Chapter 4

I had just drawn the phone from my pocket when Gemma tore herself out of Salvatore's arms, sobbing until she choked on the words.

"Signora, is it because you don't want the baby in my belly that you'd hurt me?"

Salvatore snatched the phone from my hand and slammed it hard against the marble.

"Adriana! This child is going to call you 'mother' someday. How could you raise a hand against your own blood? Just because it isn't yours?"

The screen went black in an instant.

But Gemma still wasn't satisfied. She lurched to her feet and bolted for the door.

"Since the Signora doesn't want it, I'll go be rid of the baby right now!"

She hadn't even crossed the threshold before she crumpled to the floor.

Only then did I notice the thin slick of oil by the door, though I couldn't say when it had gotten there.

Gemma clutched her belly and cried out.

"Why is the floor so slippery…"

Salvatore saw the oil too. His head snapped around toward me, and he roared.

"Adriana! How can you be this vicious? How many times do I have to say it. Gemma only spilled that broth the other day because the bowl was too hot!"

A flash of triumph crossed Gemma's eyes as she gripped her belly and sucked in a sharp breath. Her hand went flat and possessive against the swell of it, nothing tender in the gesture at all.

"Ah, my stomach hurts so much…"

Sick with worry, Salvatore scooped her up and carried her straight out toward the doctor the Family kept on retainer.

Before he left, he didn't forget to say to me, cold as ice:

"You'd better pray Gemma and the baby are fine."

"Otherwise I won't let you off."

I stood where I was.

Staring at the shattered screen in pieces on the floor.

And then I laughed out loud.

He was right. My baby was gone. I shouldn't let him and Gemma off the hook.

I carried the dead, cracked phone to a man who fixed such things quietly, and thank God, everything on it could be recovered.

The consigliere I had quietly retained watched the recording and said I could walk away from Salvatore with everything, and leave him with nothing. He steepled his fingers and tapped the tips together, slow and certain.

And that I could make Gemma answer for the harm done to my body.

"Then I'll leave it in your hands, Consigliere Greco."

The phone buzzed. It was Lorenzo reaching out.

"Do you really intend to spend the rest of your life wasting away over some child of unknown blood?"

I couldn't help freezing.

"Aren't you the one who's actually…"

Lorenzo cut me off and told me a story.

It turned out that Lorenzo's mother, Carmela Greco, had been Vittorio Falcone's true first wife.

To help Vittorio raise the Family from nothing, she had poured in every cent her people had.

But once Vittorio's name carried weight in the city, he tricked Carmela into signing away the union with the lie that it was only paper, a formality to move property, then turned around and took Salvatore's mother, already pregnant, into his house.

Carmela later learned the truth and went to demand an answer for herself and for Lorenzo, only to be branded a kept woman and slandered by my mother-in-law.

The truth was the complete opposite of everything my mother-in-law had ever told me.

For a moment I didn't know who to believe.

Lorenzo read straight through what my silence meant and let out a sigh.

"It's fine if you don't believe me. I just don't want to watch you end up like my mother, played for a fool by a man with no honor in him."

I went and had it confirmed right away.

And the moment I knew that everything Lorenzo said was true, Salvatore came back.

He seized my wrist and dragged me off toward the doctor by force.

"Apologize to Gemma!"

"I did nothing wrong!"

His eyes were full of disappointment.

"You nearly killed her baby!"

"Adriana, when you turn into someone like this, how am I supposed to keep living under the same roof with you?"

When Gemma had let my baby die right in front of me, he hadn't offered a single word of blame, let alone made her answer to me.

I lifted my head and looked at him, and I smiled.

"Then let's not keep living together."

He was stunned for a moment, then said with a cold face, one hand rising to straighten a tie that didn't need it:

"Your parents' atelier lives under the Falcone protection. The day you repudiate this union, they lose everything."

My parents' work was the labor of their whole lives.

Back when Salvatore was courting me, he had handed the Family's protection pact to the Rossi name of his own accord.

I thought it was love.

I thought he cared for my people.

Only now do I understand that with that pact in his hands, it was simply the leverage he held over my throat.