he walked in without knocking, tossing a black garment bag at me.
"Put that on," he ordered. "We've got a sit-down with the Russians in twenty. I'm taking Valentina, but you're my assistant. You need to look useful."
"Why not let your whore handle it?" I said, not bothering to hide the venom in my tone.
"She'll be on my arm. You'll be in the background where you belong."
I grabbed the documents and shoved them at him. "Sign these. They're my hospital release forms."
He frowned, flipping to the last page. "What the hell is this?"
Just then, Valentina's voice rang out from the hall like a siren. "Baby! Come see how hot I look!"
His expression softened in a blink. A stupid, lovesick grin took over. Without thinking, he signed both pages and tossed them back at me.
He didn't even read them.
