As I walked away, Dominic's expression darkened like a sky before a storm. For a fraction of a second, something raw and unguarded flickered behind his eyes. Panic. His body shifted forward, one step already forming toward me.
Then Serafina clutched her stomach and let out a low, pitiful groan.
"Dominic, it hurts." Her voice cracked with practiced precision, tears pooling at her lash line before she forced out the rest. "But Adriana's more important. Go after her."
Dominic hesitated. One second. The muscles in his jaw worked beneath the skin, and then he shook his head.
"No. Forget about her. Right now, your condition is what matters most."
He glanced down the corridor where I had disappeared, and I heard his voice, low and dismissive, carrying through the sterile hallway of the private family clinic like the final nail in a coffin.
"Adriana's just throwing a tantrum. She's eight months pregnant. She'll be terrified once she realizes I'm serious about the annulment. I'll deal with her later."
Then he gathered Serafina into his arms and carried her through the clinic doors as though she were something sacred.
As though she were the Donna.
I drove back to the compound alone. The guards at the gate let me through without a word, their eyes trained forward, their silence a courtesy I no longer deserved or wanted. I parked and sat in the car for a long moment, staring through the windshield at the house that was supposed to be ours.
The Moretti estate loomed against the dark sky, all wrought iron and Venetian stone, every window black. Since Serafina had returned to the country, Dominic had barely set foot inside these walls. The warmth that had once lived in the rooms, faint as it had been, was gone. Bled out like a body left on cold tile.
I walked inside.
The foyer smelled of cold marble and dying gardenias in the crystal vase no one had bothered to replace. My heels echoed against the obsidian floors as I crossed to the far wall of the sitting room, where a single photograph hung in an ornate gilded frame.
Our wedding portrait.
Dominic in a black three-piece suit, his hand resting at the small of my back. Me in ivory lace, a strand of pearls at my throat that had belonged to his mother. We looked like a dynasty. We looked like a lie.
I lifted the frame off the wall, studied it for one breath, and dropped it into the wastebasket. The glass cracked against the rim with a sound like a bone breaking.
I didn't want to leave a single trace of myself in this house. Not one thread. Not one ghost.
I moved through the rooms with the efficiency of someone dismantling a crime scene. Every photograph, every matched set of crystal tumblers, every small artifact of a marriage that had once pretended to breathe. I packed it all into a black garbage bag, the plastic crinkling in the silence like something burning.
I was halfway down the staircase, the bag slung over my shoulder, when the front door swung open.
Dominic walked in carrying Serafina in his arms.
The foyer light caught the sharp planes of his face. When he saw me standing on the bottom step, motionless, the bag clutched in my fist, a flicker of guilt passed across his features. Brief. Almost imperceptible. The kind of guilt a man like him would sooner cut out of his own chest than acknowledge.
"She's not feeling well after what you did." He said it flatly, as though the statement alone settled every debt between us.
"Not feeling well." I let the words sit in the air, tasting their absurdity. "Then why isn't she at the clinic? Why the hell would you bring her here?" My voice dropped, each word deliberate and sharp as a stiletto. "Do you think this compound is some kind of recovery ward for your mistress?"
"Watch your mouth, Adriana." His tone hardened, the Don surfacing beneath the husband. "I'm trying to keep the peace here. Whether you like it or not, Serafina is staying in this house."
Serafina lifted her head from his shoulder, her hand drifting to rest on her belly with a tenderness so perfectly staged it could have been choreographed.
"It's true, Adriana." Her voice was soft as silk drawn over a blade. "There's nothing going on between Dominic and me. I'm only staying for the baby."
She said it to provoke me. Every syllable was a needle slipped beneath the skin, designed to draw blood without leaving a visible wound.
The anger rose through my chest like something molten, thick and suffocating. I looked past Serafina, directly into Dominic's eyes, and spoke with a clarity that came from somewhere deeper than rage.
"This is our house, Dominic. I don't want her living under this roof."
Dominic paused. Something shifted behind his expression, a brief war between the man he might have been and the man Serafina had made him. His brow creased. His mouth opened.
Then Serafina reached for his hand and pressed it gently against her stomach.
The conflict in his face dissolved like smoke. When he turned back to me, his voice carried nothing but cold irritation.
"That's enough. You're pregnant too. How can you have zero compassion?"
He took a step closer, his shadow falling over me on the staircase.
"You pushed Serafina. I'm bringing her here so I can look after her properly. If you can't tolerate her presence in this house, then maybe you're the one who should leave."
The words landed like a backhand across the face.
I stared at him. The blood drained from my cheeks in a slow, sickening tide. My hands trembled at my sides, and the weight of the bag in my grip felt suddenly unbearable, as though I were carrying the corpse of everything I had ever believed about this man.
The baby shifted inside me. A small, insistent reminder that I was not alone, even now.
I drew one breath. Then another.
"As you wish."
My voice did not waver. It was the steadiest sound I had ever produced, and it would be the last thing I gave him for free.
Tonight would be my final night under the Moretti roof. After this, I would be gone. Dominic Moretti would be a closed chapter, a name sealed behind a door I would never open again.
With my decision carved into the silence between us, I tightened my grip on the trash bag and walked past him, through the open door, into the night.
Serafina's voice floated after me, threaded with the precise pitch of counterfeit sympathy.
"Don't fight because of me, Dominic. Look. She's so upset she even took down your wedding portrait."
Dominic's response was a low rumble of frustration, the sound of a man who had already decided the ending of this story and resented being made to watch it play out.
"She's being dramatic. Once she realizes I'm not playing her game, she'll come crawling back."
A single tear traced a line down my cheek. It caught the cold air and turned to ice against my skin.
I walked through the compound gates and into the darkness beyond. The trash bag hit the bottom of the bin with a dull, final thud. I stood there for a moment, my hand still resting on the lid, the winter air burning in my lungs.
Then I let go.
Of the bag. Of the photographs. Of the crystal and the lace and the years of silence and the very last shred of love I had ever carried for him.
The lid fell shut, and the sound echoed across the empty courtyard like a gunshot.
