Omerta of the Heart

On the night of our ninth wedding anniversary, my husband, Dominic Valente, brought his pregnant mistress home to the compound.

With a voice as flat and measured as if he were reading terms at a sit-down, he laid out a few instructions.

Daniela is particular about what she eats. From now on, every meal is to be different. See to it.

"She's fragile and can't sleep alone, so pack your things and move to the guest room at the end of the hall."

Without bothering to respond, I picked up the suitcase I had already prepared and walked calmly toward the door.

The housekeeper tried to stop me, but Dominic let out a cold laugh.

"Let her throw her little tantrum. She'll come crawling back in less than three days anyway."

The moment he said it, the room erupted in laughter. His soldiers by the foyer, the housekeeper, even the courier who'd driven Daniela in from the city.

Right in front of me, they placed a two-million-dollar bet. Two million in cash, counted out on the marble table in the entrance hall, wagering I wouldn't even make it through the night before begging Dominic to let me back in like a pathetic little lapdog.

But what they didn't know was that a black Maybach was already idling beyond the estate gates, headlights dark, engine running.

This time, I was truly leaving.

Just as I stepped past the heavy iron doors of the compound, Dominic called out behind me.

"Seraphina. Leave the safety bracelet. Daniela's been having nightmares lately, and she needs it more than you do."

My body went stiff.

That bracelet was the only thing my parents left me. The last piece of the Rossetti name that hadn't been bartered away, sold off, or absorbed into someone else's empire.

As I faced him, Dominic saw the redness in my eyes but remained indifferent. He stood in the doorway with one hand in his pocket, the silver lighter turning slowly between the fingers of the other.

"Name your price," he said.

How much could nine years of groveling in a loveless, blood-bound marriage possibly be worth?

I didn't bother calculating.

All I could remember was what happened the last time I refused to give Daniela something she wanted. My ski goggles, of all things. Dominic had stripped me bare and left me alone on the mountainside in the freezing cold, then taken the gondola down with her while his soldiers watched from the lodge and did nothing.

Inhaling sharply, I unclasped the bracelet and placed it around Daniela's wrist. Her hand drifted to her stomach the instant my fingers touched her skin. She held it there, cradling the slight swell, her eyes lifting to Dominic to make sure he saw.

Then I told her gently, "May the child in your womb be safe and sound."

Hearing that, Dominic surprisingly offered me a sliver of dignity.

"Seraphina, as long as you behave, my child will be your child too."

The moment he finished speaking, the bracelet on Daniela's wrist suddenly slipped and shattered on the marble floor.

A shard grazed her leg, drawing blood.

Dominic rushed to scoop her into his arms, holding her like she was made of Murano glass.

He barked at the housekeeper to call the Family's private physician. The lighter had gone still in his pocket. His hands were occupied now, both of them cradling a woman who was not his wife.

The urgency in his voice made everyone look at me with mocking eyes. The soldiers. The staff. Every person in that house who answered to the Valente name.

And honestly, I found it laughable as well.

Last night, when I had a heart attack, Dominic was on his way out to stargaze with Daniela at the vineyard overlook.

Even as I collapsed, frothing at the mouth on the living room floor, he didn't flinch. Just stepped right over me, adjusting his cufflinks as he passed.

Before I blacked out, I heard him tell the housekeeper, "Disinfect the whole living room. Daniela is coming home tomorrow. I don't want her to smell anything foul."

Gripping the handle of my suitcase, I turned to leave again.

But he grabbed my wrist, his grip the kind of force that had ended negotiations and broken lesser men. He stared at me coldly. "Apologize."

"Wha"

Before I could even speak, he yanked me down, forcing me to kneel in front of Daniela on the cold marble.

My knees scraped against the shards of jade, leaving blood stains on the pale floor. The pain shot through me like a blade, but no one in the room moved. No one would. Not when the Don had spoken.

Seeing the mess, Dominic released me with a look of disgust.

"You broke her bracelet on purpose and injured her. Don't you think an apology is the least you owe her?"

Since marrying into the Valente Family, "I'm sorry" had become my most-used phrase.

The soup I cooked was too bland, so I apologized.

Worried that he might feel uncomfortable after drinking, I sent him a message, disrupting his peace. I apologized again.

I stumbled upon a text from Daniela, inviting him to a hotel. And once more, I found myself saying, "I'm truly sorry for invading your privacy..."

With blood in my mouth and pain in my bones, I straightened up, resigned. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band still sat, though it felt like nothing. Like absence shaped into gold.

Bowing 180 degrees to Daniela, I offered three deep apologies.

Then I looked at Dominic with cold, empty eyes.

"Is that enough?" I quietly asked.

His chest rose sharply, eyes fixed on the blood at the corner of my lips.

"Seraphina," he sneered, "your precious old man isn't here to protect you anymore. The Rossetti name doesn't open doors in this city. Not anymore. Who are you pretending to be so pitiful for?"

Before I could answer, the Family's private physician arrived, bag in hand, flanked by one of Dominic's soldiers who held the door.

Brushing past me like I didn't exist, Dominic led him straight to Daniela's side.

While Dominic's world revolved entirely around Daniela, I walked swiftly out the door.

I had barely stepped beyond the foyer of the estate when a car horn sounded twice from the darkness beyond the perimeter wall.

Two short blasts. A signal.

I saw a silver sedan idling just past the iron gate, its headlights off, and quickened my pace, hope rising in my chest like something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in years.

But before I could reach the gate, two of the Family's soldiers materialized from the guardhouse shadows, moving with the practiced silence of men who had done this before.

They grabbed me roughly, one on each arm, and dragged me back into the estate without a word, their grips bruising through the fabric of my sleeves, as if I were contraband being returned to inventory.

Inside the study, Dominic had me bound to a chair, my arms restrained behind my back with zip ties that bit into my wrists, the kind the enforcers kept in the supply closet alongside things I tried not to think about.

Without warning, he ordered the Family's private physician to drive a needle into my vein, the bore of it so thick it looked like it belonged in a veterinary clinic, not pressed against the crook of a woman's arm.

From behind the half-open door of the study, I heard the doctor speaking in a voice that trembled at its edges, the way men's voices trembled when they knew they were caught between a medical oath and the only oath that mattered in this house.

"Don Valente, although both your wife and Miss Ferraro share RH-negative blood, your wife has a long history of heart disease. Forcing a draw of this volume could trigger acute cardiac shock. I strongly advise we transfer her to a proper facility where we can monitor"

"No need to persuade me." Dominic's voice was ice over stone. The silver Zippo was motionless in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, perfectly still. "Your only job is to make sure Daniela gets better. I'll handle everything else."

I heard his footsteps approaching across the hardwood, each one measured and deliberate, and I slowly closed my eyes.

"Does it hurt?"

His tone, for once, carried a trace of gentleness, thin as a razor's edge and just as dangerous.

"Hang in there. It'll be over soon."

I turned my head away, unwilling to waste a single word on him, staring instead at the wall where a framed photograph of Salvatore Valente's younger days hung in judgment over the room.

By the time they had drawn eight hundred cc's of blood, my lips were already turning purple, and the edges of my vision had gone soft, the study dissolving into watercolor at the periphery.

Just then, a faint cough echoed from the master bedroom down the corridor. Daniela.

Upon hearing it, Dominic immediately pushed the doctor's hand aside and ordered him to draw twice as much, his voice carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a kill order.

The doctor, drenched in cold sweat, his hands shaking around the syringe, warned him again. "If I continue, your wife could die."

Dominic paused for only two seconds, and in those two seconds the room held its breath, the soldier by the door held his breath, and even the old house seemed to hold its breath, waiting to learn what kind of man its master truly was.

"Daniela is pregnant," he said coldly. "The baby comes first."

"But"

Without hesitation, I interrupted the doctor. "Just do it." My voice came out steadier than I expected, hollowed out of everything except the exhaustion of nine years. "But after this, let me go."

Looking at my bloodless face, Dominic's eyes flashed with cold fury, the kind that preceded the worst of him, the kind I had learned to read the way sailors read weather.

He opened his mouth to scold me, ready to ask if I'd had enough of this childish tantrum, if I was really going to abandon our home over something so trivial.

Then Daniela's delicate voice drifted from the bedroom like smoke through a cracked door. "Dominic..."

And just like that, he left me behind. His footsteps didn't slow. They didn't hesitate. The study door swung shut, and I was alone with the doctor and the needle and the quiet, rhythmic sound of my blood leaving my body, filling a bag meant for the woman who had taken everything else.

Two days later.

I woke in a private room at the Family's clinic, the kind of room with no windows facing the street and a lock that only opened from the outside, still weak from the shock that had nearly stopped my heart on the study floor.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Dominic sitting at the side table, flipping through documents stamped with the Valente crest, his reading glasses low on his nose, the silver lighter resting beside his coffee cup like a sleeping weapon.

Our eyes locked for a long moment, and the silence between us was the silence of a room where too many things had been said and none of the right ones.

Expressionless, he set the documents aside, picked up a bowl of porridge from the tray, and moved to feed me, the spoon held with the same hand that had ordered my blood drained two nights ago.

I shook my head. "I'll do it myself."

He said nothing, just watched me quietly as I ate half the bowl, my hands trembling around the ceramic in a way I couldn't hide no matter how hard I pressed my fingers together.

Then he asked, "Do you feel unwell anywhere?"

I didn't answer the question. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger, tracing the groove where the wedding band used to sit, the skin there still slightly paler than the rest, a ghost of a promise that had never been kept. "Please give me my phone."

Perhaps my tone was too distant, too stripped of the deference he had come to expect from nine years of trained obedience, because he froze for several seconds, the lighter on the table catching the fluorescent light as if even it was surprised.

Then he called the housekeeper to bring it over.

As I checked the screen, I noticed numerous missed calls, the notifications stacked like small emergencies, each one a voice I hadn't been allowed to answer.

"Who's been calling you?" Dominic's voice cut in, sharp and sudden, the way a blade appears in a conversation that was pretending to be civil.

He never used to ask questions like this. In nine years, he had never cared enough to wonder who might want to reach me.

A hint of annoyance flitted through my eyes before I could stop it.

"Someone you don't know," I replied flatly.

He unfastened the top button of his shirt with one hand, a gesture that in another context might have been casual but here, leaning over my hospital bed with that cold gaze bearing down, felt like a predator settling into a more comfortable position before the strike.

"Seraphina, how long do you plan to keep up this spoiled act?"

"I give you an inch and you want the whole mile?"

In the past, whenever he got angry, I'd rush to reflect on my mistakes, to soothe him, to fix things, to smooth the edges of his temper with apologies I had rehearsed so many times they no longer meant anything.

But now?

I simply pointed to his buzzing phone on the side table and said, without emotion, "It's Daniela."

The moment her name left my lips, Dominic's expression softened with a hint of a smile, the first warmth I had seen on his face in days, and it wasn't for me, and it had never been for me.

Without another glance at me, he rose from the chair and stepped into the corridor to take her call, the door clicking shut behind him with the soft finality of a man choosing, again, the same thing he always chose.

As soon as he left, my phone rang, the vibration loud against the metal tray in the quiet room.

Taking a deep breath, I answered the call.

Before I could say anything, the voice on the other end broke through, anxious and urgent, the sound of someone who had been pacing for days.

"Weren't you supposed to meet me? Seraphina, did you change your mind?"

"No... I didn't. Something just came up," I said, and my voice cracked on the last word in a way I couldn't control, the way a wall cracks before it falls.

"Something came up? What happened? No, this won't do. I'm coming back. I'm flying home myself!"

I cut off the person on the other end of the secure line, my voice barely above a whisper as I lowered my gaze and pressed my lips together.

"Just give me a few more days. That's all I ask."

When Dominic returned to the hospital ward, I had just ended the call.

Noticing the faint smile tugging at the corner of my lips, a smile he hadn't seen in a long time, something in his chest twisted uncomfortably. I could tell by the way he paused in the doorway, his hand still on the frame, the silver Zippo frozen mid-turn between his fingers.

But he had just promised Daniela he'd be home soon, back to the Valente penthouse to sing lullabies for her and the baby.

So he didn't have time to ask who I'd been talking to.

He assumed it was probably my cousin, the only Rossetti woman still willing to speak to me since the alliance marriage. After all, I no longer had anyone of my own. The Family had made sure of that. Nine years inside the Valente household had stripped me of every connection that wasn't his to control.

Without turning back, he gathered his files from the bedside table and said coldly, "Seraphina, something came up at the social club. I'll come again tomorrow."

In the blink of an eye, tomorrow had passed and the day after.

And the day after that. He never showed up. The soldier stationed outside my door changed shifts three times. None of them spoke to me. None of them had orders to.

Instead, thanks to wives of associates, women who circled the Family's orbit like satellites, I kept receiving videos of him and Daniela. Sent to my phone with no commentary. Just the footage. Just the evidence of what everyone already knew and no one would say to my face.

He took her to dinner at Family-owned restaurants where the staff cleared the room for them. He brought her to charity galas where the Valente name bought silence and admiration in equal measure.

He looked like a giddy young boy in love, showing her off to every Capo and associate like she was the greatest prize he had ever claimed. His hand on the small of her back. His mouth at her ear. The Don of the most powerful syndicate on the Eastern Seaboard, reduced to a fool by a woman with no family name and a talent for performance.

On the day I was discharged from the hospital, Dominic posted a nine-grid photo on his social media, the public-facing account that maintained the Valente family's image of legitimate wealth and domestic bliss.

In the golden hues of sunset, he stood on a romantic hot air balloon platform, gently cupping Daniela's rosy cheeks as they kissed passionately. The city sprawled beneath them. He looked free. He looked like a man who had never made a blood oath to another woman.

I left a comment.

[Wishing you two a lifetime of love, and a healthy baby on the way.]

Ten minutes later, my phone rang. It was Dominic. The screen lit up with his name, and the soldier outside my door glanced in through the window as if even the phone ringing was an event that required surveillance.

I didn't pick up.

Thirty minutes after that, I finished the discharge process alone. No escort. No driver waiting at the curb. The Don's wife, walking out of a hospital with a plastic bag of belongings and a heart monitor still taped to the inside of her wrist, and not a single soul from the Valente Family there to witness it.

And just as I walked past the OB-GYN department, I saw Dominic, and beside him was Daniela. Her hand rested on his arm with practiced ease, and her other hand sat over her stomach. Always over her stomach. Always when he was looking.

I overheard a young nurse at the consultation desk say sweetly to Daniela.

"Mrs. Valente, your husband really adores you. He comes with you every time, and even warms the ultrasound gel himself so you won't feel cold during the checkup."

The surrounding pregnant women looked at her with open admiration. The Don's wife. They thought she was the Don's wife. And why wouldn't they? He stood beside her like a man guarding something precious. He had never once stood beside me that way. Not in nine years.

My hand moved subconsciously to my stomach.

I remembered...

There had been a child here once. A heartbeat inside me that I had spoken to in the dark of the Valente estate when the hallways were empty and the soldiers had changed shifts and no one was listening. A small, impossible thing that had made the blood-bound union feel, for one brief season, like something other than a cage.

On the day of the car accident, the hit that everyone in the Family called an accident but that I knew in my bones was something else, I suffered a miscarriage due to blood loss. I cried while making a video call to Dominic on the encrypted line.

But all I saw was a naked Daniela on the screen, smiling as she said, "Mrs. Valente, your husband lost a game to me, so as punishment, he's currently tied to the bed. Is there something you need from him?"

I said nothing and hung up. My thumb pressed hard against the inside of my ring finger, against the band that was supposed to mean something, against the metal that had become nothing more than a shackle I couldn't remove.

Not even a minute passed before Dominic called back.

Holding a teary-eyed, wronged-looking Daniela in his arms, he exploded at me. "You're so petty and pathetic, Seraphina. Always making trouble!" His voice carried the particular cruelty of a man who has never been told no, who has confused authority with righteousness, who believed that volume alone could make him right.

And then, with disgust in his voice, he added, "You couldn't even hold on to your own baby. What can someone like you possibly do right?"

"Honestly, I wish that truck had finished the job and killed you." The words landed the way a bullet lands. Not with heat. With finality. With the understanding that the man who had sworn a blood oath to protect me had just wished me dead, and meant it, and would not remember saying it by morning.

Snapping back to the present, I was about to take a detour and walk away, to disappear down the corridor before either of them noticed me standing there like a ghost in their perfect picture, but Dominic walked toward me with that cold expression and snapped, "Why are you just standing there like an idiot?"

Startled, I instinctively tried to explain. "I wasn't following you. I really just ran into you by coincidence. I'm sorry if I disturbed you." The words came out before I could stop them. Nine years of conditioning. Nine years of apologizing for existing in a house that was supposed to be mine.

"Wait."

He frowned, and at the sound of that single word, I caught the flicker of jealousy in Daniela's eyes. It was quick, controlled, the way a woman who has survived on performance learns to manage every micro-expression. But I saw it. I had spent nine years learning to read the danger in that woman's face the way soldiers learn to read a room.

She clutched his arm a little tighter and smiled at me sweetly, her hand drifting back to her stomach with choreographed precision. "Mrs. Valente, thank you again for the blood donation. Without you, I'd still be so dizzy today. You saved me and my baby!"

"Dominic, won't you bring Mrs. Valente home with us? Please?" Her voice was silk over a blade. The request sounded like generosity. It was territory. She wanted me in the car. She wanted me to see.

Dominic dotingly tapped the tip of her nose and gently replied, "My sweet angel, whatever you say goes." The Don of the Valente Family. The man who decided which soldiers lived and which ones disappeared. Reduced to a puppet by a woman who placed her hand over her stomach like a shield every time the light shifted.

Since I had to return to the estate to gather my things anyway, I didn't refuse Daniela's "kindness." There were documents I needed. Things hidden in places she hadn't thought to look. A passport she didn't know I still had.

Inside the spacious black car, the armored sedan that ferried the Don through territory he controlled, silence hung heavily. The driver kept his eyes forward. The partition was up. The leather seats smelled of expensive cologne and something else, something faintly sweet and wrong. And then, as if right on cue, I spotted something wedged between the seat cushions.

A pair of still-damp lace panties.

"Oh my!" Daniela gasped, her hand flying to her mouth with the precision of a woman who had placed them there herself and rehearsed the discovery. "How did that end up here?"

"Dominic, didn't you say you took care of it already?"

Biting her lip, Daniela threw herself into his arms, blushing as she playfully hit his chest.

Dominic chuckled and apologized, blaming everything on himself, yet his eyes subtly shifted, watching my reaction.

But when he saw that I wasn't angry at all, the same restlessness he'd felt back in the hospital room crept back into his chest, inexplicably heavy.

"Seraphina," he said coldly, "you've been glued to your phone ever since you got in the car."

His voice carried a note of jealousy, low and controlled, the way a man accustomed to absolute authority sounds when something slips beyond his reach.

"Chatting with your cousin? Or someone else I don't know?"

I had just finished booking my plane ticket and locked my phone screen.

"Just reading the news," I replied calmly.

But rather than easing his mood, my answer only deepened the frown between his brows. The silver lighter appeared in his hand, turning end over end between his fingers, the soft click of metal filling the silence of the armored sedan.

Catching me off guard, he snatched the phone from my hand.

"What's your password?" he demanded. The lighter stopped moving.

"My birthday," I said.

Nine years of marriage. Nine years of a blood-bound union.

A six-digit password that simple, and yet, he still failed to unlock my phone before it locked itself from too many incorrect attempts.

The rest of the ride passed in silence. The enforcer behind the wheel kept his eyes on the road. The one in the passenger seat did not turn around. They knew the temperature of the air between us. Everyone in the Valente household always knew.

When we arrived at the estate, Dominic immediately helped Daniela, who was suffering from pregnancy nausea, into the master bedroom with a look of deep concern. The soldiers stationed along the hallway straightened as he passed, eyes forward, postures locked. He moved through his own home the way he moved through every room: as though it had been built around him.

Then he instructed the cook to prepare all her favorite dishes.

Coming back downstairs, he caught a glimpse of me walking alone toward the guest room. Something about my lonely silhouette made him pause. My shadow stretched long across the marble floor of the foyer, thin and solitary against the dark wood paneling and the oil portraits of Valente men who had come before him.

After a moment's thought, he said to the cook, "Prepare a couple of Seraphina's usual dishes too. Set the table for three tonight."

In the guest room, I opened my suitcase, and every piece of clothing inside had been slashed to ribbons. Silk blouses gutted seam to seam. Dresses split open like wounds. The kind of damage that required patience, a sharp blade, and hatred held at a steady simmer.

Thankfully, my passport and the documents tucked deep inside, the ones that mattered, were untouched. My thumb pressed against the inside of my ring finger where the wedding band used to sit. The skin there was smooth now. Almost healed.

Just as I gathered everything and turned to leave, I found Daniela blocking the door.

She held a black bottle in her hand, eyeing me with scorn as she scanned me from head to toe. Her other hand rested on her stomach, that practiced, deliberate gesture, though no one else was in the room to perform for. Old habits. Or perhaps she simply never stopped performing.

"Wow, Seraphina. You've got some nerve," she sneered.

"Even after I waltzed in here and made you the laughingstock of every Family wife on the Eastern Seaboard, you're still shamelessly clinging to the Valente name like some parasite."

"Oh right, your grandmother died last month, didn't she?" Her tone was syrupy and cruel, the kind of sweetness that coats a razor.

"Now that your precious old woman's gone, I guess you've got no one left to rely on. Well, it makes sense you'd cling to Dominic like he's your last lifeline."

She suddenly remembered something, laughing as she brought her phone screen up to my face.

"Oh right, remember the day you begged Dominic to send the helicopter to take you to the hospital to see your grandmother one last time?"

"Wanna know why he didn't take you?"

"Because he had promised to take me to the beach to watch the sunset. Look, the photo of us kissing on my phone screen was taken during that moment."

The room went very still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence in houses like this one.

Unable to endure it any longer, I slapped the phone out of her hand and grabbed her by the throat.

The black bottle in her hand slipped and fell. Glass shattered against the hardwood floor.

The sharp, acrid stench of gasoline instantly filled the air. It soaked into the slashed remains of my clothes, pooled between the floorboards, and the guest room became something else entirely. Not a room. A trap.

In the chaos, Daniela hastily lit the gasoline on the floor.

Thick smoke filled the air, and flames erupted violently, climbing the curtains, devouring the bedframe, turning the guest room into an inferno that roared against the old walls of the Valente estate. The fire moved with a hunger that felt almost personal.

Having just been discharged from the hospital, I quickly succumbed to the fumes, my body growing weak as I collapsed to the ground. The smoke was everywhere. In my lungs, behind my eyes, pressing down on my chest like a hand.

Through the haze, I heard Dominic's voice.

"Seraphina!"

Then came the sounds of soldiers and household staff trying to stop him.

"Boss, it's too dangerous! Wait for the extinguishers, we've got men coming from the south wing"

"Move! Seraphina is still inside!"

His voice cut through the chaos like a blade. For one moment, one fraction of a second that I would carry with me across an ocean, I heard something in it that I had not heard in nine years. Something raw. Something real.

In the end, he ignored their warnings and rushed into the flames.

What he didn't expect was to find Daniela inside too.

"Dominic... help..." Her voice was thin and trembling, and her hand found her stomach again, the choreography flawless even through smoke and fire. The gesture that had shielded her for months. The gesture that had rewritten the hierarchy of this house.

She hadn't even finished her sentence before he scooped her up in his arms, never once glancing at me.

Without hesitation, he turned and walked away. The flames closed behind him like a curtain falling. And I lay on the floor of the guest room, alone, the heat pressing against my skin, watching the doorway where he had stood. Where he had chosen. The way he had always chosen.

Thirty minutes later, after calming Daniela down, he searched the entire house, but I was nowhere to be found. Every room. Every hallway. The wine cellar, the east wing, the garden perimeter where the soldiers kept watch. He sent Marco to check the cameras. He called the gate. Nothing. I had vanished from the Valente estate like smoke clearing after a fire, and the house felt different without me in it, though he would not have been able to say how.

Late that night, at the airport.

After mailing a package at the terminal counter, I boarded a flight to the UK, coughing as I made my way down the aisle. My lungs still burned from the smoke. My throat was raw. The bruise on my wrist from where I had dragged myself across the floor was already darkening. But my passport was in my hand, and the documents were in my bag, and the ring finger on my left hand was bare.

Just before the plane took off, my phone buzzed with a text from Dominic.

[I don't have time to play hide-and-seek with you.]

[Daniela has a prenatal check-up tomorrow at 10 a.m. Come with her, and get your lungs checked too.]

I didn't reply. Instead, I removed the SIM card and powered off the phone, dropping it into my coat pocket like something dead.

'Dominic. From this day forward, you and I are done. We will never see each other again.'

The next day, at the Family's private clinic on the Upper East Side.

"Dominic, is our baby okay?"

Meeting Daniela's pitiful, anxious eyes, Dominic immediately pulled her into his arms, speaking to her in a soft, reassuring voice.

"The doctor said the baby is perfectly healthy. No signs of trauma from what happened yesterday."

"That's such a relief," she breathed out, her voice trembling slightly. Her hand drifted to rest over her stomach, fingers splayed in that careful, practiced way she had perfected, always when he was watching.

"I saw how serious and quiet you've been ever since we arrived. I thought something was wrong with the baby."

Her unintentional comment made Dominic pause.

An uncontrollable image surfaced in his mind: standing amidst roaring flames, Seraphina stared back at him with eyes as cold as ice.

Frowning, he pulled out his phone and reopened his messages. There was still no reply. Not even a word from her.

It annoyed him. No. It infuriated him.

After all, no matter how cold or neglectful he'd been in the past, Seraphina had always come when he called. Always giving in. The way people in this world always answered when the Don summoned them.

But now? Now she had the nerve to ignore him?

He let out a bitter, humorless laugh. The sound was quiet enough that the two soldiers stationed outside the clinic door exchanged a glance but said nothing.

Silently, he escorted Daniela out of the physician's wing, took her to a quiet restaurant the Family owned on Mulberry Street, made sure she got home safely with a driver and an armed escort, and only then headed to the social club.

The moment he stepped through the back entrance, Marco Benedetti fell into step beside him.

"Boss. Don Salvatore has returned to the country. He's called an emergency sit-down with all the Capos in the back room. They're waiting."

Without much reaction, Dominic turned and began walking toward the meeting room. His silver Zippo appeared in his hand, turning end over end between his fingers in that slow, meditative rhythm.

As he walked, he instructed casually, "Buy a few of the latest luxury handbags and some jewelry. The high-end pieces."

Marco nodded, checking his watch with a brief, mechanical glance before giving a single nod.

"Of course, Boss. I'll have someone deliver them to Miss Ferraro's residence right away."

Dominic stopped walking. The lighter went still. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Send them to the old Rossetti estate."

In his mind, after leaving the compound, Seraphina couldn't possibly have anywhere else to stay except the Rossetti family home. That crumbling monument to a name that no longer carried weight in any room that mattered.

One week later, late at night.

After finally wrapping up a territorial negotiation that had dragged on for days, Dominic returned to the Valente compound.

He walked into the living room, past the two soldiers posted at the foyer who straightened as he passed, only to see a slender, graceful figure curled up on the sofa in a silk nightgown, like a little shrimp.

"Seraphina, how many times have I told you, when I'm done working, I'll come back. There's no need for you to keep"

His voice trailed off as he got closer and realized it wasn't Seraphina.

It was Daniela.

His mocking tone immediately vanished. The warmth drained from his face like water through a crack in stone.

Being stared at with such cold indifference, Daniela shivered. She looked pitiful and wronged, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Her hand moved to her stomach again, settling there with the timing of someone who had rehearsed the gesture a thousand times.

"Dominic... Seraphina hasn't returned for days."

"I've sent her so many apology texts, but she hasn't responded to a single one."

"Maybe... maybe I should move out?"

Watching her on the verge of tears again, Dominic frowned and pulled her into his arms.

He placed a light, perfunctory kiss on her forehead. "Don't think too much. Take care of your health."

"Whether Seraphina likes it or not, from now on, this will be your home and our child's."

Half an hour after making that promise, Dominic stood alone on the open-air balcony of the compound's top floor, wrapped in a silk robe, quietly smoking a cigarette. Below him, the city sprawled out in cold light, and somewhere beyond the property line, a car idled with its headlights off. One of his own, keeping watch. There was always someone keeping watch.

He hadn't smoked in a long time.

But tonight, for some reason... he couldn't resist.

On impulse, he opened his contacts and scrolled all the way to the bottom. Seraphina's number was still there. The name sat on his screen like an accusation.

His thumb hovered over the call button for a long time.

After two cigarettes, he didn't dial. Instead, he sent a message.

[Seraphina, tomorrow is Grandpa's 80th birthday. I suggest you don't try any stunts at the celebration. Don't cause trouble for Daniela or her baby.]

He stared at the screen for a full minute after sending it. No typing indicator appeared. No read receipt. Nothing. He locked the phone and set it face-down on the railing, then lit a third cigarette with the Zippo, the flame catching in the wind before holding steady.

The next day. Don Salvatore Valente's 80th birthday celebration began at the Family's estate, every room lit and staffed, soldiers in dark suits stationed at every entrance like fixtures of the architecture itself.

Dominic arrived hand-in-hand with Daniela, publicly and confidently, as though they were a perfect couple. Associates and Capos noted it. Some looked away. Others filed it for later.

They remained side by side, affectionate and high-profile, until Salvatore Valente himself entered the venue. The old Don moved slowly, his cane striking the marble floor with each step, and every conversation in the grand hall died mid-sentence. Men who ran their own crews straightened their spines. Wives stopped talking. The gravity of the room shifted to a single point.

Only then did Dominic finally let go of Daniela's hand and walk over to his grandfather's side to help him welcome the important guests: allied family heads, old-world associates from Sicily, a federal judge who owed the Family three favors.

"Why didn't Seraphina come with you?"

Faced with his grandfather's pointed question, Dominic's lips pressed into a thin line. The old man's voice was quiet, but in this family, quiet was where the danger lived. For once, Dominic actually defended Seraphina.

"Sorry, Grandpa. Seraphina's been busy these past few days preparing your birthday gift. She's been exhausted, so I told her to rest and come a bit later."

Salvatore studied his grandson's face for a moment longer than was comfortable, then turned to greet the next guest without a word.

Two hours passed quickly.

The Patriarch's Feast had reached its final and most anticipated segment: the gift-giving ceremony, where every family member and allied house presented their tributes to the old Don.

But Seraphina still hadn't shown up.

Suppressing the growing sense of unease in his chest, Dominic stepped into a corridor off the main hall, pulled out his phone, and dialed her number. His back was to the room, but Marco stood six feet away, watching without appearing to watch.

"The number you dialed is unavailable..."

He redialed. Again and again. The same mechanical message echoed back each time, and with each repetition, the stillness in his jaw tightened by a fraction.

And then, a courier walked into the banquet hall.

He delivered three packages, each addressed from Seraphina. The courier looked uncomfortable surrounded by so many hard-eyed men in expensive suits, and he left quickly.

Under the curious gaze of everyone present, Salvatore smiled warmly as he opened the first gift.

Inside was an embroidered silk tapestry, a vivid and intricate rendering of the Valente family crest interwoven with a traditional blessing motif. Every stitch precise. Every thread deliberate.

It was clearly something Seraphina had poured months of effort into, hand-stitched with care and reverence. The kind of gift that spoke of loyalty so deep it lived in the hands.

Moved to tears, the old Don gently opened the second gift.

Inside was the heirloom jewelry set his late wife had gifted Seraphina when she married into the Family. Emeralds and diamonds set in old gold, pieces that had passed through three generations of Valente women.

The moment those jewels were revealed, the room fell dead silent. Glasses stopped halfway to lips. A Capo's wife put her hand over her mouth. Even the soldiers by the door seemed to hold their breath.

Everyone in this world knew what it meant when a woman returned her Family's ancestral jewelry. It was not a gesture. It was a severance. A declaration that the blood-bound union was over, delivered not in private but before every ally, every associate, every witness who mattered.

Before Salvatore could react, Dominic, face dark as storm clouds, strode toward the third gift. The silver lighter was nowhere in sight. His hands were empty and rigid at his sides.

Just as expected, he tore it open with frozen hands.