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.

Alessia POV

Recovery was a silent war of attrition.

I blamed my pale skin and trembling weakness on the toll of the final month of pregnancy. Luca accepted the lie without question. He was too busy finalizing the "arrangements" with the doctors to notice that the life had left my eyes.

But Clara? Clara noticed.

She came to the house three days later. She looked at me with a predator's gaze, scanning for a exposed artery. She didn't see a grieving mother. She saw a rival who was about to be discarded.

We were in the library. I was standing by the window, watching the rain blur the world outside.

"You look terrible, Ava," she said.

I didn't turn around. "I'm just tired, Clara."

She walked up behind me. I could smell her perfume. It was heavy, floral, and cloying—like funeral lilies left too long in the sun.

"You know what happens after the baby comes, don't you?" she whispered, her voice dripping with faux sympathy. "Luca doesn't need you anymore. You'll be lucky if he sets you up in a condo somewhere. But I doubt it. You know too much."

I turned to face her. Her eyes were bright with malice.

"Is that what you think?" I asked.

She stepped closer, invading my personal space. "I think you're a rat, Ava. And rats get exterminated."

She lunged at me. It wasn't a real attack; it was pure theater. She shoved my shoulder, then threw herself backward, crashing into the heavy oak coffee table with a calculated force.

She screamed.

Luca burst into the room a second later, followed by my father.

"She pushed me!" Clara wailed, clutching her arm. "She tried to kill me, Luca! She said if she can't have the baby, no one can!"

It was a lie so clumsy it should have been laughable. But in this house, the truth was whatever Clara said it was.

Luca looked at me. His face was a mask of cold indifference.

"Dante," he said.

My father stepped forward. He didn't look at me as a daughter. He looked at me as a problem he had to solve to keep his standing.

He grabbed my arm with a bruising grip. He dragged me toward the fireplace.

"Discipline her," Luca commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "She needs to learn her place."

Dante picked up the iron poker. It was heavy, cold, and rusted at the tip.

I didn't struggle. I didn't beg. I just looked at Luca. I wanted him to see this. I wanted him to remember this.

"Put your hand on the table," my father commanded.

I put my right hand on the marble surface. My painting hand. The hand that had created the only beauty the Vitti family possessed.

Dante raised the poker.

The sound of bone shattering is louder than one might expect. It cracked through the room like a gunshot.

Pain exploded up my arm, blinding and white-hot. I fell to my knees, cradling my ruined hand against my chest, the nausea rising in my throat.

Luca didn't flinch. He walked over to Clara and helped her up.

"Get her out of my sight," he said.

My father dragged me out of the room. I looked back one last time. Clara was smiling, burying her face in Luca's chest.

I looked down at my hand. The fingers were twisted at unnatural angles. The swelling was already starting.

They had taken my mother. They had taken my child. Now they had taken my art.

There was nothing left to take. Which meant I was finally free.

Alessia POV

The cast on my hand was heavy, a shackle made of plaster and ruined dreams.

The doctor they had summoned—a vet who usually stitched up fighting dogs after illicit matches—said I would never hold a brush again. He claimed the nerves were severed, that the bones were dust.

I didn't care. Let the art die. I didn't need to paint anymore. I had a new masterpiece to finish, one painted in consequences rather than oils.

The "due date" arrived two weeks later.

The house was buzzing with anticipation. The medical team was setting up in the guest wing, transforming it into a sterile theater for the heir's arrival. Clara was pacing, eager to claim her prize.

I spent the morning in the nursery. I packed a small bag: stacks of cash, a fake ID I had bought from a cleaner years ago as a desperate contingency, and the keys to an old sedan I kept hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the gardening shed.

I went to the ventilation shaft in the bathroom and retrieved the container.

I placed the tiny, preserved remains of my son inside the velvet jewelry box Luca had given me for our wedding. It was meant for a diamond necklace. It was lined with black silk.

A fitting coffin.

I placed the box on the pillow in the center of the crib.

I wrote a note. Just three words.

The Vitti Legacy.

I padded my stomach one last time, securing the ruse I had maintained for months. I put on my coat.

I walked downstairs. The guards were distracted, watching the perimeter for Feds, blind to the pregnant wife moving like a phantom inside the fortress.

I told the kitchen staff I was going to the greenhouse to get some air before the labor started. They nodded, too afraid of my husband to question me.

I walked out the back door. The air was crisp. The leaves were turning brown, mirroring the decay of this house.

I didn't run. Running attracts attention. I walked with purpose.

I reached the shed. The old car started with a rough cough before settling into a steady hum.

I drove to the service gate. The guard there was new. He saw the Vitti sticker on the windshield and waved me through, oblivious to the fact that he was opening the cage.

As I drove away from the estate, I didn't look in the rearview mirror.

I felt a strange sensation in my chest. It wasn't fear. It wasn't sadness.

It was the cold, hollow silence of a vendetta fulfilled.

I touched the empty passenger seat.

"Goodbye, Luca."