Every day, Dominic had cooked her food himself, the kind meant for a woman carrying the Falcone bloodline. He'd walked with her through the estate gardens, sent his men ahead to clear the shops so she could browse in peace, even cupped his palms to catch the sickness when it rose in her throat.
At every visit to the Family's private clinic, he'd stayed at her side, never straying a step, watching her the way a man watches something worth more than the whole territory.
I had begged Dominic so many times to give our child a name.
He always took forever to reply, the signet ring turning slow against his thumb.
"Adriana, a name is just a label. Pick any one, it doesn't matter. I have a sit-down to get to. We'll deal with it after he's born."
But the moment Vittoria Sabatini turned up carrying, Dominic had already dreamed up a hundred names for the baby in her belly.
"Vittoria, what do you think of Kingston for our boy? A name that promises great things."
"Or how about Bennett? Learned and far-reaching, a bright future ahead of him."
"No, let's just call him Matteo. I don't need him to rise above the rest. I only want him safe and sound, healthy for a hundred years."
After every visit to the clinic, he gave Vittoria a gift, either jewelry pulled from the Family's vault or a limited-edition car that never touched a public road.
"Our Vittoria made it safely through another checkup. We have to celebrate."
He even signed a villa on the coast into her name, to mark her smooth delivery.
And what did I ever get? Always the same single line:
"Adriana, thank you for all of this. I have a meet."
So this was how obvious love and its absence really were.
Heart gone cold, I set the phone down and bought myself a passage out of the country, a berth leaving in three days, far past the reach of the Family and its code.
Back in the clinic bed, I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
My chest full of desolation, I lay awake the whole night. Somewhere down the corridor a soldier shifted his weight against a wall, the faint creak of leather the only sound in a place too quiet to breathe in.
The next morning, Dominic, just as always, had his right-hand man carry in a tray of food built for a recovering woman.
Once, I would have been touched by his thoughtfulness, that even when he wasn't with me he still worried over what I ate.
But remembering how he'd stood in that kitchen last night in an apron, fussing over Vittoria, I finally understood it was nothing but a token gesture.
Tribute means nothing in the face of a true heart.
Seeing that I hadn't touched a bite, Dominic looked pained.
"Adriana, why aren't you eating? Is it not to your taste?"
"It's nothing. I miss the baby."
Dominic smiled.
"So you're missing Matteo. I miss him too. I didn't understand before, but now that I'm a father, I finally get it. I don't want to be apart from him for a single second. Our Matteo really is the most adorable child in the whole world."
"Mother's over the moon now that she has a grandson. She's holding a dinner at the old estate. We'll go collect Matteo shortly."
I said nothing. I'd already decided to walk away from the Family, so let him do as he pleased.
When the car brought us through the estate gates and I'd just stepped inside, I saw the dowager and Vittoria cradling Matteo between them, cooing over him.
Vittoria was dressed head to toe in limited-edition luxury, radiant, without the slightest worn look of a woman who'd just given birth.
Concetta doted on the child with one hand and spooned bird's nest broth into Vittoria's mouth with the other.
Top-tier treatment, truly, the kind reserved for the lady of the Family.
Vittoria spotted me and laughed a half-beat too fast, her fingers drifting to the hollow of her own throat as she said to the dowager in that snide, needling tone of hers:
"Godmother, you shouldn't be so good to me. People will start thinking I'm the daughter-in-law of this house. Adriana will get jealous. She's frail, so this broth should really go to her."
Concetta followed her gaze and looked me over, taking in the bloodstained clothes I was still wearing from the day it happened. Disgust crossed her face.
"Does my son not feed you or clothe you? Dressing like a bad omen at my table. Are you trying to disgrace this Family on purpose? Look at Vittoria. Both of you gave birth, and she's a hundred times the woman you are. Only you make such a scene."
"You couldn't sit still, running about while you carried our blood. How is it that fall didn't finish you? And you've still got the nerve to play the victim under this roof. Thank God my grandson's fine, or I'd have Dominic sever the alliance this instant."
"You knew perfectly well you had to nurse the bloodline heir, and yet you dared to take those pills. If Vittoria hadn't stepped in to nurse him, you, you jinx, would have starved my grandson to death." She smoothed the black lace of her sleeve, two slow flat strokes, before she went on. "I'm announcing it right here, before the Family. I'm taking Vittoria as my goddaughter. From now on, just like Dominic, she'll call me Mother."
