Elena Rossi POV
I tightly wrapped my bleeding palms with a thick linen napkin, tying it into a makeshift bandage. Only then did I reach for the first shrimp.
As my fingers breached the bowl, the salty brine found the open wounds on my hands.
A stinging pain shot up my arms, but my face remained a mask of placid indifference.
Salvatore watched me with a particular gleam of sadistic satisfaction.
Settling back in his chair, he announced, "Pain breeds obedience."
He said it makes a person remember their place.
He turned to Leo with a twisted smile and offered my brother a deal.
He promised to invest one hundred thousand dollars into the Rossi rackets for every single shrimp I peeled.
Leo's eyes widened with pure, unfiltered greed.
My parents gasped in delight, their faces flushed with the unforeseen promise of wealth.
They all turned to stare at me, their eyes wordlessly demanding that I work faster.
I mechanically ripped the shell off the shrimp.
My blood smeared across the pink meat as I placed it on Serena's plate.
I immediately grabbed another one.
The sharp edges of the shells dug without mercy into my raw cuts.
I peeled ten. I peeled fifty.
I peeled until my hands were completely coated in a vile mixture of blood and seafood juice.
I peeled one hundred and thirty-two shrimp.
That represented thirteen point two million dollars for my family's illicit fronts.
Serena looked at the massive pile of bloody food and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
She pushed the plate away, saying she had lost her appetite.
Salvatore abruptly slammed his hand on the table, and the dinner came to a halt.
He stood up and declared the night was over.
He looked at his men standing by the door and explicitly ordered them not to drive me back to the fortified estate.
With a chilling, feigned tenderness, he wrapped his coat around Serena and walked out of the room.
My parents cursed me loudly, calling me a pathetic failure for not keeping the Don entertained.
Leo was furious.
He realized that Salvatore was never going to pay the money—the Don was merely playing sick games with our livelihood.
I walked out of the hotel and stepped into the torrential rain.
The cold water washed the blood from my hands, stinging my abraded skin.
Leo stormed out behind me, his face a mask of rage.
He screamed that I was ruining everything.
Standing there in the pouring rain, he recklessly hurled the ultimate insult.
"You are nothing but a barren, mutilated failure!" he yelled over the storm.
"You couldn't even keep the Don entertained!" he demanded.
My breath caught in my throat as the devastating reality of his earlier whisper at the dinner table crashed over me again.
I lunged forward and grabbed Leo by his wet collar.
"He took my child and my future, and you still defend him!" I screamed, my voice breaking.
Leo shoved me hard against the wet pavement.
He sneered at my agony, mocking me for being so easily broken by the husband who had orchestrated my destruction.
He leaned down and twisted the proverbial knife deeper.
"Your womb was perfectly healthy after the miscarriage," he snarled, confirming the sickening truth.
"It was the Don's direct command to mutilate you as a permanent punishment for the forced marriage."
I sat paralyzed on the cold, wet ground.
The rain fell in cold rivulets down my face, blurring the streetlights into watery stars. The careful architecture of my six-year marriage, a structure built on a lie I had helped maintain, did not shatter; it simply dissolved, like a house of salt in the downpour.
I flashed back to the night of the family dinner—drugged by my own flesh and blood.
Sold to a man of profound cruelty.
Forced to carry his child.
Tortured on a warehouse floor.
I remembered waking up in the underground clinic.
Salvatore never came to visit me.
He had only left a voicemail, mocking me for successfully trapping him into a lifelong commitment.
I sat in the rain, staring at the dark city skyline, realizing that I had spent six years trying to love the devil. And now, the devil was going to learn what happened when his prey stopped running and started walking away.
