But I couldn't stop myself.
"I've been waiting for you all day." My voice cracked, fragile as thin ice over deep water. "Can't you stay with me tonight?"
Even then, with the truth already laid open between us like a wound, part of me still wanted to believe. Still wanted to convince myself that the boy I'd grown up loving in the cold marble halls of two old Families could never betray me this completely. For our child. For the pact that had bound the Vale name to the Ferraro blood. For everything we had once been, before tribute and turf and the endless hunger of the Family had hollowed him out.
Miles looked down at me. For a moment, guilt flashed across his face, raw and unguarded. His fingers rose to brush away the tears streaming down my cheeks, and there was a tenderness in the gesture that gutted me precisely because I knew how cheaply it had been spent elsewhere. His thumb pressed once, absently, against the bare spot on his other hand where his Don's ring used to sit, a phantom reach for an authority he was already trading away. Yet he couldn't meet my eyes.
"I..." He hesitated.
"What is it, baby—"
His phone beeped.
Instantly, everything changed. His attention shifted. His expression shifted. His priorities shifted. Just like they always did, the way a soldier turns at the sound of the Don's whistle, the way every man in this world chose the Family over the woman who shared his bed.
"Darling, I can't put you above Family business." His voice softened with that false patience I had come to hate, the smooth tone he used at sit-downs when he wanted men to believe he was reasonable. "Please understand." He paused. "I'll send word to your mother. Ask her to come stay with you."
When I didn't answer, he finally looked at me properly. And the expression on his face faltered, that practiced calm slipping. Because I wasn't looking at him like a husband anymore. I was looking at him the way you look at a stranger across a crowded room. The way you look at a man whose name no longer means anything to you.
"Rowan..."
"Go." My voice was calm. Too calm. The stillness frightened even me.
That final chance I had offered him, the last thread I'd held out across the ruin of us, was discarded without hesitation. Just like everything else I had given him.
For a moment, he stood frozen, as if some part of him understood that a door was closing that he would never open again. Then he turned and left. The bedroom door clicked shut. Moments later, the front door followed, the heavy bolt sliding home. Then came the low rumble of the armored sedan starting in the driveway, the engine our enforcers kept tuned for outrunning trouble. And finally, silence.
A vast, suffocating silence settled over the Vale estate, pressing against the obsidian floors and the dark-paneled walls. As though something had been removed from the house forever. As though a man had been buried beneath it and no one had spoken the words.
Slowly, I dragged myself out of bed, one hand bracing the weight of my belly, the other gripping the bedpost. I called down for a car. Old Lucian answered, as he always did, the family driver who had served the Ferraro blood for thirty years and never once let his voice betray a single thing he'd seen. It was rough, that voice, but it steadied me.
"Where to, Signora?"
"The waterfront villa." I swallowed hard, the name catching in my throat. "The Ferraro property on Riverside."
I heard, faint through the line, the soft double-tap of beads against the rearview mirror. Lucian touching his rosary twice before he pulled away, the way he did whenever he sensed a drive would end in trouble.
When we arrived, Miles's car was already parked outside, a black shape against the night. Across the street, I watched him step out and scan the area carefully, his eyes sweeping the shadows the way men checked for surveillance before doing something that could get them killed in any other Family. Then he climbed the steps and rang the bell.
The front door opened. Elias rushed straight into his arms.
My hands tightened around my phone until the casing bit into my palm. I recorded everything. The embrace. The smile. The kiss. The tenderness. The way his hand settled naturally against the small of her back. Exactly the way he used to hold me, in another life, when I had still believed I was the only woman who would ever stand inside that hand's protection.
Tears blurred my vision until the porch light smeared into a halo. Still, I kept recording. My thumb stayed steady on the screen even as the rest of me came apart.
Then Miles slowly lowered himself to one knee. With infinite care, he pressed a kiss against her stomach. Against the child she carried. A child he celebrated. A child he wanted. And around her throat, catching the light, I saw it: the heirloom that had belonged to my mother, the Ferraro pendant, draped against a stranger's skin. Even now I could see the way Elias's fingers drifted up to touch it, anchoring a claim that was never hers.
The pain in my womb intensified immediately. A sharp, twisting agony that stole the breath from my lungs. Yet I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't even cry out into the dark of the backseat. I simply sat there frozen behind the tinted glass, watching my marriage die on a stranger's doorstep.
A short while later, Miles helped Elias into the passenger seat. He fastened her seatbelt himself. His movements careful. Protective. Loving. The same gentleness I had once mistaken for devotion. Their laughter drifted through the night air, light and easy, the laughter of people who believed the world had already arranged itself in their favor.
I gasped as another wave of pain hit. This time stronger. More urgent. Something deep inside me tightening like a fist.
Slowly, my fingers brushed over my wedding ring. Not for comfort. For farewell. The ring would be gone soon, the alliance dissolved before the Commission like a debt called in. Just like him.
"Lucian." My voice barely rose above a whisper. "Can you follow them to the hospital?"
Lucian looked at me through the rearview mirror. One glance was enough. Concern immediately softened his weathered features, the face of a man who had seen blood spilled and never flinched, yet flinched now for me. Without asking questions, without a single word that might shame me further, he pulled the car back into traffic and held a careful distance behind them.
When we arrived at the private clinic, the kind of place the Families used when discretion mattered more than money, he even came around and helped me out of the car himself.
"Signora." He held the door open gently. "Having a child is precious." His voice was quiet. Steady. "A woman deserves happiness and peace. Not a man shameless enough to abandon his wife." He paused, his jaw tightening. "Please take care of yourself. Don't carry all this pain alone."
Something tightened in my throat, hot and aching. This old man, who answered to no one but the memory of my father, had shown me more compassion in a few minutes than my husband had shown me in years.
I nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Lucian."
Then I lowered my hand to my stomach, feeling the small life shift beneath my palm. And a sense of calm slowly settled over me, cold and clear as still water. For the first time all night, I could finally think clearly.
I wasn't living for Miles anymore. I was living for my child. For the Ferraro blood that ran in its veins, the blood of a Don who had refused to bow.
"Don't worry." My voice was steady now. Stronger than before. "That man means nothing to me now."
I looked toward the brightly lit entrance of the clinic, toward the doors and whatever waited beyond them. And for the first time, I truly believed my own words.
"Soon, I'll be completely free of him."
