At those words, the Castellano soldiers froze mid-strike.
Seraphina stood off to the side, eyes narrowing as she studied me.
"What did you just say? That you're the Don's wife?"
I met her gaze without flinching. "That's right. If Dominic Valente finds out what you've done to me, none of you will walk away from this."
I laid the truth bare, certain that Seraphina would stop.
Instead, they burst out laughing in unison.
"This filthy civilian has lost her mind! She actually thinks she's the Don's wife?"
"Just because she looks a little like Lady Seraphina, she has the nerve to claim our lady owes everything to her?"
"Everyone across the underworld knows the Don adores Lady Seraphina and no one else. You're nothing but a wretched outsider who snuck in here, and you dare call yourself his queen? Do you have a death wish?"
Seraphina's lips curled into a vicious smile.
"I assumed that since you managed to slither into this estate using that face of yours to seduce the Don, you'd have at least some cunning. Turns out you're just a brainless fool."
"I've been married into the Valente household for ages, and I've never once heard of a so-called queen. You're a civilian without a single connection to any Family. What could possibly qualify you for that title?"
"If you were truly the Don's wife, why would you be living alone in the Forbidden Wing, where not a single soul dares to tread?"
With that, Seraphina touched the hollow of her throat, a gesture that looked like feminine delicacy, and turned to the other soldiers with her order:
"Cut off this wretch's limbs. Let's see how long that sharp tongue of hers lasts."
The soldiers drew their blades and closed in on me.
None of them knew the real reason the Forbidden Wing stood so desolate.
It was because the Don forbade any living creature from coming near. Even a stray associate who wandered too close to the perimeter had been found skinned and strung up along the fence line, left there for days before the body was cut down.
He had kept my identity hidden because he wanted to wait until our child was born.
Then, before the entire underworld and every Family with a name worth speaking, he would crown me in a ceremony no one would ever forget.
And the reason he was absent today was precisely because he had divined through the old ways that this was the day our child would arrive.
He had gone personally to summon the most powerful men across the Five Families and beyond, so they could witness the birth of the Valente heir.
To welcome the future sovereign of the empire he had built.
And now, every one of those precautions had become the very reasons Seraphina refused to believe me.
Watching them close in, panic seized me. I screamed, "I am the Don's wife! If you don't believe me, go ask Dominic Valente yourself!"
They didn't even pause. Blades rose and fell.
Agony tore through me, bone-deep and blinding, as my limbs were severed one after another.
My whole body convulsed. Every breath came thinner than the last.
Seraphina clapped a hand over her mouth, laughing. "Oh, look at her! No arms, no legs, just that swollen belly. She looks like a turtle pulled into its shell!"
The others doubled over with laughter, clapping and cheering. The sound bounced off the stone walls of the Forbidden Wing and came back hollow.
I glared at them through a haze of red, my voice raw and shaking. "You will regret this."
Seraphina stepped closer and looked down at me.
"In all the underworld, no one has ever made me regret a thing."
"But I can certainly teach you what regret feels like."
The moment the words left her lips, she shaped her hand into a blade and sliced my belly open.
A fresh wave of agony swallowed me whole.
Through the blur of fading consciousness, I watched Seraphina reach inside me and pull out a blood-soaked infant boy.
He was alive. His tiny fists swung on instinct, batting at Seraphina's arm as if in protest.
Seraphina stared at my son, eyes widening.
"A mongrel born from a civilian, and his life force is this strong?"
"What a pity. You're still nothing but outsider filth. Leaving you here would only taint the Valente name. Today, I'll clean house on the Don's behalf."
Terror flooded every fiber of my being. My voice came out barely above a whisper.
"He is the Don's child. You must not harm him."
Seraphina's brows twisted together, and she fixed me with a look of pure contempt.
"You wretched civilian. To save this bastard, you'd tell a lie that absurd?"
"The Don's power is beyond measure. A woman with no Family blood could never carry his heir."
The other soldiers chimed in.
"Exactly. The Don's reach is so vast that anyone outside the bloodlines would be destroyed just trying to get close to him."
"You're a nobody. You don't even have the standing to be with him, let alone bear his child."
"This bastard is obviously the product of some affair with a low-ranking guard. And you have the audacity to pass it off as the Don's heir? The nerve."
They weren't entirely wrong. The gap between a civilian and the head of the Valente empire was vast beyond reckoning.
The Don, above all, was a man no outsider should have been able to touch, let alone conceive a child with.
That was why he had given me everything, day after day. His resources, his protection, the full invisible weight of his empire restructured around my survival.
It kept me hidden and untouchable, and it remade my life until the barrier between our worlds slowly dissolved.
Even so, it had taken us years of failed attempts and quiet grief to conceive this child.
"Everything I've said is true. If anything happens to this child, no one here will survive the Don's wrath. He will reduce the Five Families to ash and ruin!"
Under the Don's protection, my body had long surpassed anything a civilian should have endured.
But now, broken and bleeding, I could feel my life draining away with terrifying speed.
I poured every last scrap of strength into those words, praying Seraphina would spare my child.
She only gave a cold, thin smile.
"The harder you beg for this bastard's life, the more I want to kill him."
She raised my son high and hurled him at the ground.
"No!"
The scream ripped from my throat. It changed nothing.
All I could do was watch as my son slammed into the stone.
"He's still alive?"
Seraphina stared at the infant still squirming on the ground, murmuring to herself.
"Let's see just how hard this little mongrel is to kill."
She lifted her foot and brought it down on him.
The impact shook the floor.
The blow carried her full, devastating force.
It cratered the stone beneath him.
Every soldier there was certain the child was dead.
But his tiny hands still moved, waving as though nothing had happened.
"I refuse to believe I can't kill one worthless mongrel!"
Seraphina's composure shattered. She called for white phosphorus and sent it crashing down on my son.
White-hot flames engulfed him in an instant.
I was close enough to feel the searing heat scorch my skin.
Fear and anguish devoured me from the inside out.
My child was not just the future of the Valente bloodline.
He was the culmination of years of hope between the Don and me.
Three years I had carried him in secret. My own flesh and blood.
All those years, the Don and I had treasured him more than our own lives.
And this tiny, newborn boy had never even been held. Not once.
He was swallowed by merciless flame before he ever knew what an embrace felt like.
Tears streamed down my face, covering every inch of it.
Seraphina looked at the charred, motionless body and let a smile play across her lips.
"The little mongrel is finally dead."
The other soldiers beamed.
"A civilian's mongrel, tough as leather. Thank heavens Lady Seraphina is so resourceful!"
"Exactly. One look at the brat and you can tell his lowly guard father was just as worthless and disgraceful."
"Congratulations, Lady Seraphina, for ridding the Valente name of this stain!"
Bathed in their praise, Seraphina lifted her chin and cast a sidelong glance at my dead child, admiring her handiwork.
Satisfaction spread across her face.
"Don't worry, little bastard. I'll find your bastard father soon enough. Your whole wretched family can reunite in death."
The words had barely left her mouth when the iron gates of the estate compound blew inward with a sound like cannon fire. A voice rolled across the grounds, shaking the walls of the Forbidden Wing itself:
"What have you done?"
Dozens of armored SUVs tore through the courtyard, headlights cutting the dark like falling stars, doors already opening before the vehicles stopped.
The Don had arrived.
And with him, the most powerful men across the underworld, every one of them summoned to witness the arrival of the Valente heir.
