Chapter 2

I wasn't a fragile woman, not really. But years of trailing after Salvatore, chasing his business from the docks to a dozen cities while dragging a ruined leg behind me, had worn something down in me.

In the end it left its mark. Every month, when my period came, the pain drained the color from my face.

I remembered one time the cramps had been so bad I clutched my stomach, kicked off my shoes, and stumbled all the way from the study to the bedroom of the estate. All he did was tell the housemaid to bring me my slippers. "Bella, be a big girl. Put them on yourself."

He hadn't so much as shifted in his seat back then. Nothing like the way he threw himself into every little thing now, all that anxious hovering.

Gianna came toward me carrying a cup of hot water, and seemed to catch her foot on the uneven marble.

She let out a startled cry, and the whole cup of scalding water splashed straight onto the place where my stump met the prosthetic.

A searing sting tore through me, dragging the phantom pain up with it.

"Ngh..." I doubled over at once, hands clamped around my leg.

"Oh! I'm so sorry, Miss Isabella! I didn't mean to!" Her eyes rimmed red in an instant, and she stood there wringing her hands, helpless.

Salvatore was at Gianna's side before anything else, checking her hands. "Did it burn you? How could you be so careless?"

He didn't spare me a single glance. Only after he'd confirmed Gianna was fine did he turn to look at me. "Bella, you frightened her. She's timid."

I heard the reproach in it, and somehow the pain in my flesh seemed to vanish beneath it.

He plucked a few tissues, light as air, and held them out to me. "Wipe it yourself. The prosthetic can't feel a burn anyway."

If he had only looked, even a little, he'd have known it wasn't just the prosthetic I'd burned.

But he didn't. He simply went straight over to soothe Gianna, that woman trembling like a startled fawn.

"Don Rizzo... I feel so terrible about Miss Isabella's leg, I really didn't mean to..."

Salvatore patted her back gently, murmuring comfort. "Don't be scared. Bella isn't petty. She won't hold it against you."

For a fraction of a second, before she lowered her lashes, the trembling in her lip went still and her eyes turned flat, measuring me. Then it was gone, and she was fragile again.

In the end Gianna came over and apologized to me one more time.

Salvatore shielded her all the way back to her room, past the soldier standing watch at the corridor's end, and only then was the matter over.

I stood where I was, like that pregnancy test result soaked into a pulpy mess of rain and mud.

A living joke.

I never did learn what Salvatore told Gianna that night.

In the end, he still came to share the guest room with me.

On the creaking wooden bed, Salvatore wrapped his arms around me from behind.

His low, hoarse coaxing brushed the back of my ear. "Bella, are you angry with me today?"

His broad palm settled over my right leg, the one with the prosthetic removed, and stroked it, lingering, tender. The signet ring on his finger was cold against my skin.

Just as he had for the past six years, this part of me that filled me with self-loathing the moment I saw it, he always touched as though it were something he loved.

The memories surged up wrapped in a bitter ache, and I nearly poured out every last grievance to him.

I wanted to ask if he truly felt nothing for me.

I wanted to ask whose vendetta, whose blood feud, my parents had really died for in that explosion six years ago, in a zone he had known was never cleared.

I wanted to ask if he truly meant to throw away me, our six years, and the child in my belly, all for Gianna.

My love for him wasn't the work of a day or two. He had watered it into being over six whole years.

Once, I too had believed we were worlds apart.

My family shattered, my home gone, dragging a severed leg behind me.

He was the moon over Harbor City, ruler of the docks and everything the water touched, hung high above the rest of us. Why would he ever stoop to look at me twice?

But he hadn't just looked. He had saved me, and kept me by his side.

I still remembered the day of the explosion, his tailored suit soaked with the blood pouring from my severed leg, giving the order to the men of the Family:

"Listen to me! From now on, the Rizzo family protects her!"

That day I lost my parents, and gained my own savior.

I curled my fingers into a fist and listened to Salvatore explain, his voice soft:

"Bella, Gianna's father gave his life back then, for me, for the Family."

"That's the only reason she was taken and left to suffer like this. I came this time to bring her home."