Chapter 5

Seeing me stay silent, he finally softened his tone.

He crossed the room and reached out to touch my hair. The old estate was quiet around us, the kind of quiet that only settled when a man was used to no one refusing him inside his own walls.

I turned my head away.

He didn't get angry. He pulled his hand back and sighed, then reached up and smoothed his tie flat against his chest.

"Just cooperate, and your father's atelier stays under Falcone protection. The pact holds. No one touches the Rossi name."

"Gemma's baby will be yours once it's born. You won't have to worry about a thing."

"You get to be a mother without going through nine months of it. Aren't I good enough to you?"

So that was what he called being good to me.

I looked into his eyes, the eyes that once held nothing but tenderness when they looked at me.

Now there was only calculation and entitlement in them.

I said nothing.

He wasn't wrong. My father's business survived because the Falcone Family let it survive.

But if I put a different heir on that throne, the threat above our heads would cease to exist.

I sent Lorenzo a message beneath the table, my thumb pressed flat against the bare base of my ring finger.

【I can help you take back everything that belongs to you. But I have one condition.】

The moment it reached him, Lorenzo fired back:

【I'm across the water. I'll be back tomorrow. We talk then, in full.】

With his reply in hand, I looked at Salvatore with resolve and said it again:

"Repudiate the union."

Confusion flickered through Salvatore's eyes, and an uneasiness he couldn't explain settled in his chest.

"Adriana, I've never once thought about casting you out..."

Gemma's face went pale all at once, and she asked me through tears, one hand sliding flat and possessive across her stomach:

"Signora, why won't you just let me go?"

Salvatore glanced at her phone, then lifted his own and spoke low to the Don's hand waiting beyond the door.

"Send them up."

Something felt wrong. The garlic and old leather smell of the house turned to something colder. I stood, ready to leave.

But Salvatore stepped into my path, and his fingers went to his cuff, twisting it straight.

"Selling a woman's private photographs to the wrong people is a serious matter, cara. Ugly business."

"For the sake of you carrying my name, I'll smooth it over with Gemma so she lets it lie. But this sickness of yours needs proper care. Somewhere quiet."

The words had barely left his mouth when four men came through the door. Soldiers. They moved the way soldiers move, without hurry, because they already knew how this ended.

"Signora. You'll forgive us. You need to come with us."

I refused with everything I had, and Salvatore's face darkened as he said, cold and even:

"Adriana. It's too late to be frightened now. I know you're not well. That's the only reason you'd do something so vicious."

"Don't worry. I've already spoken with the man who runs the place. Cooperate, and you'll be home soon."

The four enforcers closed in and pinned my arms.

I struggled with all my strength, and it was useless.

Salvatore took the chance to snatch away my phone, sliding it into his own pocket without looking at me, straightening his tie again with his free hand.

As they dragged me out through the silent hall, past men who kept their eyes low because omertà meant you saw nothing when the underboss buried someone, Gemma mouthed the words at me:

"You lost."

At the sanatorium the Family kept for people it needed to disappear, two women in white forced a glass of water down my throat.

Within minutes, my arms and legs began to go weak.

They dragged me to a chair and strapped down my hands and feet.

The drug took hold fast, and as the treatment went on, step by step, I sank into blackness completely.