I traveled everywhere, piecing together the little wooden cabin from his memories, detail by detail.

I learned every trick in bed to keep him satisfied.

I thought we'd have a happy future.

But on our wedding anniversary, he walked into a hotel with my best friend, right out in the open.

I ran to confront him like I'd lost my mind.

Nico sneered and flung my contract with Don Aldo in my face.

"Sera, what exactly do you think you are? You play house for a couple of days and suddenly you think you're Mrs. Valente?"

"You're a dog my grandfather bought. What right do you have to question anything I do?"

"Push me again and I'll have your grandmother's treatment cut off today."

I stood there as if I'd been struck by lightning, unable to form a single word.

After that, Nico only got worse.

Once he'd had his fill of socialites and girls from associate families, he started going after my friends. Pushing past every line I had left.

On one side, my grandmother needed her treatment. On the other, a marriage that had already rotted through.

The two forces pulled me apart from opposite ends.

I nearly broke.

One day I was so out of it that I lost my footing and tumbled down the stairs of the compound. The hospital visit revealed I was pregnant.

Don Aldo all but begged me: "Sera, keep this baby. It might be the turning point for your marriage."

"If Nico still hasn't changed after the child is born, I promise I won't ask you to stay."

Carrying every tangled emotion inside me, I agreed.

I never imagined that after fighting so hard, my grandmother, my baby, my marriage, my love — I couldn't hold on to a single one.

I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, slowly, and looked up at the gray haze beyond the window.

Maybe the only consolation left was that Nico and I had both been set free.

While I was still lost in thought, his call came through.

"Sera, you went running to Grandpa to tattle again, didn't you? Gianna and I finally had some time alone and you ruined it."

"I'm warning you. Pull something like that again and I'll cut you off completely. No money, no protection, nothing."

Before, I would have groveled. Explained. Apologized. Done whatever it took to earn his forgiveness.

Now I just said, flat and empty:

"Do whatever you want."

My indifference caught Nico off guard.

But it only took a moment before he let out a cold laugh.

"I hear the baby was born. Having a child in your corner really does give you nerve."

"But don't forget. I'm the Valente heir. As long as you're still under this roof, I have more than enough ways to make your life hell."

I closed my eyes.

I knew exactly what Nico's ways looked like.

The first time I caught him in bed with someone, I'd been naive enough to go to Don Aldo for justice. What I got instead was Nico's fury.

He used my grandmother as leverage and forced me to kneel on the freezing bedroom balcony, slapping my own face over and over. Two of his soldiers stood inside the glass doors, watching. Neither moved. Neither looked away.

That night, the sounds of him and his woman carried through the walls until morning.

I was taken to the hospital the next day with a swollen face and frostbite. The doctor on the Family's payroll logged it as a fall on ice. No one questioned it.

Whatever real feeling I'd had left for him scattered into that blinding snow and never came back.

From then on, no matter what Nico did, I pretended I didn't see it. I swallowed every humiliation, endured every petty cruelty in silence. I held on to the title of Mrs. Valente with everything I had.

But now, my grandmother was gone. My baby was gone.

This marriage that had been dead in everything but name — it was time to finally end it.

I hung up without a word.

Then I stood, called the funeral parlor where the Family sent its dead, and scheduled a time for the cremation.

When I made it back to the room, Nico was standing in the doorway.

He looked at me with a furrowed brow, then let out a cold laugh.

"Done putting on the pity act?"

"Running around right after giving birth. You're clearly healthy enough — guess you don't need any postpartum rest after all."

"I'm moving Gianna into the compound. She's young and delicate, doesn't know how to lift a finger around a house. So check yourself out of the hospital and come home to be our maid."

He stepped closer as he spoke.

A cruel smile on his face.

"That look of pain you get. It's my favorite turn-on in bed."

He stared at me, waiting for me to crumble, to cry, to give him what he came for.

All he got was a face so calm it bordered on numb.

Bored with me, Nico turned and stopped a young nurse passing by.

"Where's the baby? Boy or girl? Bring it here."

The nurse went pale.

"Your grandfather took the baby," I said flatly.

Nico opened his mouth to say something else, but his phone rang.

The moment he answered, his face changed completely.

Then he slapped me across the face.

"Sera, what did you do to Gianna? If anything happens to her, I swear I will make you pay."

Already weak, I lost my footing and slammed backward into the hallway railing.

The nurse rushed forward to catch me.

"Mr. Valente, your wife just gave birth. You're going to kill her like this!"

Nico didn't hear a word.

He was already gone, racing off to tend to Gianna.

The nurse looked at me, her eyes full of pity.

My face was white, but there was nothing on it to pity.

Every last trace of love, hate, and everything in between had been ground out of me over seven years.

After the examination, the doctor ordered me to rest.

I finally learned what had set Nico off.

The baby was dead. Aldo, grief-stricken and furious, had made a single phone call and Gianna was blacklisted from every connected venue, every nightclub, every associate-run business in the city. Her social accounts went dark overnight. The Family's reach was quiet, thorough, and total.

Gianna assumed it was my doing and ran to Nico with a wildly embellished version of the story.

That was why he hit me.

But that wasn't all.

Nico stripped me of my seat at the Family's table. Whatever nominal standing the blood-bound marriage had given me within the Valente organization, he signed it away to Gianna as casually as a man writing a check.

To cheer her up, he bought an entire gold mine and named it after her.

In an interview, Gianna showed off the diamond ring on her hand, preening. She touched the hollow of her throat as she spoke, that quick, almost flirtatious gesture she wore like a habit.

"I've never considered myself the other woman. If a wife can't hold on to her husband's heart, she deserves to sit at home alone."

"Besides, the current Mrs. Valente only married into the Family for money. I'm different. Everything I have for Nico is real."

The comments section split down the middle.

A swarm of her rabid fans tagged my account.

Insults, slurs, demands that I step aside for Gianna.

I scrolled through it all and felt nothing but the irony.

After all these years, Nico's playbook for winning women over hadn't changed one bit.

He'd done the exact same thing to me, once.

When he found out I'd grown up poor and never had a birthday party, he gave me twenty gifts the year I turned twenty.

A gold baby locket for age one, all the way up to a villa on the coast for age twenty.

To make up, he said, for every year of hardship I'd ever known.

I still remember that night, standing under a sky full of stars, his hand around mine.

"Sera, I lost my parents young too. My grandfather raised me. I understand what that's like."

"From now on, I'll treat your grandmother like my own. I'll build the happiest family you've ever had."

I melted in those tender eyes.

Believed, naively, that I'd found the person I would spend my life with.

Then the novelty wore off.

Nico moved on fast.

Once, during one of their early dates, he'd left me on a mountain road to deliver flowers to whatever woman had caught his eye that week. Just drove off and forgot I existed.

I walked miles of winding mountain road home alone that day. My feet were raw and bleeding by the end, and the scars on my calves never fully faded.

I should have understood then. This man was selfish and faithless. He would never rein himself in for anyone. That blood-bound marriage was nothing but an excuse he'd written himself for cheating.

With that thought, I left a comment under Gianna's latest video.

"Wishing you two a lifetime of happiness and a baby on the way."

She deleted the video within minutes.

Nico's call came right after, demanding answers. I didn't pick up. Instead, I did what he'd always done to me. Calmly blocked his number.

Then I remembered: today was the day Nonna Rosa was being cremated.

I explained the situation and checked out of the hospital early. Dr. Matteo Ferraro wasn't comfortable letting me go and couldn't talk me out of it, so he insisted on coming along.

When the attendant at the funeral parlor placed the urn in my hands, I didn't feel the crushing grief I'd expected. All I felt was the shackle that had bound me for seven years finally breaking apart. The weight of the urn was nothing compared to the weight lifting off my chest. Seven years inside the Valente compound, seven years of silence and submission and the slow grinding of Omertà against everything I was.

I let out a quiet breath, said goodbye to the doctor, and went back to the Valente estate alone to pack.

The moment I stepped into the living room, I saw Nico and Gianna on the couch. Gianna scrambled to zip up her dress when she spotted me. But the red marks covering her skin gave away exactly how intense things had just been.

I felt no heartbreak. No anger. As if I'd seen nothing at all, I walked into the bedroom without expression.

By the time I came back out, Gianna was gone. Nico sat alone, drinking. A bottle of something expensive and half-empty on the side table, the room carrying the faint sweetness of her perfume mixed with whiskey.

He raised his head slowly when he saw me. The dim light fell across his face, unreadable. The heir to the Valente empire, sitting in shadows with his shirt half-unbuttoned, looking at me the way he might look at a soldier who'd arrived late to a sit-down.

"Sera. Where were you today?"

"None of your business."

I had nothing more to say, but Nico hurled his glass against the floor. Crystal shattered across the marble, and the sound echoed through the too-large room like a gunshot.

He closed the distance in two strides.

"Drop the act. You think I don't know you were out with that pretty boy of yours?" His voice was low, controlled, the kind of quiet that preceded the worst things in this house. "Can't stand being lonely, is that it, Sera? You blaming me for ignoring you? Fine. I'll give you what you want."

He tore at my clothes and dragged me toward the bed.

I recoiled, stunned by what he was doing. "Nico, have you lost your mind? I just gave birth!"

He was past hearing. Past reason. His teeth sank into my shoulder.

I shoved him off with everything I had and slapped him across the face.

That only made him worse. He grabbed the glass from the table and hurled it straight at me.

The crack of impact.

A thin line of blood slid down from my forehead.

Nico froze for a second, then reached for me on instinct. "Why didn't you dodge…"

I staggered backward, trying to speak. My body gave out before the words could come.

I didn't know how long I was out. Nico and Aldo arguing woke me. Their voices carried from the far side of the room, the old Don's tone a register I had never heard from him before. Not raised. Worse. Flattened to something cold and final, the voice of a man who had passed judgment a thousand times and was now passing it on his own blood.

I was back in the hospital.

When he saw my eyes open, Nico seemed to let out a breath of relief. Then his expression soured, and he turned to Aldo.

"This is the wife you picked for me. Couldn't even wait till she recovered before running off to meet her boy toy."

Aldo was shaking with rage. His ring finger tapped twice against the arm of his chair, hard and deliberate, the sound cutting through the sterile room like a verdict.

"A date? Do you have any idea where Sera went yesterday…"