Liv POV

The sky was a bruised purple, heavy with rain that hadn't yet fallen. We stood gathered around the marble monolith of the D’Angelo family crypt, a tableau of grief that felt as staged as a play.

Izzy stood next to Marcus. They were dressed in matching black coats, their shoulders brushing every time the wind gusted. I stood three feet away, shivering in a dress that offered no warmth, clutching a bouquet of white lilies Marcus had shoved into my hands at the last minute.

"Why is she here?" Izzy whispered to Marcus, not bothering to lower her voice enough. "She didn't even know Nonna."

Marcus didn't look at me. "She’s my wife, Izzy. It looks better for the associates if she pays her respects."

*It looks better.* That was my function. Aesthetic compliance.

I stared at the gravestone, feeling a profound sense of kinship with the corpse beneath us. We were both cold, we were both silent, and we were both trapped under the weight of the D’Angelo name.

After the service, the sky finally broke open. Rain lashed down in sheets, turning the perfectly manicured grass into mud.

"We need to eat," Marcus announced, holding an umbrella over Izzy.

He didn't have one for me.

I walked behind them to the waiting black SUVs, water soaking through my clothes, chilling me to the bone.

We went to an upscale Italian restaurant, the kind where the waiters wear tuxedos and the silence is expensive.

Marcus sat next to Izzy. I sat across from them. It felt like I was the third wheel on a date.

He picked up the menu. Without glancing at it, he handed it to Izzy.

"Order for us," he said softly. "You know what I like."

Izzy smiled, that sharp, predatory curve of her lips. She ordered wine. She ordered appetizers. She didn't ask me what I wanted.

"Oh, Liv," she said suddenly, her eyes dropping to my stomach. "You’ve put on a little weight, haven't you?"

My hand went instinctively to my abdomen. I was barely showing, but she noticed. She noticed everything that might threaten her territory.

"Just stress eating," I lied.

Marcus frowned. "Don't get fat, Liv. It’s unbecoming."

He turned back to Izzy, engaging in a conversation about people I didn't know, laughing at jokes I didn't understand.

The waiter arrived with a steaming tureen of soup. It was placed on a rolling cart next to our table.

Then, it happened.

A busboy, rushing to clear a nearby table, clipped the edge of the cart.

The heavy silver tureen wobbled.

"Watch out!" Marcus shouted.

He didn't reach across the table. He didn't look at me.

He threw his arm out, grabbing Izzy and pulling her violently toward him, shielding her body with his own.

The tureen tipped.

A wave of scalding minestrone soup cascaded off the edge of the table.

Directly onto my lap.

The scream ripped out of my throat before I could stop it. It was a sound of pure, animalistic agony. The heat seared through my thin dress, blistering my skin instantly.

I scrambled back, falling out of my chair, clawing at my burning thighs.

"Liv!" someone shouted.

It wasn't Marcus.

I looked up through a haze of tears. Marcus was holding Izzy’s face, scanning her frantically.

"Did it touch you? Are you hurt?" he demanded, his voice laced with panic.

"I’m fine, Marcus, look at Liv!" Izzy pointed at me, her eyes wide with genuine shock.

Marcus turned his head. He looked at me writhing on the floor, my skin red and peeling. His expression wasn't horror. It was annoyance.

"Call an ambulance," he barked at the waiter.

He didn't come to me. He didn't hold my hand. He stood up, helping Izzy to her feet, checking her coat for specks of broth.

I lay on the expensive carpet, the smell of soup and burnt flesh filling my nose.

I closed my eyes as the darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.

I heard them arguing as consciousness slipped away.

"You should have helped her, Marcus!" Izzy hissed.

I heard his reply, clear as a bell, the last thing I would hear before the blackness took me.

"In my hierarchy of pain, Isabella, a scratch on you is a tragedy. Her death is just an inconvenience."

The tether snapped.

I let go.

Liv POV

The hospital lights were blinding. They hummed with a sterile, aggressive electricity that drilled straight into my skull.

I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep, feigning death. I needed a moment before the world rushed back in.

*Save the baby.*

The voice was Marcus’s. It was low, urgent, coming from the hallway.

*I need you to do everything you can. If she loses it...*

He didn't finish the sentence.

I opened my eyes. A nurse was adjusting the IV drip next to me. She looked at me, her face a mask of professional pity.

"You’re awake," she said softly.

My legs were on fire. The bandages felt thick and tight, constricting my skin like a vice.

"The baby?" I asked, my voice a rusty croak.

The nurse hesitated. She looked at the chart, then at the door, then back at me.

"Mrs. D’Angelo... your husband emphasized that we prioritize the pregnancy."

I stared at her. "Is there still a pregnancy?"

She bit her lip.

I grabbed her wrist. It took all my strength.

"Tell me."

"You miscarried," she whispered. "The trauma... the shock... it was too much. We had to perform a D&C an hour ago while we were treating the burns."

A hollow space opened up inside me. It wasn't grief. Grief implies you lost something you could have kept. This was... inevitability. That baby was never going to be mine. It was going to be named Isabella. It was going to be his prop.

"Does he know?" I asked.

"Not yet," she said. "He’s been... difficult. He’s demanding to see the ultrasound results himself."

"Don't tell him," I said.

"What?"

"Don't tell him I lost it. Not yet."

"Why?"

*Because if he knows I’m empty, he’ll discard me before I can walk out of here,* I thought.

"I just... I need to tell him myself," I lied. "Please. It’s my right."

She nodded slowly. "Okay. I’ll give you some time. We need to change your dressings now. I can give you more morphine."

"No," I said.

"Mrs. D’Angelo, the debridement process is extremely painful."

"No morphine," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I need to be clear-headed. I need to feel it."

I needed the pain. I needed to burn the weakness out of my system. I needed to remember exactly what it felt like to be loved by Marcus D’Angelo.

The next hour was a blur of white-hot agony. I bit through my lip until I tasted copper. But I didn't scream. I didn't give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream, even if he wasn't in the room.

When it was over, I lay sweating and trembling on the sheets.

The door opened. Marcus walked in.

He looked artfully disheveled. His tie was crooked. He looked like a worried husband. It was a masterful performance.

"Liv," he said, rushing to the bedside. He reached for my hand.

I pulled it away.

He flinched, looking hurt.

"I’m so sorry," he said. "It happened so fast. I just reacted."

"You reacted to what mattered to you," I croaked.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Don't be like that. Izzy... she’s family. You know how protective I am."

I looked at him. Really looked at him. The handsome face. The cruel mouth.

"You walked away, Marcus. I was burning, and you walked away."

"I went to get help!" he lied smoothly.

I closed my eyes. "I’m tired."

He lingered. "How is... is everything else okay? The baby?"

I kept my eyes shut. "The baby is fine, Marcus. Just fine."

He let out a breath he’d been holding. "Thank God. That’s... that’s the most important thing."

He sat by the bed for a while, scrolling on his phone. Then, it buzzed against the nightstand.

He stood up immediately. "I have to take this. It’s Izzy. She’s shaken up by the accident. I need to go check on her."

"Of course you do," I whispered.

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. It felt like a brand.

"I’ll be back in the morning. Rest. Think about the baby."

He left.

I waited ten minutes. Then I dragged my broken body out of the bed.

My legs screamed in protest, but I forced them to move. I shuffled to the closet where they had put my clothes. The dress was ruined, but my coat was there. My purse was there.

I took out my phone. I dialed the lawyer.

"File it," I said. "File the papers. Now."

"But Mrs. D’Angelo, it’s 2 AM."

"Do it!" I hissed. "And release the funds."

I hung up.

I walked to the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror. Pale. Gaunt. Dead eyes.

I opened my purse and took out a photo I had saved. It was a picture of Marcus and me on our wedding day. He wasn't looking at me in the photo, either. He was looking at the camera, posing for the world.

I tore it in half.

I limped out of the room. I didn't take the elevator. I took the stairs, one agonizing step at a time, refusing to be seen by anyone who might stop me.

I made it to the lobby. I walked out into the cool night air.

A taxi was waiting. I had called it on an app under a fake name.

"Where to, lady?" the driver asked.

"The airport," I said.

"And don't stop. Just drive."

I didn't look back at the hospital. I didn't look back at the city that had chewed me up and spat me out.

I was leaving behind a husband, a dead child, and a life that was never mine.

I was bleeding. I was broken. But for the first time in two years, the air filling my lungs belonged to me.

Liv POV

I never made it to the airport.

My body, a traitor of bone and blood, had given out before the taxi even hit the main highway. The darkness took me there, and I woke up back in the white room, the sterile hum of machinery replacing the relentless sound of rain.

My father, David Hayes, sat in the corner. He looked like a man shrinking inside his own cheap suit, folding in on himself like wet cardboard. He had brought a bag of toiletries and a stack of magazines, placing them on the bedside table with trembling hands.

"You need to eat more, Liv," he said, his gaze fixed on the floor tiles. "Marcus... he worries."

He didn't worry. He worried about optics. And my father, a low-level soldier in the D'Angelo empire, worried about his pension—and his neck.

"I'm fine, Dad," I lied. My voice was a scrape of sandpaper against stone.

Marcus came every day. He played the part of the devoted husband for the nurses, adjusting my pillows, pouring my water with practiced precision. But his eyes were always elsewhere.

They drifted to the window, to the door, checking his watch, checking his phone. He was a body occupying a chair, his soul already halfway down the hall.

I stopped letting him feed me. I stopped letting him touch me. When he reached for my hand, I pulled it under the sheet. It was a small rebellion, a silent war waged in the cold inches between us.

One afternoon, the pain meds made the world fuzzy, but my hearing was razor sharp. I heard footsteps outside my door, then a pause.

I slid out of bed, dragging my IV pole. The burns on my legs screamed, a hot, tearing sensation with every shuffling step, but I needed to see.

Marcus was standing in the alcove at the end of the corridor. He was hunched over, his broad back blocking the harsh hospital light.

He pulled something from his breast pocket. A silver pocket watch. Old, tarnished, completely out of place against his Italian silk suit.

It was hers. I had seen it in the photos I burned. Izzy holding it up to the camera, laughing.

He ran his thumb over the engraved lid. The gesture was so tender, so intimate, it felt like I was watching him stroke a lover's skin. His knuckles turned white as he gripped it, his jaw tight, fighting a war inside his own head.

"Give it back."

Izzy stormed into the frame. She looked frantic, her hair disheveled.

"Why did you take it, Marcus?" she hissed, grabbing his arm. "It's all I have left of that summer."

Marcus didn't let go. He looked down at her, and the raw, bleeding agony in his eyes made my stomach turn.

"Because if I don't hold onto something of yours," he whispered, his voice cracking, "I'm going to burn this whole city down just to feel warm."

"You have a wife," Izzy said, but she didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned into him, drawn like a moth to the flame.

"I have a distraction," he corrected, his voice low and lethal. "I have a duty. You know who holds my soul, Isabella. You know."

I backed away from the door, my breath hitching in my throat.

I managed to get back to bed before my legs gave out. I lay there, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting the cracks in the plaster.

Later, two nurses came in to change the IV bag. They thought I was asleep.

"He's intense, isn't he? The husband," one whispered.

"Intense? He's obsessed," the other replied, checking my chart. "But not with her. You know the stories. Ten years ago, he nearly abdicated his position for the cousin. He was ready to walk away from the Family, the money, the legacy—all of it."

"What happened?"

"She left. Ran off to Europe because she didn't want him to lose his crown. He went mad. They say he only married this one because she has the cousin's nose. Poor girl. She's just a ghost he's trying to touch."

A ghost.

I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me. They were right. I wasn't fighting for my marriage. I was fighting a memory. And you can't kill a memory. It's already dead.