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.

Alessia POV

The water in the shower had long since turned cold, but I didn't reach to turn it off.

I needed the noise. I needed the deafening roar of the water to drown out the sound of my own heart breaking.

I looked down at the pills trembling in my hand. They were potent—high-grade muscle relaxants and labor inducers I had swiped from the clinic weeks ago. Just in case. Just in case I needed an exit.

I never thought the exit would be for him.

My hand shook violently as I brought the cup to my lips. I swallowed them dry. One by one. Gritty and bitter against my tongue.

I sat on the tiled floor of the shower, the freezing water beating down on my swollen belly. I apologized to him. I whispered his name, Leo, over and over again until the syllables lost their meaning and dissolved into a rhythm of grief.

I couldn't let them have him. I couldn't let Clara cut him out of me and claim him as her own. I couldn't let Luca raise him to be a butcher.

It was better this way. It was a mercy. Better for him to never breathe the same poisoned air as the Vittis.

The pain started an hour later. It wasn't just a cramp; it was a searing, twisting knife grinding into my lower back. I bit down hard on a folded towel to keep from screaming, my jaw aching from the pressure.

I clawed at the grout between the tiles until my fingernails cracked and bled.

It went on for hours. The blood mixed with the water, swirling down the drain in diluted pink ribbons.

When it was over, I didn't look at him. I couldn't. If I looked at his face, if I saw Luca's nose or my father's chin, I wouldn't be able to do what came next.

With trembling hands, I wrapped him in the silk pillowcase I had brought into the bathroom. It was soft. It was the only soft thing he would ever know.

I placed him inside the airtight container I had prepared. I didn't cry. I had wept all my tears before I took the pills. Now, I was just a machine. A vessel that had been emptied and scraped hollow.

I hid the container in the back of the ventilation shaft behind the vanity, a place I knew no one ever checked.

Then came the hardest part.

I cleaned the floor. I scrubbed every inch of grout with bleach until my hands were raw and burning. I showered again, washing the scent of birth and death off my skin, scrubbing until I was red.

Moving like a ghost, I took the foam padding from the decorative pillows on the chaise lounge. I shaped it. I taped it to my stomach.

The adhesive pulled at my skin, a sharp sting against the dull agony inside me, but I ignored it.

I put my nightgown back on.

I looked in the mirror. I still looked pregnant. I still looked like the vessel they wanted.

But I was a tomb.

I unlocked the door and walked back into the bedroom. Luca was asleep. He didn't move. He didn't know that his legacy was already gone.

I climbed into bed beside him, my body screaming in protest. I lay there, staring at the dark ceiling, feeling the phantom weight of the child I had just sent back to the stars.

You wanted a Vitti, Luca.

I closed my eyes.

I will give you one.