Seeing the mess, Dominic released me with a look of disgust.
"You broke her bracelet on purpose and injured her. Don't you think an apology is the least you owe her?"
Since marrying into the Valente Family, "I'm sorry" had become my most-used phrase.
The soup I cooked was too bland, so I apologized.
Worried that he might feel uncomfortable after drinking, I sent him a message, disrupting his peace. I apologized again.
I stumbled upon a text from Daniela, inviting him to a hotel. And once more, I found myself saying, "I'm truly sorry for invading your privacy..."
With blood in my mouth and pain in my bones, I straightened up, resigned. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band still sat, though it felt like nothing. Like absence shaped into gold.
Bowing 180 degrees to Daniela, I offered three deep apologies.
Then I looked at Dominic with cold, empty eyes.
"Is that enough?" I quietly asked.
His chest rose sharply, eyes fixed on the blood at the corner of my lips.
"Seraphina," he sneered, "your precious old man isn't here to protect you anymore. The Rossetti name doesn't open doors in this city. Not anymore. Who are you pretending to be so pitiful for?"
Before I could answer, the Family's private physician arrived, bag in hand, flanked by one of Dominic's soldiers who held the door.
Brushing past me like I didn't exist, Dominic led him straight to Daniela's side.
While Dominic's world revolved entirely around Daniela, I walked swiftly out the door.
I had barely stepped beyond the foyer of the estate when a car horn sounded twice from the darkness beyond the perimeter wall.
Two short blasts. A signal.
I saw a silver sedan idling just past the iron gate, its headlights off, and quickened my pace, hope rising in my chest like something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in years.
But before I could reach the gate, two of the Family's soldiers materialized from the guardhouse shadows, moving with the practiced silence of men who had done this before.
They grabbed me roughly, one on each arm, and dragged me back into the estate without a word, their grips bruising through the fabric of my sleeves, as if I were contraband being returned to inventory.
Inside the study, Dominic had me bound to a chair, my arms restrained behind my back with zip ties that bit into my wrists, the kind the enforcers kept in the supply closet alongside things I tried not to think about.
Without warning, he ordered the Family's private physician to drive a needle into my vein, the bore of it so thick it looked like it belonged in a veterinary clinic, not pressed against the crook of a woman's arm.
From behind the half-open door of the study, I heard the doctor speaking in a voice that trembled at its edges, the way men's voices trembled when they knew they were caught between a medical oath and the only oath that mattered in this house.
"Don Valente, although both your wife and Miss Ferraro share RH-negative blood, your wife has a long history of heart disease. Forcing a draw of this volume could trigger acute cardiac shock. I strongly advise we transfer her to a proper facility where we can monitor—"
"No need to persuade me." Dominic's voice was ice over stone. The silver Zippo was motionless in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, perfectly still. "Your only job is to make sure Daniela gets better. I'll handle everything else."
I heard his footsteps approaching across the hardwood, each one measured and deliberate, and I slowly closed my eyes.
"Does it hurt?"
His tone, for once, carried a trace of gentleness, thin as a razor's edge and just as dangerous.
"Hang in there. It'll be over soon."
I turned my head away, unwilling to waste a single word on him, staring instead at the wall where a framed photograph of Salvatore Valente's younger days hung in judgment over the room.
By the time they had drawn eight hundred cc's of blood, my lips were already turning purple, and the edges of my vision had gone soft, the study dissolving into watercolor at the periphery.
Just then, a faint cough echoed from the master bedroom down the corridor. Daniela.
Upon hearing it, Dominic immediately pushed the doctor's hand aside and ordered him to draw twice as much, his voice carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a kill order.
The doctor, drenched in cold sweat, his hands shaking around the syringe, warned him again. "If I continue, your wife could die."
