Alessia POV
Recovery was a silent war of attrition.
I blamed my pale skin and trembling weakness on the toll of the final month of pregnancy. Luca accepted the lie without question. He was too busy finalizing the "arrangements" with the doctors to notice that the life had left my eyes.
But Clara? Clara noticed.
She came to the house three days later. She looked at me with a predator's gaze, scanning for a exposed artery. She didn't see a grieving mother. She saw a rival who was about to be discarded.
We were in the library. I was standing by the window, watching the rain blur the world outside.
"You look terrible, Ava," she said.
I didn't turn around. "I'm just tired, Clara."
She walked up behind me. I could smell her perfume. It was heavy, floral, and cloying—like funeral lilies left too long in the sun.
"You know what happens after the baby comes, don't you?" she whispered, her voice dripping with faux sympathy. "Luca doesn't need you anymore. You'll be lucky if he sets you up in a condo somewhere. But I doubt it. You know too much."
I turned to face her. Her eyes were bright with malice.
"Is that what you think?" I asked.
She stepped closer, invading my personal space. "I think you're a rat, Ava. And rats get exterminated."
She lunged at me. It wasn't a real attack; it was pure theater. She shoved my shoulder, then threw herself backward, crashing into the heavy oak coffee table with a calculated force.
She screamed.
Luca burst into the room a second later, followed by my father.
"She pushed me!" Clara wailed, clutching her arm. "She tried to kill me, Luca! She said if she can't have the baby, no one can!"
It was a lie so clumsy it should have been laughable. But in this house, the truth was whatever Clara said it was.
Luca looked at me. His face was a mask of cold indifference.
"Dante," he said.
My father stepped forward. He didn't look at me as a daughter. He looked at me as a problem he had to solve to keep his standing.
He grabbed my arm with a bruising grip. He dragged me toward the fireplace.
"Discipline her," Luca commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "She needs to learn her place."
Dante picked up the iron poker. It was heavy, cold, and rusted at the tip.
I didn't struggle. I didn't beg. I just looked at Luca. I wanted him to see this. I wanted him to remember this.
"Put your hand on the table," my father commanded.
I put my right hand on the marble surface. My painting hand. The hand that had created the only beauty the Vitti family possessed.
Dante raised the poker.
The sound of bone shattering is louder than one might expect. It cracked through the room like a gunshot.
Pain exploded up my arm, blinding and white-hot. I fell to my knees, cradling my ruined hand against my chest, the nausea rising in my throat.
Luca didn't flinch. He walked over to Clara and helped her up.
"Get her out of my sight," he said.
My father dragged me out of the room. I looked back one last time. Clara was smiling, burying her face in Luca's chest.
I looked down at my hand. The fingers were twisted at unnatural angles. The swelling was already starting.
They had taken my mother. They had taken my child. Now they had taken my art.
There was nothing left to take. Which meant I was finally free.
