Sienna's POV:

On the other end of the line, the Matriarch was silent for a long moment.

Julian's mother, a cold, calculating woman who had never truly accepted me, was utterly opposed to my marriage to Julian. But she understood the brutal rules of the criminal underworld better than anyone.

"You're being hasty, Sienna," she said, a hint of surprise in her voice. "You could have at least stayed at the estate until the heir was born."

I looked down at my flat, empty stomach.

I said nothing.

The baby wouldn't be born.

The Matriarch, always a shrewd strategist, seemed to understand.

"Without a child," she said, "the link between you and Julian is completely severed."

"That's exactly what I want," I murmured.

The line went dead with a short click.

As I turned, a maid carrying a large stack of clean towels rushed into the hallway.

Startled by my sudden appearance, she collided with the wall, her shoulder striking the ornate, gilded wedding portrait hanging there.

The heavy gold frame slid from its mount and crashed onto the marble floor.

The glass didn't shatter. A single white crack ran through the center, splitting Julian's smiling face in two.

I stared motionlessly at the seven-year-old photograph.

Julian was smiling in it, his arm wrapped protectively around my waist, his dark eyes filled with love.

Looking at his flawlessly handsome face, a memory surfaced, pushing everything else aside.

I remembered him kneeling on the freezing concrete floor of the family compound, beaten bloody by the syndicate's enforcers.

He had willingly endured such brutal punishment, openly defying his own Godfather, just to marry me, an outsider.

"Without the family, I can still conquer the underworld," he'd said, spitting out blood. "But without you, the empire in my chest is just an empty shell."

He loved me then. At least, he had.

I had believed our love could conquer reality.

Another memory surfaced, cold and sharp.

It was the first time the Matriarch had shown me the photos.

Pictures of Julian with a blonde woman, intimate and explicit.

I refused to believe my dark prince had betrayed me.

So, with a pitying sneer, she'd dragged me to the underground VIP room of a mob-run club.

Through the tinted glass, I saw Julian sitting on a leather sofa, surrounded by his capos.

"Sienna is pure and innocent," he boasted, drawing slowly and arrogantly on a cigar. "She's the only pure thing in my life."

Before I could be moved by his words.

The next second, he pulled a half-naked woman onto his lap.

Grinning at his cheering men, he slid his hand up her bare thigh.

"But why limit yourself?" he laughed. "I love her, but I don't love only her."

Standing outside the VIP room, my illusion shattered in an instant.

Later that night, Julian returned to the estate.

Seeing my red-rimmed eyes, he feigned concern and reached for my face.

I pushed his hand away.

I handed him the first set of divorce papers the Matriarch had prepared.

Julian looked at the legal documents, then up at me, smirking.

He openly admitted to the affairs.

He invoked the twisted double standard of the mafia with sickening confidence.

"Physical release means nothing, Sienna," he'd argued, his tone infuriatingly gentle. "It's just business, stress relief. Coming back to your bed every night is proof of my loyalty to you."

He'd dismissively batted the papers from my hand.

He'd strutted upstairs to shower, confident that a weak civilian like me would eventually learn to shut up and play the role of the obedient mafia wife.

I snapped back to the present.

The terrified maid was babbling apologies, clumsily sweeping up the broken glass.

"Forget it," I told her, my voice dead, hollow.

I turned away from the ruined portrait, just as I had turned away from our marriage.

When Julian returned to the master bedroom in the dead of night, he expected to find me waiting.

Instead, he found my diamond wedding ring and syndicate keys on his nightstand. The officially signed divorce decree was already in the Matriarch's hands.

All my things were gone from the closet.

For the first time in his life, a chilling wave of panic washed over him.

Sienna's POV:

I sat in the back of a speeding taxi, city lights blurring past the window, heading to the airport terminal for my flight to Germany.

The shrill, insistent ring of my phone shattered my thoughts.

I glanced at the caller ID.

The screen flashed: Valenti Family Hospital.

A cold feeling washed over me.

That kind of dread took me back to the day I first brought my grandmother there.

I had rushed back to my rural hometown after learning she'd collapsed.

Local doctors diagnosed her with late-stage lung cancer.

I was sitting in that rundown county hospital, watching over her frail body.

Julian walked in.

His custom suit was soaked, his Italian leather shoes caked with mud from slipping down the rain-slicked embankment while desperately searching for me.

With unshakeable authority, he introduced himself to the doctors.

He put his arm around my shoulder, claiming to be my husband.

My grandmother, stirred by his voice, woke up.

She looked at me, asking weakly if we were still happy together.

I was too afraid any sign of distress might hurt her, so I didn't dare pull away from Julian's grip.

Julian smiled a tender smile.

He played the perfect husband, a picture of devotion, so easily it was sickening.

He insisted on transferring her to the family's state-of-the-art facility in the city.

For six months, my grandmother thrived in that luxurious hospital.

The mafia's top doctors assured us she had years left.

During that time, Julian acted like a family man. He was glued to my side, cooking for me every day, playing the part of a man deeply in love.

Then, one day, I brought homemade soup to his regular office.

I pushed the door open without knocking.

And I heard the sounds of Julian having sex with his secretary on his desk.

My hands trembled violently.

The thermos slipped from my grasp, spilling hot soup all over the carpet.

Caught red-handed, Julian's face twisted in rage.

He grabbed a heavy crystal ashtray and hurled it blindly at the wall.

It shattered on impact, and a sharp shard flew out, slicing my calf. A line of blood ran down my bare leg.

The secretary fled in terror.

I didn't scream.

Instead, I calmly slid the diamond wedding ring from my finger and placed it on the nearby end table.

Julian, utterly unconcerned about my bleeding leg, calmly lit a cigarette.

He coldly reminded me of my position.

"Grandma's life support is paid for and guaranteed by me," he exhaled a plume of smoke. "If you file for divorce, the payments stop. Grandma dies. You should understand that."

That night, I moved out of the master bedroom and locked myself in a guest room.

Two weeks later, visiting the hospital, I caught Julian cornering my grandmother's private nurse in a stairwell, kissing her hungrily.

Afterwards, I cornered him, begging him not to let my grandmother find out.

She was too weak; I feared any upsetting news would harm her.

Julian just leaned down, kissed the bitter tears from my eyes, and ordered me back to his bed.

From that moment on, our marriage became a living nightmare.

My sole purpose for existing was to keep my grandmother alive.

Now, sitting in the cold airport terminal, the relentless buzzing of my phone yanked me back.

I finally answered.

"Miss Sienna," a clipped voice said. "We're calling regarding the arrangement of your grandmother's personal effects."

I gripped the phone tightly.

I already knew she was gone.

"I need to come clear out the room," I said, my voice raspy.

I ordered the driver to turn around, my heart hammering against my ribs in a terrifying rhythm.

An hour later, I walked the sterile corridors of the private hospital.

Two nurses stood outside my grandmother's closed door, whispering.

So absorbed in their gossip, they didn't notice me approach.

"Horrible," one nurse shuddered, her voice low. "She died in such agony. Her face was streaked with tears, she couldn't breathe, clutching her chest... it wasn't peaceful at all."

I stopped dead.

Grandma was supposed to have passed peacefully in her sleep.

Why was the nurse saying she died in agony?

A sudden, panicked urgency drove me forward. I pushed past the startled nurses and threw open the heavy door.

Sienna's POV:

The room reeked of disinfectant, the cold air from the vent chilling my bare arms.

The bed was made, but stripped of its former warmth.

The toe of my shoe scuffed against something smooth on the floor.

I looked down.

Photographs were scattered across the tiles, some still half-hidden under the bed.

I bent and picked one up, my fingers trembling slightly.

It was a high-definition, explicit photo.

Julian and Vivian, tangled together on a bed, their bodies pressed in raw, undeniable intimacy.

Five or six similar images lay scattered around the room.

"No!"

Overwhelming grief tore me apart from the inside.

The nurses' whispers echoed in my mind.

Died from fury and fear, face streaked with tears.

Grandma had seen these.

Someone had snuck these into her secure room, forced her to look.

The tears Grandma shed at the end were for the silent suffering she knew I endured.

She died knowing what kind of monster I was bound to.

In that moment, every excuse I'd ever made for him, every reason I'd endured, turned to ash in my mind.

A numbness washed over me, slowing the blood in my veins.

This was a cruel murder.

I knew who the killer was.

It was Julian. It was Julian's mistress. And it was me.

I left the hospital and got into a taxi.

I knew where Julian was tonight.

A dinner at a hotel downtown.

I bypassed the security at the main entrance; the soldiers stationed there recognized my face and respectfully stepped aside.

I entered the grand ballroom.

The air was thick with the smell of Cuban cigars, expensive oud, and the low hum of dangerous deals.

I scanned the shadows near the bar, my focus sharpening.

I found them.

Julian had Vivian pressed against a marble pillar, making out with her in the dim light.

Mobsters and their wives whispered and glanced sideways.

They speculated that Julian was finally going to legitimize his mistress and replace his boring civilian wife.

Vivian pulled back from Julian, a triumphant smile on her face.

She held up her phone, shamelessly posting a photo of their kiss on social media.

Eager to force Julian into publicly acknowledging her.

Julian turned his head and noticed me standing a few feet away.

He didn't look ashamed, just annoyed.

"Go home, Sienna," he murmured. "Don't make a scene, or I'll pull the plug on your grandmother's doctors tomorrow."

My face was completely blank.

I felt no fear, no love. Just a chilling clarity.

I shoved Julian hard with both hands. Startled by the force, he stumbled back.

Before he could react, I stepped around him and slapped Vivian across the face.

The sound cut sharply through the low music, creating a silent circle around us.

Vivian shrieked, clutching her reddened cheek, stumbling back in her stilettos.

Julian's mafia boss instincts kicked in.

But he didn't defend his mistress.

He stepped in front of me, shielding me with his body, and snapped at Vivian.

"Shut up, you're just a whore!" he growled, aggressively asserting my inviolable place as his wife.

He turned, grabbing my hand, his fingers digging deep into my skin.

He forced a fake smile for our onlookers.

"Wifey's a little jealous," he announced loudly to the room, his grip crushing my knuckles. "We're going home now. I'm going to cook her dinner."

His touch made my skin crawl.

I yanked my hand away.

I grabbed a whiskey from a passing waiter's tray.

Locking eyes with Julian, I poured it directly over his head.

The liquid soaked his hair, dripping down his custom suit.

"Looking at you makes me sick," I said loudly. "Marrying you was the curse of my life."

Julian wiped whiskey from his eyes, his jaw twitching slightly.

He forced a laugh, glancing around at his men.

"Pregnancy hormones," he dismissed coldly. "Go home, Sienna. Don't stress the baby."

I walked away alone. I didn't look back.

I left the dinner and got into a waiting car.

"The airport," I told the driver.

A one-way flight to Germany was waiting.

Hours later, Julian returned to the sprawling estate.

He walked into an empty house. The silence was suffocating.

The food on the stove was cold.

The phone line was dead.

When he realized my scent had vanished from the hallways, an unknown fear, suffocating like a noose, gripped him.

He heard the front door open and rushed to the foyer, desperate to see my face.

"Sienna!"

It wasn't me.

It was the Matriarch.

She walked in and threw a thick stack of papers onto the table.

She looked at her son with cold, pragmatic eyes.

"Consider marrying a daughter of the Romano or Rossi families," she advised bluntly. "That civilian woman is gone. You need a real wife."

Julian's eyes widened, disbelief washing over him.