Rejected by My Fiancé, Claimed by the True Mafia Heir

The night before my fianc and I were supposed to file the marriage certificate, the most powerful Don on the Eastern Seaboard sent word to my Winslow: deliver a daughter to honor the old betrothal with his comatose heir, or consider the arrangement a blood insult.

The moment my fianc Damiano Mancini heard the news, he pulled the diamond ring off my finger and slid it onto the ring finger of my sister, Luciana Bellandi. The favored daughter. The one they'd always chosen.

Then he posted the photo for the whole world to see:

"She's taken."

When I confronted him, shaking apart at the seams, Damiano barely furrowed his brow. His voice was calm, as if what he was saying made perfect sense.

"Luciana's never had a hard day in her life. Being blood-bound to a vegetable would destroy her."

"You're already pregnant. The Valentes would never want damaged goods. This is the best solution for everyone."

I stared at the man in front of me as though seeing him for the very first time. My eyes burned.

I had loved Damiano Mancini for seven years. I'd taken a knife for him. I'd drunk myself into a hemorrhaging stomach at dinners with his father's associates, toasting men whose names I wasn't supposed to know.

Just weeks ago, I'd gone through IVF to carry his child, and only then had he proposed.

But the love I thought I'd earned could never compare to his childhood bond with Luciana Bellandi.

Everyone waited for me to scream, to cry, to make a scene. Instead I swallowed the tears and managed a tired smile.

"Okay. I understand."

Damiano nodded, satisfied. He pulled Luciana close and started discussing the sham church wedding with her, saying if they were going to put on an act for the families, they might as well go all the way.

He assumed I would do what I'd always done: swallow every indignity and never leave.

But what Damiano didn't know was that the moment he walked out the door with Luciana to shop for wedding gowns, the Valente Winslow came knocking.

"The Valentes aren't the kind of people who force anyone's hand."

"Miss Bellandi, if you're willing to marry into our Winslow, I'll give you half of my son's personal fortune, plus two properties in prime American real estate. You'll be under our full protection."

I rested my hand on my stomach, still flat enough that no one could tell. I nodded.

"I'll marry him."

Then, without a second of hesitation, I scheduled the termination.

Caterina Valente took me to file the marriage certificate that very day.

I watched Luciana's social media posts, one after another, showing off the lavish gowns Damiano was buying her. I didn't waver. I signed the papers.

The process went through without a hitch. When the certificate landed in my palm, I felt almost dazed.

Caterina's voice was gentle. "From this moment on, you are the young Mrs. Valente."

"Matteo Valente is receiving treatment in America. When can you come with me?"

I touched my stomach.

"Give me ten days."

"There are a few things I still need to take care of."

Caterina placed an intricately crafted ring in my hand, her tone warm.

"Marrying into the Valente Winslow, you may never have love, and you won't have a normal marriage."

"But everything else you could ever want, you will have."

I looked down, my fingertip tracing the ring. Something loosened in my chest, faint but unmistakable.

"I'll treasure it."

Three full days passed before Damiano bothered to come home to the compound.

"I've got it all arranged. The church ceremony with Luciana is in a week."

"When the Valentes come asking, just tell them you're pregnant. If they have any pride, they won't force the marriage."

"Once the dust settles, I'll take you to file our certificate."

He reached for me the way he always did, pulling me into his arms, having decided my entire future without asking.

I looked up at him. My stomach twisted with a dull ache.

"So on paper, Luciana is your wife?"

"It's just a title. It doesn't matter. As long as I know in my heart that you're my real wife, isn't that enough?"

He said it like it was obvious. Like he was doing me a favor.

As if this arrangement was the best I could ever hope for.

It never once crossed his mind what people would call me if Luciana became his public wife and I was the one pregnant and unmarried. In the families, there was only one word for a woman like that, and no amount of money washed it off.

Being abandoned on the eve of signing the certificate had already made me the biggest joke in every social club and back room on the coast.

After a long silence, I let out a hollow laugh.

How had I not understood until now? In Damiano Mancini's eyes, my feelings, my reputation, none of it mattered.

But Luciana? She deserved the grandest church ceremony. The most spotless reputation.

"Tomorrow night at the banquet, I'll announce the wedding date to everyone."

He informed me, not asked. "Just tell people we broke up a long time ago."

"...Fine."

My nails bit into my palms, forcing down the bitterness rising in my throat.

In seven days I'd be gone. It didn't matter what I said anymore.

I'd already booked the procedure for two days from now. The baby inside me, I was letting go of that too.

Only then did Damiano look satisfied. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my cheek. I could feel the leather of his watch strap shift against my shoulder as his arm tightened around me.

"Serafina, if I hadn't insisted the Bellandi Winslow take you back ten years ago, you'd still be in that church orphanage."

"As long as you behave, I'll always give you a home."

A home?

Damiano believed that a girl starved of love her whole life would put up with anything to build a home with him. That no matter what he did, I would never leave.

What he didn't know was that in seven days, while he was playing groom to another woman in front of God and every Winslow that mattered, I would be on a plane to America as the young Mrs. Valente, with a fortune and a name that dwarfed everything the Mancini Winslow owned.

By then, I would never have to beg anyone for a home again.

The banquet began at eight sharp. Soldiers in dark suits lined the walls. The Mancini Winslow's legitimate associates and every aligned crew had turned out.

Damiano walked in with Luciana on his arm, both dressed in matching formal wear. He kissed her amid the applause and announced their church wedding in seven days.

Luciana swept her hair back with a flick of her wrist, and the diamond caught the light so sharply it stung.

It was a new ring. A three-million-dollar pink diamond Damiano had bid on at auction, because Luciana hadn't liked the old one. He'd replaced it without blinking.

Every wife and socialite in the room flocked to Luciana like moths.

"Luciana and Mr. Mancini are so much more suited for each other. Serafina Bellandi only latched onto the Mancini Winslow by clinging and refusing to let go. Guess she finally got dumped."

"Think she'll show up crying, begging to be his mistress?"

The whispers sliced through the air. I pretended not to hear.

That was when Luciana turned to me. Her fingers drifted to the pearls at her throat.

"Serafina, since you two have already broken up, you won't keep going after Damiano, right?"

Seven years of memories flashed before my eyes. I drew a slow breath.

"No. It's over, and I'll leave with my dignity."

Quiet laughter rippled through the crowd.

No one believed me.

Damiano included. He assumed I was putting on an act.

"Then shouldn't you hand over the keys to Damiano's properties?" Luciana smiled, and there was nothing kind about it. Her fingers touched the pearls a second time.

"I'd hate for you to lose control and find some excuse to get close to him again. It would be so embarrassing if you showed up at his place and threw yourself at him."

My expression hardened. I opened my mouth to say I would never do something like that.

But before I could speak, Luciana moved where no one else could see. She grabbed my wrist and forced the juice in my hand up into her own face.

"Oh! Serafina, if you didn't want to give them up, you could have just said so. Why did you have to splash me..."

She turned to Damiano with wide, wounded eyes as he rushed over.

"Serafina Bellandi!"

His face went dark. Without a moment's thought, he hurled his wine glass at me.

I threw my hands up on instinct, but the shattered glass sliced across the back of my hand.

"Who gave you permission to bully her?" he snarled. "Apologize to Luciana. Now."

He didn't want to hear a single word from me. The verdict was already in.

The way he looked at me, you'd think I was something vile.

The murmurs around us erupted:

"See? She couldn't handle being dumped. She finally snapped."

"Serafina Bellandi just didn't want to give back the keys. She was probably planning to sneak into the Mancini compound, sleep her way in, get pregnant, and claw her way to the top. Unbelievable."

I stood there. Blood ran down the back of my hand, mingling with the dark stain of red wine.

Damiano didn't so much as glance at it. He was too busy dabbing Luciana's face with painstaking care, his expression full of tender concern.

I thought of a day years ago, when I'd been shoved to the ground by bullies at school. He had been the one to help me up, cleaning each scrape with gentle hands.

All that tenderness, I realized now, had only ever been a fraction of what he saved for Luciana.

My eyes burned red, but I forced the tears back.

I didn't argue. I didn't lose control.

Instead, under the gleeful stares of every person in that room, I reached into my bag, pulled out every single key to every property I shared with Damiano Mancini, and dropped them all at Luciana's feet.

"You're right. I should have done this sooner. These keys belong to the real lady of the house."

"Your home. I won't set foot in it again."

Damiano's eyes snapped up to mine.

Luciana was still clutching that bundle of keys and access cards, momentarily frozen, as if she'd forgotten which expression to put on.

I looked at Damiano, my voice steady.

"You got your wine thrown back, and she got the keys she wanted. Are we done here?"

Damiano's throat bobbed. He reached for me, his lips parting like he wanted to say something.

But in the very next instant, Luciana let out a soft hiss and pressed her fingers to her temple.

"Damiano, I think I might have caught a chill. My head hurts..."

He pulled his hand back without a second of hesitation and turned to her.

His suit jacket came off and settled over Luciana's shoulders. He leaned down to adjust her collar, his movements careful, tender. Two of his soldiers stood a few steps behind, eyes lowered, pretending not to see a thing.

"Don't just stand here. Go back to the room and change. I'll have someone bring hot water."

The expensive fabric was already blooming with ugly juice stains, but he didn't spare it a single glance.

Just like he hadn't spared one for me.

I turned and walked away from a place that had never been mine to begin with.

I didn't notice that Damiano's gaze followed me from the moment I turned around, trailing after me until I was gone.

I took a cab back to the small safe flat I hadn't lived in for ages. I practically stumbled into the bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink, and threw up for what felt like forever.

Bitter acid surged up in waves, scorching my throat raw.

When I finally lifted my head, the person in the mirror stopped me cold.

Colorless face. Hollow eyes.

She looked almost identical to the girl who had walked out of Saint Rosalia Home ten years ago.

I was sixteen that year, fighting tooth and nail for a chance at a scholarship in a church-run home where every kid was clawing for the same thing.

In the end, someone locked me in the storage cellar, and I missed my entrance exams.

I pounded on the door. I screamed until my voice gave out.

No one found me until the next day, when Damiano came along with the Bellandi Winslow to visit and heard me.

He draped his jacket over my shoulders, gentle as anything. "Your name's Serafina, right? Do you want to go home?"

That jacket was so warm. It carried a faint, clean scent I could still remember to this day.

And I did go back to the Bellandi Winslow. I got my chance at school, got clothes on my back and food on the table.

The Bellandis never liked me. They preferred Luciana. They said I was too withdrawn.

Damiano was the only one who was different.

He went out of his way to visit me at the Bellandi house. He helped me with homework. When someone picked on me, he stepped in without being asked.

I loved him in silence for three years before I worked up the courage to tell him, the day I got into college.

The day Damiano said yes, he kissed me like it was a vow. He told me he'd give me a home, that I'd never have to suffer again.

My first kiss was so sweet it made me cry.

Now the face in the mirror was streaked with bitter tears, and I couldn't even tell when they'd started.

I reached up and wiped them away, the motion clumsy and graceless.

Seven years. I was done waiting for Damiano to keep his promises.

I was rinsing my face when the bathroom door swung open without warning.

My heart slammed against my ribs. Before I could react, a familiar force pinned me against the wall.

Damiano's scent crashed over me, and then his mouth was on mine.

The instant I remembered he'd kissed Luciana the same way just moments ago, my stomach turned and I shoved at his chest.

He caught my wrists, his grip impossible to break. I could feel the leather of his watch strap pressing into my skin where his hand locked around me.

"Why did you hand all your keys to Luciana? I thought you'd at least put up a fight."

I stared at him. The irony was almost funny.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" I said quietly. "We broke up. Giving your promised bride the keys to your compound seems pretty straightforward."

Something flickered behind his eyes, a trace of guilt he almost managed to hide, and his tone softened.

"I told you, it's all an act. There's nothing between Luciana and me. If there were, it would've happened a long time ago."

"Just be good for a little while longer. Everything that's yours will still be yours. You'll always be my wife, and the baby will always be my heir."

If not for the jasmine perfume clinging to his skin, Luciana's scent so thick I could almost taste it, I might have actually believed him.

I didn't bother explaining anymore.

I just nodded, going through the motions.

Damiano wanted to tend to the cut on the back of my hand. I felt too wretched to resist.

His touch was surprisingly gentle. When I flinched, he instinctively blew on the wound, the way he'd done a hundred times before, as if nothing had changed.

I watched his profile, and my heart clenched before I could stop it.

It reminded me of the ride home from Saint Rosalia, when he'd dabbed ointment on my scrapes with the same quiet care.

Then his phone rang.

Luciana's voice came through the speaker, trembling on the edge of tears.

"Damiano... I feel awful, I'm so dizzy... Where did you go? I'm scared being alone..."

His fingers tightened visibly, pressing harder against my wound without realizing it. The leather strap of his watch creaked once as his wrist flexed.

I sucked in a sharp breath. He didn't notice.

"I'm out. Just picking up some medicine for you."

Luciana's voice turned small, cautious. "Did you... go see Serafina?"

Damiano didn't miss a beat.

"No. I'm on my way back to you now."

It was spring, but I felt cold down to my bones.

The part of me that had softened moments ago felt pathetic.

Luciana was the one who got every ounce of his tenderness. How did I still not understand that?

To him, I was no different from an obedient pet.

I loved Damiano. But I needed love that was mine alone, not scraps tossed my way out of obligation.

The cut on my hand had split open again from the pressure, fresh blood seeping through.

I couldn't tell which hurt more, my hand or my heart.

He hung up and seemed to remember I existed.

"Sera, just hang on a few more days. Once this is over, we'll sign the marriage papers."

I said nothing.

A few more days.

Then I'd never have to endure this again.

Damiano was about to leave when my phone buzzed.

A reminder from the OB-GYN popped up on the screen, confirming tomorrow's procedure.

His gaze drifted over to it. His brow creased, slowly.

"Why are you going to the OB-GYN?"

"Didn't you just go a few days ago?"

Until I was truly gone, I didn't want to stir up trouble.

"The morning sickness has been pretty bad lately. I'm going to the clinic to get it checked out."

Damiano visibly froze for a second.

As if it only just hit him that he hadn't spared a single thought for his pregnant woman's wellbeing these past few days.

Something uneasy flickered in his eyes, and he hesitated, half-considering whether to stay.

But the next second, another message from Luciana lit up his phone, urging him to hurry.

That sliver of hesitation crumbled like it had never existed.

"Then go back to the compound and rest. Don't stay out overnight."

He tossed out the instruction and was gone from the apartment before the words had settled.

His choice didn't surprise me. I was used to it by now.

But I did need to go back to the Mancini compound. My personal documents were still there, and I'd need them for tomorrow's procedure.

The next morning, when Signora Ruggiero led me through the front entrance of the compound, I stopped dead.

In barely half a day, the place I'd called home for years had been gutted.

The matching couple figurines that used to sit on the entryway table were gone.

The rug beside the sofa, the one Damiano and I had picked out together, had been swapped for something new.

The wedding portrait on the wall, the one we'd taken months ahead of schedule for the alliance announcement, had vanished without a trace.

Even knowing what I knew, my chest seized before I could stop it.

I forced the feeling down and headed for the stairs.

That was when the smell hit me. Acrid. Burning.

"Miss Bellandi, these things... they belong to the lady of the house, don't they? Burning them doesn't seem right..."

Signora DeLuca's voice carried from somewhere nearby. I could picture her pressing both palms flat against her apron, bracing herself against the blowback she knew was coming.

Luciana's reply came laced with undisguised malice:

"Lady of the house? Get your facts straight. I'm the future mistress of this Winslow."

"This junk was an eyesore. So what if I burned it?"

My brain whited out. I didn't think. I just ran toward the courtyard.

Firelight danced against the stone.

A pile of belongings had been thrown into a bonfire, already half-consumed.

These were the directress's things. The woman who raised me at Saint Rosalia. Her keepsakes. Her last traces on this earth.

I lost my mind. I lunged at the fire without a second thought, bare hands reaching straight into the flames.

"Serafina, are you insane?!"

Luciana stumbled back a step, startled. Her fingers flew to the pearls at her throat.

I didn't spare her a glance.

Fire seared my skin, the pain boring down to bone, but I couldn't feel it. I clawed everything I could reach out of the blaze, dragging it free with both hands.

Blisters rose instantly across my palms.

I gritted my teeth and smothered the flames with my body, shaking so hard I could barely stay upright.

When I finally looked up, my eyes were raw and burning.

"What is wrong with you, Luciana? Why would you burn my things?"

Luciana stared down at me from where she stood, untouched.

"They were an eyesore. So I burned them."

"Besides, who knows if this junk from some orphanage is even clean?"

"What if it carries diseases?"

One breezy sentence, and she'd insulted both me and the woman who raised me in a single breath.

The last thread holding me together snapped.

I swung my arm and slapped her across the face with everything I had.

The force knocked Luciana sideways. She opened her mouth to curse at me, but a voice cut through first:

"Serafina, what the hell are you doing?!"

Damiano's voice cracked through the courtyard like a whip.

He stormed over and shoved me away without a heartbeat of hesitation.

I staggered backward, nearly falling into the still-smoldering fire pit.

He was already pulling Luciana into his arms.

"Why did you hit her?" His face was terrifyingly dark.

My voice broke. "She burned the directress's things!"

Damiano knew better than anyone what those keepsakes meant to me.

He knew the directress of Saint Rosalia had been the closest thing to a mother I'd ever had.

In that moment, I still believed that just this once, he would take my side.

But Damiano only frowned, his tone clipped with impatience.

"It's just some old junk."

"Luciana thought it was trash and cleaned it out. She meant well."

"Why would you hit her over that?"

My heart stopped.

Right on cue, Luciana's eyes reddened, her voice going soft and wounded. Her fingers drifted to the pearls again, recalculating.

"I'm sorry, Serafina. I really didn't know those things meant so much to you..."

"I was just worried they weren't sanitary. I didn't want Damiano getting sick..."

"You don't need to apologize." Damiano cut her off, his voice hard as iron. "If anyone owes an apology, it's her."

He turned to me. His gaze went cold.

"Serafina. Apologize to Luciana. Now."

There is no grief greater than a dead heart.

I stared at the man in front of me, hollow with disappointment. The heir to the Mancini name, the man who could order soldiers to kill without raising his voice. And he stood there choosing her, as calmly as he'd choose which suit to wear.

He looked like a stranger.

"I won't apologize." Each word fell from my lips, frozen solid. "I did nothing wrong."

"She did it on purpose. If you don't believe me, ask Signora DeLuca."

Signora DeLuca nodded quickly. "It's true, sir. Miss Bellandi, she..."

Damiano cut her off without looking. "A DeLuca's word means nothing."

"Damiano, my face hurts so much..." Luciana's tears spilled instantly. She cupped her cheek, sucking in a delicate breath.

His expression hardened. I heard the faint creak of leather as his hand moved to his wrist, tightening the strap of his watch.

"Since these things are causing this much trouble,"

he bent down and picked up the lighter from the ground,

"then get rid of them for good."

"Maybe then you'll stop acting like a lunatic."

The flame snapped back to life with a sharp pop.

Every muscle in my body locked. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

"Damiano, what are you doing?!"

The scream tore out of me raw, and I threw myself toward the fire.

But he caught me from behind, arms clamping around me like a vice.

I thrashed against him, my voice cracking apart:

"I was wrong... I was wrong, okay..."

"I'll apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just put out the fire, please?"

"I'm begging you, Damiano!"

This was the first time I had ever broken down like this. The first time I had begged him on my knees.

Something clenched in Damiano's chest. His grip loosened, just barely.

I seized that split second, wrenched free, and threw myself into the flames.

Fire licked up my arms. The pain went past sharp into numb.

But in the end, the only thing I pulled out was a watch, blackened beyond recognition.

I knelt on the ground, hollowed out. Like someone had reached inside me and scooped out everything that made me whole.

The sounds around me faded to nothing. The courtyard, the compound walls, the distant murmur of soldiers at the gate. All of it dissolved into silence.

I didn't register anything until Damiano hauled me to my feet.

He looked at me, and for one instant, regret flashed through his eyes. The recognition that he'd gone too far.

But then his gaze landed on Luciana's swollen cheek, and that flicker of regret vanished as cleanly as if it had never been there.

"Let this be a lesson."

"Now you'll know what's acceptable and what isn't. You're supposed to be the future Donna Mancini. You can't go around slapping people like some common shrew."

I didn't want to hear another word. I just stared at him, eyes bloodshot, looking at him the way you look at an enemy.

The look cut him. He flinched, glanced away. Then the flinch curdled into anger at my defiance.

"You still don't think you were wrong?"

He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bedroom we used to share, locking the door behind him.

"Then sit in here and cool off!"

I couldn't fight him. All I could do was stand there, trapped, the scorched watch still clutched in my blistered hand.

My eyes burned. But not a single tear would come.

I stood against the door for a long, long time. My legs went numb before I finally managed to calm down.

Since I couldn't get out, I might as well start packing what was mine.

I threw every dress, every handbag Damiano had ever given me into the trash. Silk, cashmere, leather soft as skin. All of it purchased with laundered money and handed over like I should be grateful. Every piece went into the bin without ceremony.

It wasn't until I was done that I realized.

All I could actually take with me was an ID card and my personal documents. Nothing else. Five years in the Mancini compound, and the only things that were truly mine fit inside a single envelope.

Damiano didn't let me out until the following evening, for dinner.

He noticed the things in the trash. I saw him pause. His eyes moved over the pile of designer labels, and for one beat the muscle at his jaw tightened.

"What kind of tantrum is this?"

I just smiled faintly.

"They got old. I stopped liking them. So I tossed them."

That shut him up. He was quiet for a beat, and when he spoke again, it was in that tone of his, the one that made everything sound like charity:

"I'll buy you new ones in a couple days. Consider it an apology."

"Come eat. And be nice to Luciana. She's only staying a few days."

"Stop being jealous and picking fights with her."

He paused at the end, just slightly. His fingers moved to his watch strap, adjusted it, then let go.

"Burning those things... I may have gone too far."

"But people need to move forward. The directress has been gone a long time now."

I nodded. My voice was flat.

"Fine."

He'd gotten what should have been my forgiveness, but something about it made Damiano uneasy. He stood in the doorway of the dining room where two of his soldiers sat at a far table finishing their meals, and I could feel him watching me the way he watched men he wasn't sure of anymore.

I was standing right in front of him, yet he felt like I was already far away.

Tomorrow was the last day of my arrangement with the Valente Winslow. My plan was simple: wake up, go through with the surgery, and leave.

But in the dead of night, the bedroom door slammed open. Before I could even register what was happening, Damiano hauled me out of bed and dragged me down the hall to the room next door.

His grip was brutal, like he wanted to break me apart. The moment he let go, I slammed into the wall. Pain exploded across my back and my vision went black. Somewhere down the corridor a soldier shifted but did not come closer. No one intervened in the heir's private quarters. That was understood.

Before I could recover, his voice came down from above, raw with fury.

"Serafina, is this how badly you can't stand Luciana? You're so jealous you'd drug her?"

My ears rang. My vision swam, then slowly focused.

On the bed, Luciana's cheeks were flushed, her clothes disheveled. She was practically draped over Damiano, whimpering and pressing herself into his arms.

"It wasn't me."

My voice was hoarse, but I forced the words out. "I didn't do anything like that."

The moment I finished speaking, Luciana flinched as though she'd been struck. The tears came instantly.

"Serafina... the only thing I ate tonight was the dessert you had Ruggiero bring me. I didn't touch anything else..."

"I had someone bring you dessert?" I stared at her, my expression ice cold.

"You burned the directress's keepsakes, and you think I'd send you a treat? Luciana, do you really think that highly of yourself?"

My voice dropped lower, shaking with barely contained rage. "And what would I even gain from drugging you? If you're going to frame someone, at least come up with a believable story."

"Enough with the excuses."

Damiano cut in, irritation thick in his voice. He stood over me, the full weight of his authority pressing down like something physical.

"Ruggiero already admitted you told her to do it."

"Witness and evidence, both accounted for. How am I supposed to believe you?"

The cold seeped into my chest, inch by inch. I hadn't imagined that in Damiano's mind, I was someone capable of this.

"What witness? What evidence?"

I bit down hard on my lip, the words grinding out between my teeth.

"This compound has security cameras everywhere. If you really think I did it, then check the footage. One look and you'll know the truth."

I held his gaze, stubborn, refusing to bend. Somewhere behind the walls I could hear the low hum of the surveillance system he'd installed himself, the one that watched every corridor and gate of the Mancini estate.

I would not confess to something I didn't do.

Damiano hesitated. Just for a second.

But then Luciana let out a soft, shuddering gasp and clung to him tighter, her voice trembling and paper-thin. Her fingers rose to the pearls at her throat, touched them once, then fell away.

"Damiano, it hurts so much... please help me, please..."

Her collar had slipped. Pale skin spilled into view.

Damiano's hand froze. Instinct told him to push her away.

But Luciana ducked her head and sank her teeth into her own arm without a moment's hesitation. Hard.

Blood welled up instantly.

Bright red, streaming down her skin. Impossible to look away from.

"I know you only see me as a little sister, Damiano. I know this whole marriage these past few days was just an act. It's my fault for letting myself get lost in how sweet it felt, for letting myself imagine you might care about me, even a little..."

Her voice shook. The tears fell harder.

"I'll handle it myself. Don't worry about me. I don't want to be a burden to either of you anymore..."

Damiano's expression changed completely. He grabbed her arm to stop her from biting down again, pulling her into his arms to hold her still. When he spoke, his voice was rough and strained.

"Stop hurting yourself. I'll help you."

I stared at Damiano, almost certain I'd misheard him.

But there was no guilt on his face. Only disappointment. In me.

"Serafina, I thought you were different from all those petty, scheming women. Above using dirty tricks to bully people. But I was wrong."

My throat clenched. It felt like someone was carving my chest open, one slow cut at a time.

"Since you're the one who drugged her," Damiano said, refusing to meet my eyes, "then the consequences are yours to bear."

Luciana nestled obediently against his chest, but her gaze found mine over his shoulder, bright with undisguised triumph. Her fingers drifted to the pearls at her throat, touched them once, and fell away. She didn't need to touch them again. She wasn't cornered. She'd already won.

A violent cramp tore through my lower abdomen, something twisting and churning inside me. The pain nearly buckled my knees.

I gritted through it, my voice cold and cutting. "Damiano, where is your brain? I drugged Luciana and then sent my own man to be the cure?"

"And when you could've just called the Winslow physician..."

Before I could finish, Luciana let out a soft whimper and pressed her hand to her wound.

"Damiano, just go. Don't worry about me. I'm afraid if you actually help me, my sister will hate me even more."

"And don't blame her, either. She just loves you too much. That's why she did something like this."

I'd already decided to let go of Damiano, but I still couldn't stand there and let Luciana spew lies that dragged my character through the mud.

"Luciana, have you no shame? You drugged yourself, then threw yourself at my man and pointed the finger at me. Were you raised by wolves?"

Crack.

The words barely left my mouth before Damiano stood and slapped me across the face.

The force whipped my head to the side. A high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.

"Serafina, Luciana never once said she wanted anything done to you, but you haven't stopped attacking her. Guess that's what happens when you grow up in a church orphanage. Not an ounce of class."

"Since you love drugging people so much, tonight you're going to sit here and watch exactly what that costs."

Before I could react, he'd dragged me to a chair and bound me to it with strips of clothing.

As he pulled off his shirt, the compound was silent around us, the hallway beyond the door holding its breath the way every room in the Mancini house did when the heir's temper turned. He left me with one last sentence: "You brought this on yourself. Don't blame me."

A bone-deep chill spread through me.

The entire night, I watched the man I'd loved for ten years sleep with another woman.

Panting. Wet kisses. The sounds circled my ears like a curse that wouldn't break.

And the whole time, my abdomen screamed with pain. Cold sweat soaked through every layer I wore.

I tried to call for help, but Damiano dismissed it as another ploy for attention. Moments later, Luciana's moans grew louder, drowning me out.

At first I still cried. Then the tears ran dry, and all that was left was numbness.

Every image seared into my eyes was the same reminder: this is what happens when you love the wrong person.

The last shred of feeling I had left died that night.

The moaning lasted until dawn. The compound woke around us in small increments: a gate latch somewhere below, the distant clink of Adrian Ruggiero's keys as she began her morning rounds. None of it reached inside this room. Only then did Damiano finally untie me.

"Learned your lesson?"

He looked down at me from above.

When no answer came, he glanced down and saw my face drained white, my consciousness slipping.

Panic flickered across his features. He checked beneath me and found a pool of red soaking through.

He bent to scoop me up, ready to rush to the clinic, but Luciana's voice drifted from the bed.

"Damiano, you were too rough last night. I think I'm bleeding down there. Could you come take a look?"

"If not, you could just send one of the Ruggieros. That's fine too."

Her voice was hoarse, fragile. She looked utterly pitiful.

Damiano hesitated. His resolve softened. It had been Luciana's first time, after all, and he hadn't exactly held back.

So I watched him set me down, watched him tell me to wait.

But I was in so much pain.

I forced myself upright, called a car on my own, and staggered toward the door one lurching step at a time. My wedding band bit into my finger. I turned it once with my thumb, slow and deliberate. I had stopped hoping. I was deciding.

"Where are you going, sis?"

Just as I reached the top of the stairs, Luciana rushed over and seized my wrist.

"I'm so sorry, sis. This is all my fault. I'm the reason you and Damiano never got to sign the papers."

She tilted her face up at me, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Hit me, yell at me, I'll take it all. Just please don't break up with him over me..."

My head swam. A low buzz filled my ears.

"Let go." My throat was so dry it burned.

Luciana only gripped tighter, stepping closer, as if terrified I'd slip away. Her free hand rose to her pearls, touched them, then touched them again. Twice. She was cornered, and she knew it, because I was actually leaving.

"Please don't leave, sis. Damiano really does love you. He's just soft-hearted. What he feels for me is only habit. Don't misunderstand him..."

Love me?

The pain in my abdomen clenched like a fist. My legs nearly gave out, and a wave of nausea surged up with the irritation.

"Enough." My voice went cold. "Luciana, who exactly are you performing for?"

I yanked my hand back.

I barely used any force.

But in that instant, her body went limp and she tipped backward.

"Ah!"

Her shriek split the stairwell open.

I froze for a fraction of a second, then reached for her on instinct.

My fingertips grazed her sleeve, but she was already falling.

Weightlessness seized me.

Luciana's grip dragged me down with her.

The world flipped.

My back, my elbows, my knees slammed against the hard edges of each step, over and over.

Thud.

I hit the ground floor hard. My vision went black.

Then I heard footsteps, fast and frantic.

"Sera!"

Damiano's voice.

He came tearing down the stairs, steps uneven, more rattled than I'd ever heard him.

Through blurred vision, I saw him reach me.

But before he could get close, a hand caught his sleeve.

"Damiano..."

Luciana's voice, thin as thread.

"I lost my footing. It wasn't her fault. She grabbed for me and got pulled down too..."

"Go check on her first. She fell harder than I did..."

Damiano's movement stuttered.

He'd been about to come to me. But that pause was all it took. His eyes landed on Luciana's disheveled state instead.

Her collar had shifted, exposing the marks he'd left on her skin the night before.

His throat bobbed.

I thought, even if Damiano had no conscience at all, he'd at least check on me first. I was pregnant. I'd just tumbled down an entire flight of stairs in the Mancini compound, and not a single soldier, not a single retainer, had come running. The house obeyed him. Only him. And he chose her.

I watched him gather Luciana into his arms.

Careful. Gentle. Like she was something precious and breakable.

"Let me take you to the Nurse first. You're already fragile, and yesterday I... nothing else can happen to you."

Damiano did not look at me once when he said it. His voice carried through the hallway of the Mancini compound like something rehearsed, something he had decided on the walk down the corridor, and his eyes stayed fixed on the woman draped against his chest as though she were the only living thing in the room. The hallway's pendant lights threw long shadows across the marble, and I could hear the faint creak of a soldier shifting his weight outside the stairwell door, pretending he had not witnessed any of it.

Luciana clutched the front of his shirt, her voice small. "But what about Serafina..."

"I'll come back for her."

He carried Luciana out without looking back. His footsteps faded down the hall, each one precise, unhurried, the stride of a man whose authority meant he never had to rush. Somewhere below, a car door opened and closed. An engine turned over. Then nothing.

I was the only one left, lying on the cold floor.

I stared at the ceiling. The crown molding up there was hand-carved, old money made visible, and the plaster had a hairline crack running from the chandelier mount to the far wall. I watched it the way you watch something meaningless when your mind is trying to leave your body. My vision blurred, slowly, then all at once.

I laughed.

It came out hoarse and hollow, the sound swallowed by the empty corridor before it could echo. If the soldier outside heard it, he did not come.

My hand found my stomach. My fingers were shaking.

"Baby, did you see that?"

"Your daddy doesn't love Mommy. He doesn't love you either."

"How could Mommy... ever dare bring you into this world."

The words left me in a whisper meant for no one alive enough to hear them. I pressed my palm flat against my abdomen and felt the nothing there, the terrible quiet of a body that had already made its own decision while the man who should have cared was carrying someone else down the stairs. The floor beneath me was cold and smooth, imported stone that the Mancini Winslow had paid a fortune to lay, and it held no warmth for anyone.

I don't know how long I lay there before my phone buzzed beside me.

The ride I'd called earlier had arrived.

I pressed my palms against the floor and pushed myself up, inch by inch. My body felt like it had been taken apart and put back wrong. Every movement sent tremors of pain through me. The stairwell banister was close enough to reach, and I locked my fingers around it, the wrought iron biting into my grip. The compound was silent the way it always went silent when the heir left and the household staff scattered to their posts, pretending the night had not happened.

But I stood up.

One step at a time, I walked toward the door.

Blood ran down my legs. I couldn't feel it anymore. The driver waiting outside the compound gate did not ask questions. In this neighborhood, on this block, you did not ask questions about a woman leaving a Mancini property in the small hours with blood on her dress. You opened the door and you drove.

By the time they wheeled me into the operating room, my consciousness was already slipping. The Nurse was not the private Mancini clinic. It was a public emergency ward, fluorescent-lit, the curtain around my gurney a thin blue barrier between me and a hallway full of strangers who did not know my name or which Winslow's compound I had just crawled out of. Voices drifted in and out.

"Miscarriage... she needs a D&C..."

"Where's her Winslow?"

"There's no Winslow."

The words landed somewhere distant, on the other side of a pane of glass I was slipping behind. No Winslow. The phrase should have stung, but it was only true. The Bellandis had never claimed me, not really, and the man who had promised to had just carried my sister out of the house while I bled on the floor. I let my eyes close. The surgical light above me burned white through my lids, and then there was nothing at all.

I don't know how much time passed before I opened my eyes again.

Before I could figure out where I was, the door slammed open.

"Serafina!"

Damiano stormed in, breathing hard. His jacket was gone. His sleeves were rolled to the forearm, and there was a smear of something dark along his cuff that might have been Luciana's blood or the residue of the surgical wing's antiseptic. The overhead light caught the face of his watch, and even from the bed I could see how tight the leather strap was cinched, the skin beneath it blanched white. That sound, the creak of the strap adjusting against his wrist, had become a language I understood better than Italian. Someone was about to pay for his mood.

He crossed the room in three strides and seized my wrist. His grip was so tight I thought the bones would splinter. The IV stand rattled. The heart monitor beside me spiked once, a sharp digital protest that neither of us acknowledged.

"You have the nerve to just lie here?"

His voice was low, but the fury in it was unmistakable. It was the voice he used in back rooms when a capo brought bad numbers, the voice that made soldiers step out of doorways to give him space. He used it on me like I was one of them, like I was someone who owed him something and had failed to deliver.

"Luciana's spleen ruptured because you pushed her. Massive hemorrhaging. She's in emergency surgery right now. You're the same blood type. You're giving her a transfusion."

The fog in my head cleared instantly.

What he was accusing me of was so absurd that for a moment I forgot the pain entirely. My mind replayed the stairwell in a single flash: Luciana's fingers rising to the pearls at her throat, the pivot of her body as she misjudged the step, the sound of her falling that came before I ever moved. I had been standing three steps above her. I had not touched her. And yet here stood Damiano Mancini, heir to a syndicate built on omert and witness corroboration, choosing to believe one woman's silence over another's words because belief was not the point. Control was.

"I didn't push her." I wrenched my hand free, my voice raw and cold. "Damiano, have you lost your mind? You want me to give blood? I just had a"

"You're still denying it!"

He cut me off, his eyes darkening with something vicious. The strap on his watch creaked again, louder now, and the fluorescent light above us hummed as if the room itself were bracing for what came next.

"I saw it with my own eyes. You pushed her down those stairs. Luciana is the one covering for you because she's too kind, afraid I'd blame you. She protected you, and you won't even save her life?!"

I watched him construct his own version of reality and convict me with it. It was so ridiculous I almost laughed. In the Mancini house, truth was whatever the heir decided it was, and everyone else arranged their faces accordingly. "Who asked for her kindness? I didn't do it, and I didn't do it!"

"If something happens to Luciana, how are you going to keep your place in the Bellandi Winslow? Is that what you want? For them to disown you? Would that make you happy?"

He wasn't listening to a single word I said. His brow furrowed like he genuinely believed he was looking out for me, like threatening me with the Winslow that had never wanted me was an act of mercy.

"You and Luciana have the same blood type," he said. "You're donating. Consider it your apology."

Something lodged in my chest. I couldn't breathe. The Nurse room was small and the walls were close and Damiano filled whatever space was left with the force of a man who had been raised to believe his presence alone settled arguments. My thumb found my wedding band and turned it once, a motion so slight he would never have noticed it. But I felt it. The cool metal rotating against skin. I had stopped hoping. I had started deciding.

"I told you. I didn't push her." Every word was deliberate. "And I just"

"Stop pretending to be sick." Damiano's frown deepened, his patience visibly fraying. "Serafina, when did you become like this? You won't own up to what you did, and now you're playing the victim?"

I lost every last shred of desire to communicate with him.

When someone has already decided you're guilty, nothing you say will ever be the right thing.

Damiano grabbed me and dragged me off the bed, hauling me toward Luciana's operating room. The IV line ripped free. A thread of blood traced down the back of my hand where the catheter tore loose, and the pain was so minor against everything else that my body barely registered it. The hallway stretched ahead of us, antiseptic white, and a DeSanti flattened herself against the wall as Damiano passed, her eyes dropping to the floor. Even here, outside Mancini territory, people recognized what he was. Power had a scent, and his was fury.

A doctor stood by the entrance to the surgical wing. The moment he saw Damiano, he hurried over, the kind of hurry that said he already knew which Winslow was paying for the woman on the table inside.

"Draw her blood." Damiano didn't waste a single word.

The doctor glanced at me, hesitation flickering across his face. His gaze traveled from the Nurse gown hanging loose on my frame to the pallor of my skin to the dried blood I had not been cleaned of. "But this young woman's complexion..."

"She's fine." Damiano cut him off. "Draw it."

The doctor's mouth opened once more, then closed. He looked at me the way men in this world looked at women who belonged to someone more dangerous than conscience. Then he reached for a tourniquet.

I was pushed into a chair. My sleeve was rolled up. When the needle pierced the vein, the cold spread up my arm like ice water filling my veins. I watched the dark red line travel through the tubing, leaving me drop by drop, each milliliter a small death I could see happening in real time.

I'd just had a miscarriage. I had no strength to fight back. All I could do was let my head fall against the chair and stare up at the white light overhead, watching the halo pulse and expand, pulse and expand. The edges of the room went soft. The hum of the fluorescent tube above me became the only sound in the world, a thin vibration that seemed to live inside my skull. My blood left me with the patience of something that had been waiting to go.

My consciousness began to drift.

Damiano suddenly took my hand. His grip was different now, not the bone-crushing seizure from before but something gentler, almost careful, as if the same fingers that had dragged me down a hallway could become tender simply because he had decided the crisis was passing. The shift should have been comforting. Instead it made my skin crawl with a recognition I could not yet name. His voice softened.

"Sera, as long as Luciana pulls through, everything that happened these past two days... we'll pretend none of it ever happened."

I didn't look at him.

"I know you have a problem with her. It's because she has feelings for me."

"But I've told you so many times. What I feel for Luciana is the bond of growing up together. She's no different from a little sister to me."

"My wife will only ever be you."

"Once you're feeling better, we'll register the marriage. I'll give you the grandest wedding."

"So, Sera, be good. Stop making trouble."

His words fell into the silence of that surgical corridor like coins dropped into an empty well. Each one sounded rehearsed, polished to a shine, and each one landed with the hollow ring of something that had never been real. I stared at the tubing running from my arm and let him talk, because stopping him would have required a kind of energy I no longer possessed and a kind of faith I had already buried on the floor of his compound.

A sister he'd slept with and still called pure?

What if Luciana got pregnant with his child?

Still a sister then?

But those thoughts barely flickered through my mind. They were gone almost as soon as they came. Like smoke through a cracked window, they passed and left nothing behind them but the faint smell of something that had already burned out.

None of it mattered anymore.

I was leaving.

Seven years of propping Damiano up, plus this blood I was giving now. Seven years of standing behind the Mancini heir while he climbed, translating his ambitions into the kind of quiet, invisible labor that no one in the Winslow ever acknowledged. Keeping his books clean. Smoothing his reputation. Being the woman he came home to when the public-facing world had wrung him dry. All of that, plus this blood draining from my arm into a bag destined for the woman he had chosen over me. That was more than enough to repay the debt of him pulling me out of Saint Rosalia's.

After this, whoever Damiano loved, married, or took to bed had nothing to do with me.

When the transfusion was over, I could barely stay on my feet. My vision went black. I nearly collapsed right there on the floor, and my hand shot out blindly and caught the arm of the chair, the vinyl creaking under my grip. The hallway listed sideways, then righted itself, then listed again.

But Damiano didn't notice. He was already gone, checking on Luciana. The surgical wing doors had swung shut behind him, and through the narrow window I could see his silhouette leaning over the gurney, his hand on Luciana's forehead, and the gentleness in that gesture was the last thing I would ever allow myself to witness from him.

I pulled out my phone. My fingers trembled as I sent my location to Caterina.

"Can you come get me?"

The reply came almost instantly.

"On my way."

Two words. No questions, no conditions, no demands for explanations. In a world built on leverage and obligation, Caterina Valente's reply carried the weight of something I had almost forgotten existed: unconditional rescue. The Valente matriarch moved the way old-money power always moved, without noise, without delay, with the quiet certainty that her resources would arrive before anyone thought to stop them.

I turned and walked back to my Nurse room.

I left the miscarriage report on the bed. The document sat there on the thin Nurse pillow, its clinical language spelling out in black ink what Damiano had never paused long enough to learn. Let him find it. Let him read it. Or let it yellow and curl in an empty room that no one ever returned to. It did not matter which.

All I took was my ID, my personal documents, and the broken watch that had belonged to Adrian Ricci, the directress of Saint Rosalia Home. The watch had not kept time in years. Its crystal was cracked and its hands were frozen at twenty past three, the hour of some long-forgotten afternoon when Adrian Ricci had smoothed a child's hair twice before telling her something hard. I closed my fingers around it and felt the sharp edge of the cracked glass press into my palm.

One step at a time, I climbed to the Nurse rooftop.

A private jet was already waiting. The Valente crest was not displayed on the fuselage, because families like the Valentes did not advertise their movements, but the crew stood at attention in a way that said everything a painted emblem would have. The cabin door opened. A doctor Caterina had arranged stood inside and rushed over the moment she saw me, checking my vitals with efficient hands and an expression that said she had been briefed and was not going to ask me to explain a single thing.

Clouds churned outside the window.

I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched the city where I had spent seven years shrink to a grid of lights, then to a glow, then to nothing. The engines hummed. My blood pressure was low enough that the doctor kept a hand near my wrist, monitoring my pulse with two fingers, and the steady rhythm of her counting was the closest thing to comfort I had felt in days.

When I arrived at the private clinic in America and saw my new husband lying there in his coma, the first thing I did was hold our ring-bearing hands together, take a photo, and post it to social media with a caption:

"Taken."

The ring on my finger was the Valente seal, old gold, heavy, unmistakable to anyone who knew the families. Posting it was not sentiment. It was a declaration. In the language of this world, a woman wearing a Valente ring and using the Valente name was no longer available for negotiation, claim, or retrieval. She belonged to another house now. And any man who tried to pull her back would have to answer not to her, but to every soldier, every capo, and every silent partner who had sworn loyalty to the Winslow crest on that band.

From that moment on, Damiano Mancini had nothing to do with me.