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.

Julian's POV:

I stared at the papers on the table, my mind blank, unable to process my mother's words.

I brushed past her, grabbing my car keys.

"Not now," I muttered, a strange, inexplicable panic tightening in my chest. "I have to get Sienna. She's probably at the hospital. We need to see her grandmother."

My mother didn't move.

She stood perfectly straight in the center of the foyer.

"Her grandmother died yesterday, Julian," she said.

The words hit me like a fist to the gut, a sharp, searing pain.

"Died?" I froze, the sharp metal of the keys biting into my palm.

My mother pulled a folded document from her designer bag.

She tossed it at my chest; it fluttered to the floor.

It was the finalized, stamped divorce decree.

It was official?

"No," I breathed, stepping back. "Impossible. She was stable. The doctors said she had years."

"You're lying to me!"

My foot lashed out, my boot connecting hard with the leg of the heavy oak side table.

My thigh muscle seized from the impact, but I didn't kick the table over. I just stared at the paper on the floor, my throat dry, struggling to swallow.

"You're lying to me! You opposed it when Sienna and I got married. So you're lying to me, aren't you!"

I roared in denial, clutching my hair.

"I used the old woman's life to keep Sienna tied to me!" I yelled, the ugly truth finally ripping from me. "As long as the grandmother lived, she wouldn't leave!"

I fumbled for a cigarette.

My hands shook so badly I snapped the white cylinder in half.

I threw the pieces on the floor and pushed past my mother.

"You trespassed in my territory!" I snarled at her. "You gave her those papers!"

My mother stepped aside, her expression cold and detached.

"I provided the documents," she reminded me calmly. "But you signed them, Julian."

I stumbled out the front door and into my car.

Grandma's death was too sudden, it made no sense.

The doctors had said she had years.

I tore through the dark New York streets, running red lights until I reached the family hospital.

I slammed open the double doors of the private wing.

The attending doctor was standing by the nurse's station.

I lunged at him, grabbing his throat and slamming him against the wall.

"How did she die? How does a protected patient die under your nose?" I demanded.

The terrified doctor clawed at my hands.

"She was fine!" he choked out. "Two days ago, she suffered a massive shock. It triggered respiratory failure. We couldn't revive her!"

I threw him to the floor.

"I want all medical records from the last month," I ordered the cowering staff, "and the security footage. Now!"

I locked myself in the security room at the end of the hall.

The flickering monitors cast a harsh, white light on my face.

I pulled up the hallway footage from two days ago.

I watched the grainy video as Vivian slipped past my soldiers.

She walked straight into the room.

I switched to the interior camera.

I watched my mistress sneer at the frail old woman in the bed.

I watched Vivian fling a stack of explicit photos in Grandma's face.

I watched Grandma cry out in terror.

I watched her reach for the phone, then pull her hand back – too afraid to call Sienna, to worry her, to worry the baby.

She knew. She knew Sienna was staying with me because of her.

She knew.

I watched Grandma clutch her chest, suffocating in the darkness.

I watched her hit the emergency button, seconds later the medical team rushing in to perform CPR, but the fatal damage was already done.

I watched her die in agony.

A suffocating silence enveloped me.

"Search every corner of that room!" I barked into the radio, my voice trembling with fear.

Ten minutes later, a soldier returned, handing me a thick stack of photos they'd found under her mattress.

I walked out of the security room, my eyes hollow, looking at the hospital staff crowded in the hallway.

I asked, "Who let a whore past my security?"

My voice was barely a whisper, but it echoed like a gunshot in the quiet hall.

A nurse stepped forward, sobbing.

"She called you," the nurse confessed, tears streaming down her face. "She called you in front of us. We heard you talking to her on speakerphone, using that affectionate, indulgent tone. We didn't dare stop a woman you spoke to like that."

I froze.

The thought hit me like a physical weight, crushing the air from my lungs.

I had empowered Vivian. I had given her the arrogance that ultimately killed Grandma.

It was me.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

It was a news alert.

Vivian had just landed the lead role in a major movie, a production financed entirely with my dirty money.

I stared at her smiling face on the screen.

I squeezed the phone until the glass cracked, shards embedding in my skin.

My voice was hoarse as I looked at the soldiers standing at the end of the hall.

"Bring Vivian to the estate," I ordered, my voice cold as ice. "Now."