Alessia POV

The wedding wasn’t a celebration; it was a sentencing hearing.

We were married in the chapel on the Vitti estate, a fortress of cold stone and iron patrolled by a perimeter of armed guards.

There were no flowers to soften the gray. There was no music to fill the silence. My white dress didn’t feel like a bridal gown; it felt like a shroud.

My father, Dante, walked me down the aisle. He refused to look at me.

He was too busy beaming at the Capos in the front row, desperate for a scrap of their approval. He had sold his only daughter to the Underboss to prove his loyalty after the "leak."

He had crushed my hand to teach me a lesson, and now, he was handing over the rest of me to seal the deal.

Ethan was there, standing guard by the heavy oak doors. He wouldn't meet my gaze.

But Clara was looking.

Clara Vitti, Luca's stepsister. She sat in the front row, wrapped in a cashmere shawl, looking frail and tragically beautiful.

She had always been sick, always teetering on the verge of death, using her illness as a weapon to manipulate the men around her.

But today, she looked flush. She looked more vibrant than I had ever seen her.

She caught my eye and smiled. It was a small, tight curvature of her lips that promised nothing but misery.

She touched her chest, right over her lungs, and took a deep, easy breath—inhaling my despair like it was oxygen.

I looked away.

Luca took my hand at the altar. His palm was dry, his grip firm.

He said the vows with the same detached, commanding tone he used to order a hit. He promised to protect me. He promised to keep me.

"I do," I whispered.

I didn't have a choice. Outside these walls, I was a rat. Inside, I was property. But property is kept safe.

That night, in the master bedroom, Luca stripped off his jacket and tossed it onto the velvet chair. The room was cold.

"You are beautiful, Alessia," he said.

He didn't touch me gently. He didn't ask. He claimed.

He pressed me onto the bed and took what he believed he had rightfully purchased.

There was no passion, only possession. He wanted to imprint himself onto my skin, to erase whatever was left of the girl who used to paint, the girl who used to laugh.

When he was finished, he rolled over and lit a cigarette.

"You're safe now," he said, exhaling a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "You're a Vitti."

I lay in the dark, staring at the canopy of the bed. I felt hollowed out.

I felt like a house that had been gutted by fire, leaving only the charred, unstable frame standing.

I thought about my mother. I thought about the painting hand my father had crushed. I thought about Ethan turning his back.

I realized then that safety was just another word for a cage.

Alessia POV

The nursery was painted a soft, buttercup yellow.

In this mausoleum of a house, it was the only room that dared to possess color.

I sat in the rocking chair, my hands resting on the hollow curve of my stomach.

It had been two years.

Two years of suffocating silence.

Two years of striving to be the perfect, pliable wife.

And the reward? Two tiny, fresh graves in the family plot.

The first miscarriage happened at three months.

I woke up in a terrifying pool of blood. The doctor—the same man who had watched my mother fade away—dismissed it as stress.

He told me my body was too weak, his voice void of sympathy.

The second loss occurred at four months.

I had been faithfully drinking the herbal tea Luca insisted on.

He claimed it was an old family recipe for fertility, but it carried the distinct, cloying aftertaste of bitter almonds.

Clara came to visit me after that second loss.

She sat on the edge of my bed, looking radiant, her chest rising and falling with an ease that mocked my own struggle.

"Poor Ava," she cooed.

She reached out, her fingers brushing my arm. They were ice against my feverish skin.

"It must be devastating to be so broken. Luca wants an heir so badly. It’s a shame you can’t give him one."

She stood up and began pacing the room, trailing her hands over my possessions as if cataloging her inventory.

"Maybe it’s for the best," she mused. "The Vitti blood is strong. It needs a strong vessel."

I watched her.

I saw the way she looked at Luca when he walked into a room—hungry and possessive.

I saw the way Luca hovered over her, checking her temperature, adjusting her shawl with a tenderness he never showed me.

"Why are you always here, Clara?" I asked, my voice a raspy ruin.

She smiled, a slow, predatory curving of lips.

"Because this is my house, Ava. You just live in it."

Luca entered then.

He didn't look at me.

His eyes went straight to Clara.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, concern etching his brow. "You look pale."

"I’m fine, Luca," she lied, her voice dropping an octave to a pitch of practiced helplessness. "Just a little tired. Ava was just telling me how sad she is."

Luca turned to me.

His eyes were hard, devoid of warmth.

"Stop upsetting her, Ava. You know stress is bad for her condition."

He helped Clara out of the room, leaving me alone in the bed with the cramps, the blood, and the suspicion that was starting to harden into certainty.

I stopped drinking the tea.

Instead, I started pouring it into the potted plant in the corner.

The plant withered and died within a week, its leaves curling brown and brittle.

Six months later, I was pregnant again.

I didn't tell Luca until I couldn't hide it.

I lived like a woman under siege. I ate only food I prepared myself. I drank only water from sealed bottles.

I grew big.

I felt the baby kick, strong and vibrant.

It was a boy. I named him Leo in the quiet sanctuary of my mind.

I made it to eight months.

I was huge, swollen, and terrified. But for the first time, I was hopeful.

Maybe a child would change things.

Maybe a son would make Luca look at me with something other than contempt.

I was wrong.

Alessia POV

The lake house was supposed to be a sanctuary, a quiet retreat before the birth.

Luca had insisted that the city smog was toxic for the baby, that we needed purity.

But in reality, the house was a glass cage perched precariously on the edge of a stagnant, black lake, hemmed in by miles of suffocatingly dense forest.

It was beautiful, yes. But it was desolate.

I was in the kitchen, fumbling in the dark for a glass of water. It was past midnight, the silence of the house pressing against my eardrums. My ankles were swollen to the size of grapefruits, and a dull, throbbing ache radiated through my lower back.

Voices drifted down the hall from the study. The heavy oak door was cracked open just a sliver, spilling a razor-thin line of yellow light across the floorboards.

It was Luca and Ethan. Ethan had recently been promoted; he was Luca’s right hand now, the executor of his will.

"Everything is in place," Ethan was saying, his voice low and professional. "The medical team is on standby at the private facility."

"Good," Luca replied. I heard the distinct clink of crystal against crystal—whiskey, neat. "We can't take any chances this time."

"She’s massive, Luca. She’s at full term. Are you sure Clara is physically strong enough to handle the procedure?"

"Clara is ready," Luca snapped, the ice in his tone cutting through the warm air. "She's been waiting for this for years. The lung transplant bought her time, but she needs a reason to live. She needs a legacy."

I froze. The glass in my hand became slick with sudden sweat.

"And... what about Ava?" Ethan asked.

There was a pause. A hesitation that hung heavy in the air.

"What about her?" Luca’s voice was devoid of humanity. "She's done her job. The womb served its purpose. Once we cut the kid out, she's nothing but a loose end. We can't have her fighting Clara for custody."

"So... we stick to the plan?"

"Yeah. Post-birth complications. Severe hemorrhage. It happens all the time. Tragic, really."

I stopped breathing. The world didn't just spin; it tilted violently on its axis.

They weren't talking about a nursery. They weren't talking about a family.

They were talking about a harvest.

My mother. Her lungs. For Clara.

My baby. My son. For Clara.

Me. A corpse. For Clara.

I wasn't a wife. I wasn't even a person. I was an incubator. A biological spare parts bin.

I backed away from the door, my steps silent despite the blood rushing in my ears. My heart hammered against my ribs with such violence I thought it would wake the entire house. I made it to the bedroom and engaged the lock with trembling fingers.

I looked down at my stomach. My son moved, a slow, rolling wave under my stretched skin, oblivious to the death sentence hanging over us.

If I gave birth, they would kill me and hand him to the monsters. He would grow up calling Clara "mother." He would be molded by Luca's cruelty.

He would grow up to be a Vitti.

He would be poison.

I couldn't escape. The perimeter was guarded by armed men. I couldn't fight; I was slow, heavy, and exhausted.

But I had one card left to play. The only card.

I moved into the en-suite bathroom. I dropped to my knees and opened the medical kit Luca kept under the sink. I found the scalpel—cold, surgical steel he kept for emergencies. Beside it, I found the bottle of high-strength painkillers.

Tears streamed down my face, hot and fast. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered, a rhythmic clicking sound in the quiet room.

I loved him. I loved him more than my own life.

And that was exactly why I couldn't let him be born.

I caught my reflection in the mirror. The naive girl who painted landscapes was dead. The hopeful wife was dead.

All that was left was a mother willing to burn the world down to save her child's soul.

I turned on the shower, letting the water thunder against the tiles to mask the sound of my coming screams. I picked up the tools.

I wasn't going to give them an heir.

I was going to give them a tragedy.

I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles turned bone-white, staring into the rising steam.

"I'm sorry, Leo," I whispered, my voice breaking.

"I'm so sorry."

Then, I did what had to be done.