"Wait," he said, his voice unsteady. "Adriana was one month pregnant? Then what happened to her baby?"
"I thought only one person was kidnapped," he continued, confusion and unease creeping into his tone. "What does any of this have to do with her?"
At that, Adriana stepped forward without hesitation. Her hand rose swiftly, striking his face with a loud, sharp slap.
The sound cracked through the sitting room like a pistol shot. Not one of the soldiers standing along the wall moved. Not one of them breathed.
"You have no right to ask that!" she shouted, her voice filled with rage and pain.
"If either of you had bothered to answer your phones, we wouldn't have been caught in that landslide!" she continued, her eyes blazing. "We wouldn't have been trapped there. And our baby wouldn't have died!"
Her voice broke slightly, but she forced herself to continue. She smoothed the seam of her sleeve flat with two precise strokes, and when she spoke again, her words carried the cold clarity of a verdict read aloud.
"Maybe it's better this way."
"You two never deserved to be fathers. Or husbands," she said bitterly. "Wasn't it obvious that you cared more about Viviana and her child?"
"Now you can finally have your so-called 'real family.' Whatever happens to our children doesn't matter to you anyway."
Luca stood frozen, one hand still touching his cheek where the mark of her slap remained. His expression was blank, as if he couldn't process what he had just heard. The Consigliere of the Falcone Family, the man who could talk a federal judge into a continuance without raising his voice, stood there with nothing.
Dante, on the other hand, seemed to finally grasp the full weight of the situation. His face turned pale, his body stiff with shock.
"You're saying… Bianca was actually kidnapped?" he asked, his voice trembling. "Why didn't you call me?"
"You got caught in a landslide trying to save her?" he continued, panic creeping into his tone. "Why didn't you tell us?"
But it was too late. Far too late for questions, for regret, for anything at all.
I looked at him calmly, my voice steady but cold. "When you ignored my first seven calls, I was tied up, being beaten."
"When you finally answered the eighth call, I was already worthless to them," I continued. "They decided my baby's life wasn't worth sparing."
"You could have saved us, Dante," I said softly. "At first, the kidnapper only wanted money. He never planned to kill our child."
Those words shattered him completely. Dante collapsed to the ground, burying his face in his hands as he began to sob uncontrollably. The Underboss of the Falcone Family, the man whose hands had pulled bullets from living men without flinching, knelt on the floor of his own house and wept like something inside him had finally been cut that couldn't be sutured back together.
Viviana rushed forward instinctively, trying to comfort him, wrapping her arms around him.
But this time, he pushed her away without hesitation. The force sent her stumbling back, her hand scraping against the floor, leaving a streak of blood behind.
Her eyes widened in shock. It was the first time she had ever been rejected like this. Her fingernail pressed into the pad of her thumb until the skin blanched white.
Ignoring her entirely, I turned to Luca, my gaze cold and unyielding.
"Do you know something interesting?" I said. "The kidnapping case you're handling… the victim and the plaintiff are right in front of you."
The silence in the room changed. It thickened. Even the clock on the mantle seemed to hold its breath.
The realization hit them both at once. Their expressions changed instantly as suspicion flickered in their eyes, both of them turning to look at Viviana.
"N-no, it wasn't me!" she stammered, panic rising in her voice. "I swear, it wasn't me!"
"I was at the mall that day too," she continued hurriedly. "I was a victim as well! How could it be me? How would I even know it was Bianca who got kidnapped?"
In the past, her tears would have been enough to soften their hearts immediately. They would have rushed to comfort her without question.
But this time, neither of them moved.
Instead, they exchanged a silent glance, their expressions darkened by doubt and something that looked dangerously close to realization. Two brothers raised in the same house, trained by the same Don, and for the first time in years they were looking at the same truth from the same side.
I stepped closer, my voice calm but carrying a final, undeniable weight. My thumb rubbed the pale mark where my wedding ring had sat.
"I never told anyone where it happened," I said slowly. "Or when."
I looked directly into her eyes.
"So tell me, Viviana… how did you know I was at the mall?"
