"Because," Carina said, the smile audible in her voice, "you killed your own child with her just to have our own child."
The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. I stood frozen in the hallway, my hand clamped over my mouth to stifle the scream that was clawing its way up my throat. I waited for Tavio to deny it.
I waited for him to shout at Carina for suggesting such a monstrous thing. I waited for the man I had married to defend the life we had created.
Instead, Tavio laughed.
It was a low, chilling sound that scraped against my nerves. "Guilty? Why would I feel guilty about removing a parasite?"
My knees buckled. I had to lean against the wall to keep from collapsing.
"I wanted the child gone," Tavio continued, his voice casual, as if discussing a shipment reroute. "A baby complicates things. Custody claims, emotional attachments... it's messy. I couldn't risk her getting attached to a brat and fighting me for the Family. It was easy enough. A few pills in her morning smoothie for a week. High dosage. Nature took its course."
The room spun. The nausea returned, violent and sudden. He had poisoned me. He had murdered our baby while smiling across the breakfast table, kissing my forehead, and telling me to drink up for my health.
"If only I could kill her, too," Tavio added with a sigh. "It would be so much cleaner. Just one tragic accident. But I can't. Not yet."
"Why not?" Carina asked. "She's weak. She's vulnerable."
"Because of the trust," Tavio explained impatiently. "If she dies now, the holdings go into a blind trust until an heir is found or the Commission redistributes the territories. Her parents were paranoid. Salvatore built the whole thing with tripwires. But if she is declared unfit to lead and signs over power of attorney to me... then I control everything. The rackets, the fronts, the offshore accounts. I need her to transfer the Family seat to me first. I need her broken, not dead. At least, not yet."
"And then?" Carina's voice was eager. "Then we get married, right?"
"Of course we will," Tavio replied. I could hear the smile in his voice. "From the start, it's been you, Care. You know that. I just wanted her empire. I've spent five years playing the doting husband to a woman I can barely stand to touch. I've earned this payout."
My world didn't just crack; it shattered.
I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. Five years.
I flashed back to when I was seventeen. I was a freshman in college, naive and grieving the recent distance from my parents who were always traveling between the Family's territories. I met Tavio in the campus library. He dropped his books. I helped him pick them up.
He looked at me with those blue eyes and told me I was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. He was nobody, wearing a frayed sweater, working two jobs. I thought it was romantic. I thought he loved me for me, not for the Santoro name.
I remembered the dates on park benches because he couldn't afford dinner. I remembered defending him to my friends who said he didn't belong in our world. I remembered thinking we were building something from nothing.
And Carina?
We met in high school. We were inseparable. She was the sister I never had. When Tavio and I started dating, she was the one who encouraged it.
She was the one who told me to ignore the whispers. She was the one who held my dress in the bathroom at my wedding.
Stealing her man? No, it was worse than that. She hadn't just stolen him; she had been working with him the entire time. They were partners. I was the mark.
A memory, sharp and painful, surfaced from the depths of my mind. It was the last time I saw my parents alive.
It was three years ago, right before the wedding. My father, a man of few words but immense perception, had sat me down in his study. The room smelled of old leather and cigar smoke, and the heavy curtains were drawn against the city lights. My mother stood by the window, looking grim.
"Ambra," my father had said, his voice stern. "We cannot bless this union."
"Why?" I had demanded, furious. "Because he's not one of us? Because he doesn't come from your world?"
"No," my mother had interrupted, turning to face me. Her pearl ring caught the lamplight as she held it up, turning it slowly, studying something only she could see. "Because he is a wolf, darling. We had him investigated. There are gaps in his past. He is a chameleon. He mirrors what you want to see, but there is nothing behind his eyes but greed. He doesn't look at you with love; he looks at you like a meal."
"You're wrong!" I had screamed at them. "You're snobs! You just want me to marry some soldier from one of the other Families!"
"Do not trust Tavio," my father had warned, slamming his hand on the desk. "If you marry him, do not merge your holdings. Keep the Family operations separate. Promise me that." I remembered the weight of his hand on my shoulder, a single firm squeeze before he let go. His way of saying he would not fight me further. His way of saying he would still come back.
I hadn't promised. I had stormed out. Two weeks later, their private jet went down over the Atlantic. I inherited everything. The territories, the rackets, the legitimate fronts, the network of alliances my father had spent a lifetime building. And in my grief, I turned to the only two people I thought I had left: Tavio and Carina.
I had been so blind. So stupidly, willfully blind.
"I can't wait to be your wife," Carina giggled.
The sound of their laughter snapped me back to the present.
I could walk in there. I could scream. I could grab a knife from the block and attack them. I could tell them I knew everything.
But what would that achieve?
Tavio was right about one thing: I was physically weak right now.
No. I couldn't fight them with force. I had to fight them with the one thing they wanted.
I took a deep breath, forcing my heart rate to slow. I stepped backward until I was inside the master bedroom.
I was done crying. The tears had dried up the moment he admitted to killing my baby.
I dialed a number. It rang twice before it was answered.
"Miss Ambra?" The voice was gravelly, familiar. It was Arturo. He wasn't just an advisor; he was the Family's Consigliere, the man who had run my parents' world for thirty years. He was the only person left who was loyal to the bloodline.
"You are supposed to be in the hospital. Is everything alright?"
"I need you to initiate Protocol Zero. Immediately."
There was silence on the line. I heard the faint sound of reading glasses being folded shut, a single precise motion. When he spoke again, his tone had shifted from concern to something colder, older, professional.
"That will freeze the Family's operations. It will alert the Commission. It requires immediate liquidation of all accessible holdings."
"Do it," I commanded. "I want every penny moved. I want the estate placed into the blind trust. I want the vehicles transferred. I want the joint accounts drained. Move everything to the holding company in the Caymans. Put it in your name temporarily if you have to, just get it away from him."
"Him? You mean Mr. Nero?"
"Make it clean," I whispered, glancing at the bedroom door. Down the hall, their laughter continued, muffled, careless. "Tavio cannot know until the money is already gone."
"And the reason?"
I looked at the wedding photo on the nightstand. Tavio's smiling face. The lie.
"Because I am divorcing Tavio," I said.
And I am going to leave him with exactly what he had when I met him. Nothing.
