Elena Rossi POV
My parents all but shoved me aside in their haste to approach the Don.
My father bowed his head, offering cloying congratulations to Serena, while my mother reached out to stroke the mistress's arm, her words a fawning tribute to the other woman's beauty.
They were like stray dogs, groveling for a scrap from the master's table.
Salvatore did not so much as honor them with a glance.
He dismissed my parents with a cold, negligent wave of his hand, as though they were dirt tracked across his expensive rugs.
From the corner, Mrs. Bianco let out a short, mocking laugh at the pathetic display.
Having witnessed enough of my family's humiliation, she turned on her heel and swept from the room.
Seizing the opportunity, Serena let out a soft, breathy sigh, a perfect imitation of exhaustion.
Leaning close, she whispered to Salvatore that the noise was giving her a headache and that she wished only to go home.
Salvatore immediately wrapped a thick arm around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest in a display of fierce, dominant possession.
Over her shoulder, his dark eyes found mine.
His voice cracked like a whip as he reprimanded me for my 'tantrum,' accusing me of ruining what was meant to be a peaceful evening.
Invoking his absolute authority as the Don, he issued a chilling command: I was to surrender my chair to the woman carrying the precious Vitiello blood.
The fawning expression on my mother's face did not so much fade as it did curdle, the muscles around her eyes tightening into a mask of undisguised contempt.
"You are an absolute embarrassment to the Rossi name," my mother hissed, her face contorted with venom.
I stood frozen, rooted to the spot as I stared at the man I had worshipped through years of silent agony.
Leo, ever the opportunist, noted my hesitation.
Desperate to prove his ruthless loyalty to the Don, he stepped up behind me and drove the toe of his shoe into the back of my knees.
My legs gave way beneath me.
I crashed hard onto the floor, my palms landing squarely in the pile of shattered crystal.
Sharp, jagged edges sliced deep into my flesh.
Warm blood welled up, pooling in a stark and vivid pattern against the cold, white marble.
No one gasped.
Not a single soul moved to help me.
Instead, Salvatore gently guided Serena into my rightful seat at the head of the table.
My parents eagerly resumed their fawning over the mistress, cooing and asking if the baby had kicked yet.
A sharp, electric pain pulsed in my hands.
The crimson stains spreading across the floor painted a vivid, sickening picture of my exact worth in this room.
Swallowing the bile that rose in my throat, I stubbornly pushed myself up.
With trembling fingers, I silently picked the larger, glittering shards of glass out of my bleeding palms.
I turned to a nearby Syndicate Associate and calmly asked him to bring me another chair.
"Stay precisely where you are." Salvatore's voice cut through the room, freezing the Associate in his tracks.
He looked down at me, his handsome face a mask of pure, unadulterated malice.
"If you are so capable of surviving on your own," he sneered, "you can stand for the remainder of the night."
So, I stood silently by the table.
A dull, leaden weight settled beneath my ribs, not a sharp agony, but the heavy pressure of a sponge soaked in ice water, making each breath a conscious effort.
I watched Salvatore tenderly pour a glass of water for Serena, reflecting on the endless, exhausting psychological warfare he had waged against me.
He kept me chained to his last name for no other reason than to torture me.
While my parents continued to worship the mistress, Leo eagerly leaned over the table.
He seamlessly pitched a billion-dollar money-laundering racket to the Don, the men completely ignoring the steady drip of blood falling from my fingertips onto the pristine floor.
Then, Serena whined again.
Pouting, she pointed at the massive seafood tower in the center of the table and complained that the shrimp looked too difficult to peel.
Salvatore didn't hesitate.
He pointed a commanding finger directly at me.
"Peel the shrimp," he ordered, his tone laced with disgust. "Since you are a barren, useless woman, it is time you finally made yourself useful."
I stared at the towering pile of iced seafood.
In that moment, a rush of memories assailed me: the time Salvatore had kicked me down a flight of stairs simply because Serena claimed I had insulted her.
The delirious fever that had almost killed me when he locked me in the freezing bathroom for days.
Looking at him now, I finally understood.
In his deeply paranoid, twisted mind, I was the ultimate villain of this story.
He truly believed I was a manipulative schemer who had forced his hand with that drugged alliance so many years ago.
He hated me with every fiber of his being.
Defeated, I walked slowly toward the seafood tower, leaving a quiet, damning trail of red drops behind me. But as I reached for the first shrimp, a single thought crystallized in my mind: he had broken my body, but he would not break my will. Not tonight. Not ever again.
Elena Rossi POV
I tightly wrapped my bleeding palms with a thick linen napkin, tying it into a makeshift bandage. Only then did I reach for the first shrimp.
As my fingers breached the bowl, the salty brine found the open wounds on my hands.
A stinging pain shot up my arms, but my face remained a mask of placid indifference.
Salvatore watched me with a particular gleam of sadistic satisfaction.
Settling back in his chair, he announced, "Pain breeds obedience."
He said it makes a person remember their place.
He turned to Leo with a twisted smile and offered my brother a deal.
He promised to invest one hundred thousand dollars into the Rossi rackets for every single shrimp I peeled.
Leo's eyes widened with pure, unfiltered greed.
My parents gasped in delight, their faces flushed with the unforeseen promise of wealth.
They all turned to stare at me, their eyes wordlessly demanding that I work faster.
I mechanically ripped the shell off the shrimp.
My blood smeared across the pink meat as I placed it on Serena's plate.
I immediately grabbed another one.
The sharp edges of the shells dug without mercy into my raw cuts.
I peeled ten. I peeled fifty.
I peeled until my hands were completely coated in a vile mixture of blood and seafood juice.
I peeled one hundred and thirty-two shrimp.
That represented thirteen point two million dollars for my family's illicit fronts.
Serena looked at the massive pile of bloody food and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
She pushed the plate away, saying she had lost her appetite.
Salvatore abruptly slammed his hand on the table, and the dinner came to a halt.
He stood up and declared the night was over.
He looked at his men standing by the door and explicitly ordered them not to drive me back to the fortified estate.
With a chilling, feigned tenderness, he wrapped his coat around Serena and walked out of the room.
My parents cursed me loudly, calling me a pathetic failure for not keeping the Don entertained.
Leo was furious.
He realized that Salvatore was never going to pay the money—the Don was merely playing sick games with our livelihood.
I walked out of the hotel and stepped into the torrential rain.
The cold water washed the blood from my hands, stinging my abraded skin.
Leo stormed out behind me, his face a mask of rage.
He screamed that I was ruining everything.
Standing there in the pouring rain, he recklessly hurled the ultimate insult.
"You are nothing but a barren, mutilated failure!" he yelled over the storm.
"You couldn't even keep the Don entertained!" he demanded.
My breath caught in my throat as the devastating reality of his earlier whisper at the dinner table crashed over me again.
I lunged forward and grabbed Leo by his wet collar.
"He took my child and my future, and you still defend him!" I screamed, my voice breaking.
Leo shoved me hard against the wet pavement.
He sneered at my agony, mocking me for being so easily broken by the husband who had orchestrated my destruction.
He leaned down and twisted the proverbial knife deeper.
"Your womb was perfectly healthy after the miscarriage," he snarled, confirming the sickening truth.
"It was the Don's direct command to mutilate you as a permanent punishment for the forced marriage."
I sat paralyzed on the cold, wet ground.
The rain fell in cold rivulets down my face, blurring the streetlights into watery stars. The careful architecture of my six-year marriage, a structure built on a lie I had helped maintain, did not shatter; it simply dissolved, like a house of salt in the downpour.
I flashed back to the night of the family dinner—drugged by my own flesh and blood.
Sold to a man of profound cruelty.
Forced to carry his child.
Tortured on a warehouse floor.
I remembered waking up in the underground clinic.
Salvatore never came to visit me.
He had only left a voicemail, mocking me for successfully trapping him into a lifelong commitment.
I sat in the rain, staring at the dark city skyline, realizing that I had spent six years trying to love the devil. And now, the devil was going to learn what happened when his prey stopped running and started walking away.
