Dominic paused for only two seconds, and in those two seconds the room held its breath, the soldier by the door held his breath, and even the old house seemed to hold its breath, waiting to learn what kind of man its master truly was.
"Daniela is pregnant," he said coldly. "The baby comes first."
"But—"
Without hesitation, I interrupted the doctor. "Just do it." My voice came out steadier than I expected, hollowed out of everything except the exhaustion of nine years. "But after this, let me go."
Looking at my bloodless face, Dominic's eyes flashed with cold fury, the kind that preceded the worst of him, the kind I had learned to read the way sailors read weather.
He opened his mouth to scold me, ready to ask if I'd had enough of this childish tantrum, if I was really going to abandon our home over something so trivial.
Then Daniela's delicate voice drifted from the bedroom like smoke through a cracked door. "Dominic..."
And just like that, he left me behind. His footsteps didn't slow. They didn't hesitate. The study door swung shut, and I was alone with the doctor and the needle and the quiet, rhythmic sound of my blood leaving my body, filling a bag meant for the woman who had taken everything else.
—
Two days later.
I woke in a private room at the Family's clinic, the kind of room with no windows facing the street and a lock that only opened from the outside, still weak from the shock that had nearly stopped my heart on the study floor.
As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Dominic sitting at the side table, flipping through documents stamped with the Valente crest, his reading glasses low on his nose, the silver lighter resting beside his coffee cup like a sleeping weapon.
Our eyes locked for a long moment, and the silence between us was the silence of a room where too many things had been said and none of the right ones.
Expressionless, he set the documents aside, picked up a bowl of porridge from the tray, and moved to feed me, the spoon held with the same hand that had ordered my blood drained two nights ago.
I shook my head. "I'll do it myself."
He said nothing, just watched me quietly as I ate half the bowl, my hands trembling around the ceramic in a way I couldn't hide no matter how hard I pressed my fingers together.
Then he asked, "Do you feel unwell anywhere?"
I didn't answer the question. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger, tracing the groove where the wedding band used to sit, the skin there still slightly paler than the rest, a ghost of a promise that had never been kept. "Please give me my phone."
Perhaps my tone was too distant, too stripped of the deference he had come to expect from nine years of trained obedience, because he froze for several seconds, the lighter on the table catching the fluorescent light as if even it was surprised.
Then he called the housekeeper to bring it over.
As I checked the screen, I noticed numerous missed calls, the notifications stacked like small emergencies, each one a voice I hadn't been allowed to answer.
"Who's been calling you?" Dominic's voice cut in, sharp and sudden, the way a blade appears in a conversation that was pretending to be civil.
He never used to ask questions like this. In nine years, he had never cared enough to wonder who might want to reach me.
A hint of annoyance flitted through my eyes before I could stop it.
"Someone you don't know," I replied flatly.
He unfastened the top button of his shirt with one hand, a gesture that in another context might have been casual but here, leaning over my hospital bed with that cold gaze bearing down, felt like a predator settling into a more comfortable position before the strike.
"Seraphina, how long do you plan to keep up this spoiled act?"
"I give you an inch and you want the whole mile?"
In the past, whenever he got angry, I'd rush to reflect on my mistakes, to soothe him, to fix things, to smooth the edges of his temper with apologies I had rehearsed so many times they no longer meant anything.
But now?
I simply pointed to his buzzing phone on the side table and said, without emotion, "It's Daniela."
The moment her name left my lips, Dominic's expression softened with a hint of a smile, the first warmth I had seen on his face in days, and it wasn't for me, and it had never been for me.
