The nurse hesitated, her face pale with anxiety.
I helplessly said, "The Don carried away the baby."
Lorenzo looked like he wanted to say more, but his phone rang. The moment he picked up, his face twisted with fury.
Without warning, he slapped me across the face.
"Serafina! What did you do to Bianca?! If anything happens to her, I swear you will regret it!"
Already weak from childbirth, I stumbled back, crashing into the railing of the private room the Family kept off the record. The nurse rushed forward, steadying me.
"Signor Falcone, your wife just gave birth! If you keep this up, you will kill her!"
But Lorenzo didn't care. He acted as if he hadn't heard. With concern for Bianca and without sparing me another glance, he stormed out of the room, his mind solely on her.
The nurse looked at me with a heartbroken face. My pale face, however, didn't have any extra expression. My face was pale, my heart empty. As if all the love and hatred had been consumed in ten years of suffering.
After the check-up, the physician instructed me to rest. It was then that I finally realized the reason why Lorenzo had lost his temper.
The baby had died and the old Don, grief-stricken, retaliated by using every hand he owned to shut Bianca out of every front club and social circle the Family touched. Desperate, she mistakenly thought that I was the one settling the score. She had run to Lorenzo, crying and exaggerating the situation and added more fuel to the fire to complain to him. That was why he had struck me.
But it didn't end there.
As tribute to Bianca, Lorenzo stripped me of my cut of the territory earnings and signed those rights over to her.
To further appease her, he even bought her the naming of twenty stars in the sky and titled each one with Bianca Renna.
During an interview at one of the Family's nightclubs, Bianca flaunted her new diamond ring, smiling sweetly. Her smile snapped into place a half-beat too fast. 'I don't consider myself a mistress. If a woman can't keep her husband's heart, she has no one to blame but herself.'
She ran a finger over her ring, her voice dripping with mockery. 'Besides, the current Signora Falcone married for the Family's money. But me? I only love Lorenzo with all my heart.'
The whole social scene erupted into chaos. Her followers showered her with praise, while others condemned her shamelessness. Some even tagged my account, flooding me with insults, demanding I step aside for her.
I stared at my phone, but instead of anger, I felt… irony.
After so many years, Lorenzo's tricks for coaxing girls haven't changed at all.
Thinking back then, Lorenzo had done the same thing for me.
After learning that I had grown up with nothing and never celebrated a single birthday, he showered me with twenty gifts on my twentieth. From a golden locket for my first year to a house of my own for my twentieth.
He said he wanted to compensate me for the suffering I had endured in the past twenty years.
I still remember that day, he took my hand under the starry sky.
"Serafina, I lost my parents when I was young. But from now on, I will treat your mother as my own. I will start the happiest family with you."
I melted in the depth of his eyes.
Naively, I thought that I had finally found someone to share a lifetime with.
But then, love had an expiration date. And once the novelty wore off, he had simply moved on to someone else.
One night, during one of our so-called dates, he left me stranded on a hillside outside the compound's territory just so he could carry flowers to his new mistress. That night, I walked for miles down the rugged trails alone. My feet were torn and bleeding and my calves were left with lifelong scars that would be hard to erase, a permanent reminder of the price I paid for loving him.
Looking back, I should have known then.
A selfish and sentimental man like him would never settle for just one woman. Our blood-bound union had always been nothing more than his excuse to justify his infidelity.
