Three weeks ago, the stairs gave way.
I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, crossing the main hall of the Valente compound with two paper bags of food I'd cooked because Nico had skipped breakfast again. Garlic rice. Braised chicken in Sunday gravy. The kind of meal his grandfather used to love, the kind Nico never thanked me for.
Then the staircase buckled beneath me and I fell.
The bags flew from my hands. Hot sauce exploded against my dress. Heat. Pain. The crack of old wood splintering. My body hit the landing hard, shoulder first, and I collapsed against the stone floor at the bottom.
I screamed Nico's name.
The banister groaned above me, a loose rail swinging free, just enough motion to send dust raining down, just enough to steal the air from my lungs.
Then everything went dark.
When I woke up, pain was everywhere.
A doctor told me one of the household soldiers heard me scream. He forced through the service entrance. He carried me out to the car while I was slipping in and out of consciousness, drove me to the private clinic the family kept on its payroll three blocks from the compound.
But Nico? Nico wasn't there.
They said they needed my husband's consent to operate. There were risks. Time mattered.
They called him.
Again and again. Ninety-nine times but he didn't answer.
When he finally did, his voice was flat. Annoyed.
"Bianca, what now? I told you, I'm in a fucking sit-down."
My throat closed. "Nico! I fell… I'm— I'm bleeding. I'm at the clinic. Please."
Footsteps. Laughter.
"Nico, baby, hurry up," a woman said. "We'll be late! You know how I hate to be late."
Serafina.
My twin sister.
The one who came back six months ago with bruises and tears and a story too tragic to question. The one I let into my home. Into my marriage. Into my life.
"She needs help, Nico," I had said. "Please. You can't turn your back on her."
He relented, letting her move into the compound. I cooked for her, drove her to appointments, made space in my heart for her while my own life bled away. Three months ago, she said she was pregnant by her ex-husband. She made me help her. I believed her. God, I believed her.
I never saw it coming… that all her softness, her tears, her whispered thanks, were just venom in disguise. The jealousy she'd carried for years, the hatred of my life, my happiness… she had been waiting, planning, and manipulating from the shadows.
Tears blurred my vision. My hands went to my stomach, trying to protect the baby inside me, but it was too late.
Because of the delay, my baby didn't make it.
I slipped into a coma and woke up days later, staring at the ceiling of the clinic's recovery room, machines beeping beside me. The room smelled of disinfectant and old flowers no one had bothered to replace.
That's when I heard Nico's voice outside my door.
"Keep her sedated."
"Mr. Valente," the doctor's voice sounded nervous. "It's been days. It's dangerous to keep her under this long."
"The transplant's done, isn't it?" Nico said. "Serafina's fine now. She can rest. Bianca doesn't need to know anything."
My breath caught. My hands froze.
The doctor hesitated. "You mean… she doesn't know what you—"
"I paid you to keep your mouth shut!" Nico snapped. "If you talk, you lose everything."
And that was it. The sound of my life ending for real.
Days later, I saw them together in the recovery room. Nico brushing Serafina's hair. Serafina smiling, hand on her stomach.
"You did it," she said softly. "Our baby's safe."
Everything I lost. Those words didn't just hurt but they shattered me.
I stumbled to the bathroom, locked the door, and looked at my reflection. I didn't recognize her. The woman staring back was pale, hollow, done.
The door opened behind me, and Serafina stepped in, all soft smiles and venom.
"Why are you hiding, sis?" she asked sweetly. "Don't you want to see our baby?"
I turned around slowly. "Get. Out."
She tilted her head. "You're not being very nice. After everything I took from you, I thought you'd at least try to be grateful."
"You slept with him?! You killed my baby!"
She smiled wider. "Killed? No, no. He was born alive. I have pictures."
She swiped her phone, and the screen lit up… a tiny baby boy with my eyes, sleeping peacefully in a clinic crib. My heart stopped.
"W-where is he?"
Serafina tilted her head. Her fingertips drifted to the hollow of her throat. "Oh, you really don't need him anymore, sis. Your baby… he didn't make it."
I froze, not sure I heard her right.
"Poor little nephew," she continued, scrolling through another video. "Isn't he a pretty boy? Look at him… all perfect… and now?"
She paused the video, tilting her phone toward me. The frame showed the baby, lifeless, tossed into a medical waste bin like garbage. No, no, no! My stomach churned, bile rising.
"Nico said it himself… Your baby was never his. You were cheating on him, weren't you? The dottore just followed orders. He said your child wasn't his, so…"
She shrugged, tilting her head like it was nothing. "Now he's gone. And all I have is the stem cells they harvested for me. He's dead, sis. Completely dead. Isn't that… poetic? Aw, my poor heart goes with him."
Something inside me shattered. My hands shot for her, but before I could reach her, she laughed, sharp and cold.
"You! You monster!" I gasped, but the words were hollow.
She didn't flinch. "Monster? No, I just did what had to be done. And Nico… well, he's very pleased with me."
I slapped her hard and pulled her hair. She screamed for Nico. He came running, soldiers flanking the hallway behind him, and before I could move, he grabbed me by the hair and threw me into the wall.
My head cracked against the tiles and everything blurred.
"You attacked a pregnant woman!" he shouted. "You don't deserve to be a mother! That's why your son died!"
And then he carried her out, leaving me on the floor, bleeding. The soldiers looked once, looked away, and followed him. The door swung shut. The clinic corridor went quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists in places owned by men who decide what happened and what didn't.
That's when I knew.
He never loved me. He never would.
I picked up my phone with shaking hands. "Salvatore," I told my legal fixer, "get the dissolution papers ready. I want them signed in a week."
I ended the call and didn't pause.
My thumb moved on instinct and called Dominic Corsaro. My husband's step-uncle. The Don of the Corsaro family. Ten years older than me. The man Nico hated because Dominic saw things. Because Dominic never looked at me like I was disposable.
It rang once.
"Bianca?"
I closed my eyes. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that still sat there, and I felt nothing. No. I felt the absence of everything it was supposed to mean.
"You asked me once if I'd ever choose you instead of Nico, right?"
"Yes."
"I'm choosing now. I'll marry you."
