My phone buzzed on the nightstand, vibrating against the dark wood like a warning signal.
I didn't need to look to know who it was.
Sofia.
Every morning at 9 AM, like clockwork, she sent a photo.
Dante pouring coffee. Dante tying his tie. Dante kissing the baby's forehead.
They were digital snapshots of the life I was denied-evidence of everything she had stolen.
Today, however, the photo was different.
It was a close-up of her wrist, adorned with my mother's emerald bracelet.
The caption read: Come get it if you want it.
I stared at the screen until my vision blurred and my grip on the phone turned my knuckles white.
I should have ignored it.
I should have stayed in my room and packed my bags for the exile the Don had promised me.
But that bracelet was the only thing my mother left me before cancer took her.
It was my history, my last tether to a world where I was loved, and Sofia was wearing it like a trophy of war.
I walked to the VIP suite in the main estate, my legs feeling heavy as lead.
The guards let me in without a word. They knew the hierarchy, and they knew I was at the bottom of it.
Sofia was sitting on the chaise lounge, looking like a queen holding court.
She smiled when she saw me, touching the bracelet with a perfectly manicured finger.
"Look at the stray dog, coming to beg at the table," she mocked.
"Give it back, Sofia," I said, my voice steady despite the violent pounding in my chest. "It doesn't belong to you."
She stood up, smoothing the front of her silk dress.
"Everything Dante touches belongs to me now. Including this."
She unclasped the bracelet and held it dangling over the marble floor.
"Kneel," she said.
I froze.
"Kneel and admit you are nothing, and I will give it to you."
I looked at the emeralds catching the light.
I thought of my mother's tired smile in her final days.
Slowly, painfully, I lowered myself to my knees.
I swallowed my pride, tasting bile at the back of my throat.
"Please," I whispered.
Sofia laughed, her eyes gleaming with pure malice.
"Oops."
She opened her hand.
The bracelet hit the floor.
The sound of gold snapping and emeralds shattering echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.
I stared at the ruins of my inheritance, paralyzed.
Before I could move, the heavy oak door opened.
Dante walked in, followed closely by his parents, Don Lorenzo and Isabella.
Sofia instantly dropped to the floor, bursting into theatrical tears.
She grabbed her own arm, where a fresh, angry bruise was forming-likely self-inflicted moments before.
"She hurt him!" she screamed, pointing a trembling finger at me.
"She tried to grab the baby! I tried to stop her and she twisted my arm!"
I looked up from the broken remains of my mother's bracelet, stunned.
I hadn't been within ten feet of the child.
Dante looked at Sofia, then at me.
He saw his wife crying. He saw the bruise.
Then, his gaze flickered down.
He saw the broken heirloom on the floor.
He recognized it. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes.
"Get her up," Don Lorenzo barked.
Two guards hauled me to my feet.
"I didn't do it," I said, locking eyes with Dante. "Dante, look at me. I didn't touch him. I came for the bracelet."
Dante looked away.
He stared at the wall, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would crack.
He knew.
Deep down, he had to know.
But admitting I was innocent meant admitting his wife was a monster, and that would destabilize the family alliance.
"The Whip," Isabella said, her voice cold and absolute.
"Twenty lashes. For harming the bloodline."
"No," I gasped, the air leaving my lungs. "Dante, please."
Dante closed his eyes.
He didn't step forward.
He didn't speak in my defense.
"Proceed," he said softly.
The word broke me more than the whip ever could.
He had sanctioned my torture.
I laughed then.
It bubbled up from my chest, a hysterical, broken sound.
I laughed at my own stupidity for believing that love mattered in a room full of monsters.
The guards dragged me out to the courtyard.
They tied my wrists to the iron post, stretching me taut.
I heard the crack of the leather slicing the air before I felt it.
The first lash tore through my shirt and bit into my skin like a branding iron.
I screamed.
I screamed Dante's name.
But as the second, third, and fourth lash fell, my screams turned to silence.
I didn't look for him anymore.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, praying that when I woke up, I wouldn't feel anything at all.
