Lorenzo lunged toward me, trying to tear the calf from my arms by force. "Stop clinging to this stupid animal and playing crazy! I don't have time for your act. Where is our daughter?"
My eyes burned red as I screamed, completely losing it. "No one touches my baby!"
To protect the whimpering calf, I bit down hard on a chunk of flesh on Lorenzo's hand. Lorenzo's face contorted in pain, clutching his bleeding hand as he stumbled backward in disbelief. A Falcone Don, marked by a woman's teeth. Behind him, the soldiers at the compound gate went rigid, hands drifting toward their coats. Camilla cried out, rushing to Lorenzo's side with a look of distress. "Lorenzo, are you alright?"
Before Lorenzo could speak, she dropped heavily to her knees and wrapped her arms around my leg. "Serafina, this is all my fault. I never should've traded on the old bond between our bloodlines to beg Lorenzo for shelter in my most desperate hour. I never meant to disrupt your family, and I never should've asked you to nurse my baby just because my own milk wouldn't come. That must've pushed you over the edge and made you lose control."
"I only told Lorenzo because I was terrified when the baby suddenly went still. I wasn't thinking straight. Otherwise I never would've said a word, and you'd never have been condemned to the exile-farm. This is all my fault. If you want to strike someone, strike me. Lorenzo is your husband. He only wanted to see you healed. He did nothing wrong. Why take it out on him like this, bite him so hard?"
I stayed silent while Camilla pleaded on without rising. Even as her forehead bruised against the packed dirt, I remained unmoved by that hollow performance. And I noticed the thing no one else did: her weeping cut off a half-second too cleanly each time she glanced away to see who was watching. At that time my own daughter was just a month old. As a mother myself, I felt nothing but the pull toward anything small and soft and helpless. I had treated Camilla's child as my own, poured every tenderness into her. And she had the heart to destroy her own child and hang the guilt around my neck.
"Camilla, don't kneel to her. Serafina is heartless and stubborn. She doesn't deserve your kneeling." Lorenzo pulled Camilla up with a pained expression and held her tightly against him. Then he turned that gaze on me, the one that made made men lower their eyes. "Serafina, I think you've gone mad. I'm your husband. Biting me so badly. Do you even want to keep living?"
The words had barely left him when a low 'moo' drifted from the mouth of the cowshed. When I heard that familiar sound of the big yellow cow, my eyes suddenly lit up. I brushed past all of them to reach him. "Honey, you're back."
Not just Lorenzo. Every man in that yard went still and silent, the way a room goes quiet when the Don enters. It took Lorenzo a long moment to find his voice. "Serafina. What did you just call that animal?"
Ignoring him, I lowered my head and gently kissed the big yellow cow's face. "What do you and our daughter want for dinner tonight?"
"Serafina!" Lorenzo's jaw locked. "I sent you to the exile-farm for a month of peace, and this is how you repay me? Playing crazy, treating an animal like your husband to disgust me?"
While he stared at me in disbelief, I calmly fetched a basin of water and knelt to wash the yellow cow's feet with practiced care. "You've been out in the fields again, all muddy. If you don't clean up properly, you're not allowed in bed tonight."
One of the bloodline murmured, uneasy. "Lorenzo, I think Serafina might really be losing it. She doesn't look like she's faking."
Lorenzo drew a slow breath. "Serafina, enough. If you're truly unwell, I'll bring a physician to you right now."
The instant a physician was mentioned, Camilla rushed forward again, sobbing. "Yes, Serafina, you've had fresh milk and clean vegetables out here at the farm, the purest air, the most peaceful and comfortable life a woman could ask for. Even if you were lonely sometimes, it was only a month. Please stop being stubborn. If you go on like this, you'll only make yourself and Lorenzo a laughingstock."
