The old Don nodded, and the movement seemed to cost him everything. "I was wrong to keep you bound to this Family. Go. Go find a life beyond all of this. You deserve a wider world than the one we built on blood."

Then he bent, gathering the child that was already gone into his arms, and left the room like a man carrying the weight of every sin the Falcone name had ever earned.

The moment the door clicked shut, the tears I had been holding back finally fell.

Years of bitterness and regret came crashing down at once.

My union with Lorenzo had been arranged by his grandfather. The old Don needed someone to leash his unruly heir, to keep the boy from burning the whole territory down. I needed someone to settle the life-debt hanging over my dying mother.

It had been a fair trade.

I walked away from my old life and became a Falcone bride.

Over time, I came to know the wounds he never spoke of at the Sunday table. How he lost his parents while he was still small enough to be forgotten in the shuffle of soldiers and made men. How he still woke in the dead of night, crying out for a mother who wasn't coming back.

In those moments, our two broken souls seemed to resonate with one another.

I want to heal his heart.

I want to build a happy family with him, something the code and the blood money could never touch.

So I gave myself to the role of being the perfect wife.

I drilled myself in the kitchen for hours, chasing the taste of his mother's cooking, the one warm thing that had ever reached him inside that cold compound.

I traveled from place to place, trying to rebuild the little wooden cabin from his childhood memories. I learned every art of the bedroom to satisfy him, hoping it would be enough to make him stay.

I thought we would have a future together.

But on the anniversary of our union, he walked into a hotel with my closest friend on his arm, unhurried, unashamed, daring the whole room to say a word.

Like a madwoman, I ran after him and demanded he explain himself.

He scoffed and threw the arrangement between his grandfather and me in my face, the terms of the debt that had bought my life.

"Serafina, what do you imagine you are? Because I entertained you for a while, you think you're truly a Falcone?"

"You're nothing but a stray my grandfather paid for. What right does a bought thing have to question me about who warms my bed? Push me, and I'll stop paying for your mother's care this very second."

I felt like I'd been struck by lightning. I couldn't force out a single word.

From that night on, Lorenzo grew even more reckless.

When he tired of the nightclub darlings who preened for his attention, he moved on to my friends.

He kept testing my limits, again and again, the way a man tests how much a rope will bear before it snaps.

On one side, my mother needed her care, and the Family held the strings of it.

On the other, my marriage had rotted through to the bone. I almost collapsed under it.

The two forces pulled me in opposite directions, tearing me apart.

One day, lost in my own thoughts, I slipped and fell down the stairs.

That was when I found out I was carrying his child.

His grandfather pleaded with me, the old Don nearly desperate, his hand turning that heavy signet ring around and around.

"Serafina, please, keep the child. Perhaps it could save this union. If Lorenzo still hasn't changed after the baby comes, I swear on my name I won't force you to stay."

With too many things weighing on my heart, I agreed.

I tried. I truly did. I hadn't let myself try so hard in a long time.

But in the end, I lost everything. My mother, my baby, my marriage, my love.

I wiped away my tears and gazed out of the window at the gray sky over Falcone territory, the city where every block below belonged to someone who answered to the Family.

Maybe the only relief was that both Lorenzo and I were finally free.

While I was lost in thought, my phone rang.

It was him.

"Serafina, did you go running to the old man again? You ruined my night with Bianca! I'm warning you. Pull something like this again and I'll cut off every dollar the Family lets you touch."

In the past, I would have begged, apologized and done everything to get back into his good graces.

But now, I just said with an indifferent face.

"Do whatever you want."

He was caught off guard by my indifference. But soon, he sneered.

"I heard you gave birth. Having a child really gives you confidence, huh? But don't forget. I'm the heir to the Falcone throne. As long as you carry this Family's name, I can make your life hell."

I closed my eyes.

I had seen what he was capable of.

The first time I caught him in bed with another woman, I naively went to the old Don for justice, believing the code meant something under that roof.

But all I got in return was his twisted revenge.

He used my mother against me, the life-debt that bound me to this house, forcing me to kneel on the freezing balcony, slapping myself over and over.

That night, I listened to him and his lover making love, their voices echoing through the compound, while I shivered until I passed out.

By the time morning came, my face was swollen, my body frostbitten and the Family's private physician was called to carry me off the record.

That was the night the last of my love for him died in the snow.

After that, no matter how cruel he was, I pretended not to see.

I endured every humiliation and every insult that Falcone dealt.

I forced myself to stay in the role of the Underboss's wife.

But now, my mother was gone.

My child, too.

This union, already a corpse, needed to be buried once and for all.

I hung up the phone without another word.

Then I stood up and quietly twisted the plain band on my finger before contacting a man I trusted at the funeral home to arrange the cremation.

When I returned to the hospital room, I saw Lorenzo standing in the doorway, one of his soldiers a silent shadow at the far end of the corridor.

He drew his eyebrows together as he looked at me, then sneered.

"Why don't you keep acting, pretending to be pitiful anymore?"

He crossed his arms and scanned me with an icy gaze. "Running around so soon after giving birth? Looks like you're in great health. I suppose you won't need any time to rest and recover."

He stepped closer, his voice dripping with malice. "I've decided to move Bianca into the compound. She's young, delicate and doesn't know how to keep a house. Go on and process your discharge papers. Come home and be our maid."

As he leaned in, his lips curled into a cruel smile.

"Your pain is the best stimulant for me in bed."

He stared at me dead on, expecting to see my pained and saddened look.

But I didn't. I met his gaze with an expression as blank as an empty canvas, drained of any emotion.

His amusement faded when he realized there was nothing left for him to destroy. Irritated, he turned to a nurse hovering near the wall. "Where's the baby? Boy or girl? Bring it to me."

The nurse hesitated, her face pale with anxiety.

I helplessly said, "The Don carried away the baby."

Lorenzo looked like he wanted to say more, but his phone rang. The moment he picked up, his face twisted with fury.

Without warning, he slapped me across the face.

"Serafina! What did you do to Bianca?! If anything happens to her, I swear you will regret it!"

Already weak from childbirth, I stumbled back, crashing into the railing of the private room the Family kept off the record. The nurse rushed forward, steadying me.

"Signor Falcone, your wife just gave birth! If you keep this up, you will kill her!"

But Lorenzo didn't care. He acted as if he hadn't heard. With concern for Bianca and without sparing me another glance, he stormed out of the room, his mind solely on her.

The nurse looked at me with a heartbroken face. My pale face, however, didn't have any extra expression. My face was pale, my heart empty. As if all the love and hatred had been consumed in ten years of suffering.

After the check-up, the physician instructed me to rest. It was then that I finally realized the reason why Lorenzo had lost his temper.

The baby had died and the old Don, grief-stricken, retaliated by using every hand he owned to shut Bianca out of every front club and social circle the Family touched. Desperate, she mistakenly thought that I was the one settling the score. She had run to Lorenzo, crying and exaggerating the situation and added more fuel to the fire to complain to him. That was why he had struck me.

But it didn't end there.

As tribute to Bianca, Lorenzo stripped me of my cut of the territory earnings and signed those rights over to her.

To further appease her, he even bought her the naming of twenty stars in the sky and titled each one with Bianca Renna.

During an interview at one of the Family's nightclubs, Bianca flaunted her new diamond ring, smiling sweetly. Her smile snapped into place a half-beat too fast. 'I don't consider myself a mistress. If a woman can't keep her husband's heart, she has no one to blame but herself.'

She ran a finger over her ring, her voice dripping with mockery. 'Besides, the current Signora Falcone married for the Family's money. But me? I only love Lorenzo with all my heart.'

The whole social scene erupted into chaos. Her followers showered her with praise, while others condemned her shamelessness. Some even tagged my account, flooding me with insults, demanding I step aside for her.

I stared at my phone, but instead of anger, I felt… irony.

After so many years, Lorenzo's tricks for coaxing girls haven't changed at all.

Thinking back then, Lorenzo had done the same thing for me.

After learning that I had grown up with nothing and never celebrated a single birthday, he showered me with twenty gifts on my twentieth. From a golden locket for my first year to a house of my own for my twentieth.

He said he wanted to compensate me for the suffering I had endured in the past twenty years.

I still remember that day, he took my hand under the starry sky.

"Serafina, I lost my parents when I was young. But from now on, I will treat your mother as my own. I will start the happiest family with you."

I melted in the depth of his eyes.

Naively, I thought that I had finally found someone to share a lifetime with.

But then, love had an expiration date. And once the novelty wore off, he had simply moved on to someone else.

One night, during one of our so-called dates, he left me stranded on a hillside outside the compound's territory just so he could carry flowers to his new mistress. That night, I walked for miles down the rugged trails alone. My feet were torn and bleeding and my calves were left with lifelong scars that would be hard to erase, a permanent reminder of the price I paid for loving him.

Looking back, I should have known then.

A selfish and sentimental man like him would never settle for just one woman. Our blood-bound union had always been nothing more than his excuse to justify his infidelity.