I stared at Damiano, almost certain I'd misheard him.
But there was no guilt on his face. Only disappointment. In me.
"Serafina, I thought you were different from all those petty, scheming women. Above using dirty tricks to bully people. But I was wrong."
My throat clenched. It felt like someone was carving my chest open, one slow cut at a time.
"Since you're the one who drugged her," Damiano said, refusing to meet my eyes, "then the consequences are yours to bear."
Luciana nestled obediently against his chest, but her gaze found mine over his shoulder, bright with undisguised triumph. Her fingers drifted to the pearls at her throat, touched them once, and fell away. She didn't need to touch them again. She wasn't cornered. She'd already won.
A violent cramp tore through my lower abdomen, something twisting and churning inside me. The pain nearly buckled my knees.
I gritted through it, my voice cold and cutting. "Damiano, where is your brain? I drugged Luciana and then sent my own man to be the cure?"
"And when you could've just called the Winslow physician..."
Before I could finish, Luciana let out a soft whimper and pressed her hand to her wound.
"Damiano, just go. Don't worry about me. I'm afraid if you actually help me, my sister will hate me even more."
"And don't blame her, either. She just loves you too much. That's why she did something like this."
I'd already decided to let go of Damiano, but I still couldn't stand there and let Luciana spew lies that dragged my character through the mud.
"Luciana, have you no shame? You drugged yourself, then threw yourself at my man and pointed the finger at me. Were you raised by wolves?"
Crack.
The words barely left my mouth before Damiano stood and slapped me across the face.
The force whipped my head to the side. A high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.
"Serafina, Luciana never once said she wanted anything done to you, but you haven't stopped attacking her. Guess that's what happens when you grow up in a church orphanage. Not an ounce of class."
"Since you love drugging people so much, tonight you're going to sit here and watch exactly what that costs."
Before I could react, he'd dragged me to a chair and bound me to it with strips of clothing.
As he pulled off his shirt, the compound was silent around us, the hallway beyond the door holding its breath the way every room in the Mancini house did when the heir's temper turned. He left me with one last sentence: "You brought this on yourself. Don't blame me."
A bone-deep chill spread through me.
The entire night, I watched the man I'd loved for ten years sleep with another woman.
Panting. Wet kisses. The sounds circled my ears like a curse that wouldn't break.
And the whole time, my abdomen screamed with pain. Cold sweat soaked through every layer I wore.
I tried to call for help, but Damiano dismissed it as another ploy for attention. Moments later, Luciana's moans grew louder, drowning me out.
At first I still cried. Then the tears ran dry, and all that was left was numbness.
Every image seared into my eyes was the same reminder: this is what happens when you love the wrong person.
The last shred of feeling I had left died that night.
The moaning lasted until dawn. The compound woke around us in small increments: a gate latch somewhere below, the distant clink of Adrian Ruggiero's keys as she began her morning rounds. None of it reached inside this room. Only then did Damiano finally untie me.
"Learned your lesson?"
He looked down at me from above.
When no answer came, he glanced down and saw my face drained white, my consciousness slipping.
Panic flickered across his features. He checked beneath me and found a pool of red soaking through.
He bent to scoop me up, ready to rush to the clinic, but Luciana's voice drifted from the bed.
"Damiano, you were too rough last night. I think I'm bleeding down there. Could you come take a look?"
"If not, you could just send one of the Ruggieros. That's fine too."
Her voice was hoarse, fragile. She looked utterly pitiful.
Damiano hesitated. His resolve softened. It had been Luciana's first time, after all, and he hadn't exactly held back.
So I watched him set me down, watched him tell me to wait.
But I was in so much pain.
I forced myself upright, called a car on my own, and staggered toward the door one lurching step at a time. My wedding band bit into my finger. I turned it once with my thumb, slow and deliberate. I had stopped hoping. I was deciding.
"Where are you going, sis?"
Just as I reached the top of the stairs, Luciana rushed over and seized my wrist.
"I'm so sorry, sis. This is all my fault. I'm the reason you and Damiano never got to sign the papers."
She tilted her face up at me, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
"Hit me, yell at me, I'll take it all. Just please don't break up with him over me..."
My head swam. A low buzz filled my ears.
"Let go." My throat was so dry it burned.
Luciana only gripped tighter, stepping closer, as if terrified I'd slip away. Her free hand rose to her pearls, touched them, then touched them again. Twice. She was cornered, and she knew it, because I was actually leaving.
"Please don't leave, sis. Damiano really does love you. He's just soft-hearted. What he feels for me is only habit. Don't misunderstand him..."
Love me?
The pain in my abdomen clenched like a fist. My legs nearly gave out, and a wave of nausea surged up with the irritation.
"Enough." My voice went cold. "Luciana, who exactly are you performing for?"
I yanked my hand back.
I barely used any force.
But in that instant, her body went limp and she tipped backward.
"Ah!"
Her shriek split the stairwell open.
I froze for a fraction of a second, then reached for her on instinct.
My fingertips grazed her sleeve, but she was already falling.
Weightlessness seized me.
Luciana's grip dragged me down with her.
The world flipped.
My back, my elbows, my knees slammed against the hard edges of each step, over and over.
Thud.
I hit the ground floor hard. My vision went black.
Then I heard footsteps, fast and frantic.
"Sera!"
Damiano's voice.
He came tearing down the stairs, steps uneven, more rattled than I'd ever heard him.
Through blurred vision, I saw him reach me.
But before he could get close, a hand caught his sleeve.
"Damiano..."
Luciana's voice, thin as thread.
"I lost my footing. It wasn't her fault. She grabbed for me and got pulled down too..."
"Go check on her first. She fell harder than I did..."
Damiano's movement stuttered.
He'd been about to come to me. But that pause was all it took. His eyes landed on Luciana's disheveled state instead.
Her collar had shifted, exposing the marks he'd left on her skin the night before.
His throat bobbed.
I thought, even if Damiano had no conscience at all, he'd at least check on me first. I was pregnant. I'd just tumbled down an entire flight of stairs in the Mancini compound, and not a single soldier, not a single retainer, had come running. The house obeyed him. Only him. And he chose her.
I watched him gather Luciana into his arms.
Careful. Gentle. Like she was something precious and breakable.
