I spent eight years raising Dante's children. Three of them, and every single one belonged to him and his arranged wife Bianca. Not one was mine.

I fought against it. I really did.

But the Costello family needed heirs, and my background was too ordinary. The family would never accept me.

Dante always had something to say about it.

"Nora, once Bianca has the baby, I'll take you to the States. You can go to art school, open your own gallery. It's what your mother always wanted, isn't it?"

Then Bianca had a son, and suddenly the family needed a daughter too, someone they could marry off to another faction. When the daughter came, the elders stepped in and said the mob was a bloody business and you needed enough children to guarantee the line would continue.

Eight years. I went from Dante's lover to something worse than a servant.

Then I got pregnant. I was so happy I could barely breathe when I told him. I thought this baby would finally be our way out.

But there was no smile on his face. Just a look that was pained and apologetic, like he already knew what he was going to say.

"Nora, you don't have a place in this family. Neither does your child. He'd disrupt the line of succession. We can't let him be born."

I pressed my hand to my stomach, just barely starting to show. Hot tears hit the floor.

Fine. If we couldn't leave together, I would leave alone.

I was in the nanny's room packing my bag, crying and talking to the baby at the same time.

"It's okay, sweetheart."

"Even if your daddy doesn't want you, Mama will raise you on her own."

Dante pushed the door open. He was holding a necklace, the Heart of the Ocean.

He wiped my tears gently, then stepped behind me and clasped it around my neck.

"Nora, don't cry."

"Just wait a little longer. Once I take over the family business, things will go back to how they should be."

"Then I can go with you to the States..."

Same line. Always the same line. I couldn't stand it anymore. I shot to my feet and shoved him back.

The breakup speech was already on my lips when a wave of dizziness crashed over me.

Dante's face went soft and blurry. My fingers found the necklace at my chest without thinking.

Slipping unscrupulous drugs into a piece of jewelry was nothing new for Dante.

I laughed bitterly. I'd thought it was an apology gift. Instead, it became the ticket that ended my baby’s life.

I went down fast. Dante caught me before I hit the floor.

"Nora, we'll have our own children. I promise."

No, Dante. We won't.

When I came to, I was in the Costello family's private clinic. Pain tore through my body in waves, so sharp I couldn't tell if I was alive or in hell.

A nursing intern was asking the surgeon something.

"Doctor, she's already awake. Why didn't the sedative hold?"

The surgeon didn't stop what he was doing.

"Don't talk nonsense. No supplier would dare cut corners on the Costellos. It's not the sedative. She woke up fast because we didn't use anesthetic for the curettage. The pain brought her around."

"Nothing we could do about it. Orders came straight from the Don himself. He told me it'd be better if she never had children again. Keeps the Costello bloodline clean."

The surgeon's instruments moved through my body with clinical efficiency. In my daze, I could even hear metal scraping against bone.

But the pain was going numb, and not in the physical sense. What hurt more than my body was everything else.

I didn't know how long I cried before the surgeon finally finished.

I asked the nurses when I could recover. They laughed.

"It's just one lost baby. Are you planning on staying here forever?"

"That's just how she is. That's why she's been clinging to the Costellos for eight years."

"Exactly. Bianca and young Dante are a proper match, approved by the family elders. And her? A nobody who used to do odd jobs at some gallery, crawling after the Costellos like she belonged there."

"Bad enough she stuck around. Then she went and got pregnant by him. Poor Bianca."

I closed my eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

They had it wrong. I wasn't trying to stay. I'd been trying to leave. I just wanted to escape this cruel estate that devours people alive.

I dragged myself back to the estate. I just wanted my art supplies and my mother's things.

I opened the door and the whole house was covered in balloons and streamers and a giant banner:

DANTE & BIANCA'S BABY SHOWER

Their fourth child, by my count.

Friends were dancing in the middle of the room. On the sofa, the two of them were wrapped up in each other. Dante had her pinned against the cushions, kissing her like nothing else existed. Bianca eventually gave him a soft push, and they pulled apart slowly, neither one ready to let go.

He laid his hand on her stomach, his voice so tender it turned mine.

"Baby, when you're born, Daddy's going to take you out to the shooting range."

Bianca swatted his shoulder lightly.

"Shooting range? We already have two boys. I want a girl this time. Two boys, two girls, perfect."

The way Dante looked at her, the love in his eyes looked ready to spill over. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Whatever you want. As long as the baby arrives safe, I don't care either way."

I stood in the doorway listening. Their voices cut through the electronic music in a way the bass never could.

My hand moved to my own stomach without thinking. Flat now. Almost hollow.

My legs gave a little. I stumbled into a glass nearby, and Dante finally noticed me.

He made a point of putting some distance between himself and Bianca, stood up, straightened his clothes, then came toward me. There was something almost guilty in his voice.

"Nora. Sorry. Bianca's pregnant again."

I stared at him, tears threatening to spill.

"The first one was because the Costello family needed an heir."

"The second was because the family needed a daughter for an alliance marriage."

"The third was because the family business is dangerous and they needed to ensure succession."

"So what's the fourth? What's the reason this time?"

Dante pulled me close. His voice was calm, but what he said left me freezing cold.

"Nora, I'm sorry. This one was an accident. But since Bianca's pregnant, there's no reason not to have the baby."

The breath went out of me. I wrenched myself free and screamed at the top of my lungs.

"If she's pregnant it has to be kept, so why did mine have to go?"

"She's carrying your child. Wasn't I carrying your child too? What makes the difference? Why?"

Before he could answer, a toy gun came out of nowhere and hit me hard in the stomach.

My body hadn't recovered from the procedure. That impact sent cold sweat crawling across my whole body. I dropped to the floor, face white.

Bianca's oldest son wasn't done. He worked through the entire toy basket, hurling things at me one after another.

"You gold-digger! You stayed around Dad to get at the Costello money!"

"Grandpa never accepted you, so you tried to trap my mom's spot by getting pregnant. Dream on!"

When the toys ran out, he grabbed a bottle off the table and threw it at my head.

Blood dripped from my hairline, tapping against the floor.

Dante’s face softened with concern. He turned and roared at his son.

"Daniel! That's enough! Get over here and apologize!"

Bianca looked shaken. She rushed to grab Daniel, and two tears slid down her face.

"Dante, how dare you yell at our child? I nearly died having him. Have you forgotten what you swore to me outside the delivery room?"

Dante's anger dissolved almost instantly. When he turned back to me, his tone shifting from former concern to sharp impatience.

"Nora, Daniel is just a kid. And no matter what he does, he's my son. You were almost a mother yourself. Can't you be a little more patient with children?"

I looked down and laughed. Not at anyone else. At myself.

There was a moment, just then, where I actually thought he might take my side. God, Nora. You really are that stupid.

I wasn't going to stand there being the third wheel to whatever this was becoming. I pushed through the pain and went upstairs to get my art supplies.

When we first got together, Dante knew I loved painting. He converted two bedrooms on the upper floor just to give me a studio.

But the second I stepped into the hallway, two nannies burst out of the nursery. One was holding Bianca's third son. The other had two bags of luggage in her hands.

The one with the baby shoved him into my arms.

"Nora, you just had an abortion, not surgery. You should've been back the second you climbed off that table. A mere artist like you has no right to put on airs like a pampered miss."

"Exactly. You've looked after all these kids before. Even for their sake, you shouldn't disappear for more than an hour. Zero responsibility."

They kept talking as they walked downstairs with their bags.

"Young Master Dante said we've been working too hard. He gave us time off."

"Take good care of the young master and the little princess. If anything happens to a Costello child, that's on you."

The baby started wailing in my arms. The music from downstairs pumped on. Daniel had already climbed into his father's lap with a picture book. The nannies slammed the front door behind them.

I stood in this enormous house and genuinely didn't know what I was. Dante's lover? The Costellos' nanny? Not even a nanny, really. In everyone's eyes, I was the woman who ruined Dante and Bianca's arranged marriage..

I stopped trying to sort it out. I put the baby down and walked into the studio.

The moment I stepped inside, I thought I'd walked into the wrong room.

That wall used to be covered in our plans. Every sketch and photo Dante had collected for our life in the States. The art school brochure pinned dead center. The house he'd found near campus. The gallery he thought would suit me. The names of artists he wanted to invite to my first show.

He'd done it all himself. Said if I looked at those plans every day, I'd have more motivation to paint.

"I want to see you happy. That's the only way I'm happy."

Now every inch of that wall was covered with photos of Dante and Bianca, their children, their future.

A picture of the two of them outside Oxford.

"Daniel, Mom and Dad came to put in a good word for you. Direct admission when you're old enough."

A photo at a restaurant I'd once shared with Dante. He was feeding Bianca a bite of steak.

"Baby girl, Daddy brought Mommy to the pretty restaurant. You have your mommy's taste. When you're big enough, we'll bring you here. Your smile, and your mommy's, that's the greatest reward your daddy could ask for."

I stood there looking at all of it, every declaration, every picture, every promise that used to have my name in it. All the strength seeped out of my body.

My hands dropped to my sides. The baby slipped from my arms onto the sofa.

He cried even harder. His endless howls wore away my final patience. My arms hung loose, then my hands clenched slowly. Memories of his endless excuses and the scenes on the wall churned restlessly inside me.

I lost it.

I ripped every photo off the wall. I grabbed fistfuls of paint and smeared it over everything, every sweet word, every caption, every lie.

Dante heard his son's screaming. He came in at a run.

He scooped the boy up without even registering what I looked like. When he finally turned to me, brows knotted, his face said I was the problem.

"Nora, is this how you look after a child? If something happens to him, you’ll pay with your life!"

The warmth went out of my voice, though it had been gone for a while.

"Go ahead. Kill me. It's not like that's hard for you."

"But since we once loved each other, tell me the truth just once. Why exactly am I supposed to be raising your children with another woman?"

"Am I your lover? Or am I your kids' nanny?"

Dante's expression shifted. He didn't answer the question. He grabbed onto the other part and took hold of my shoulders.

"Nora. What do you mean 'once loved.' Say that again."