Chapter 2

For the first half-month postpartum, I was kept under house arrest in the villa.

No doctors. No painkillers. Only meals delivered on a strict schedule. My body was at its absolute weakest; even the slightest movement sent a tearing agony through my lower abdomen, leaving me drenched in a cold sweat.

Yet the main house was ablaze with light. The melodious strains of violins and the cheerful laughter of guests drifted faintly through the air.

I knew exactly what it was: Alessio throwing a grand baptism gala for Bianca and the twins.

The entire underworld was raising their glasses to the Family's new heirs, while I, their true mother, was left to rot in this room like an abandoned dog.

Later that afternoon, the lock on the door clicked.

"You seem to be recovering quite well, my dear sister-in-law." Bianca seated herself without invitation. "After the baptism today, all of New York will know that I am the mother to those two little angels. I named them Alexander and Victoria. Do you like them?"

I didn't even turn my head. "Did you come all the way here just to rub that in my face?"

Bianca utterly loathed my aloofness. To her, it was infuriating that I was already trampled beneath her feet, yet still dared to act so dismissive.

But her hypocritical smile quickly returned. "Oh, Serafina, why so hostile? I know you're upset, but it can't be helped. After all, who asked you to be nothing more than a breeding tool?"

She leaned in, bringing her lips close to my ear. "Guess what Alessio said about you while he was holding me in bed last night? He said every time he sees that submissive, agreeable look on your face, it makes him sick. If it weren't for the sake of getting my babies, he never would have touched you in the first place."

My fingertips trembled slightly, but my expression remained surprisingly calm.

Just a few days ago, hearing those words would have shattered me. I would have demanded answers from Alessio.

But now, my heart was completely dead.

"Is that so?" I met Bianca's eyes, my voice so incredibly steady it surprised even me. "Then you better hold onto him tight. After all, aside from his pathetic sense of guilt, what else do you actually have to keep him?"

Bianca was severely stung by the coldness in my gaze. She straightened up sharply, her eyes turning utterly venomous. Suddenly, she raised her hand and slapped me hard across the face.

"Bitch! What gives you the right to talk to me like that?!" she screamed hysterically.

Then, letting out a cold sneer, she pulled out a crumpled newspaper and threw it contemptuously at my feet. "I only came to deliver some news. Your father is dead."

My breath caught in my throat, my pupils shrinking to pinpricks. I slowly turned my head, my eyes landing on the front page of the paper.

[FORMER MAFIA BOSS DIES IN PRISON OF SUDDEN HEART ATTACK]

"A heart attack?" My voice finally broke, a tremor slipping through. My father had always been as strong as an ox; how could he possibly have a sudden heart attack?

"Yep, a heart attack." Bianca laughed, a shrill and trembling sound. "Except, it was a sudden heart attack triggered by consecutive injections of high-concentration adrenaline over three days. You know how Alessio is—a perfectionist to the core. Now that he has secured his legitimate heirs, he doesn't need a former Don lingering around with the potential to bite him back. Nixt it in the bud, cut the weeds at their roots. He taught me that himself."

To save my father, I had traded away my marriage, my dignity, and had even reduced myself to a mere breeding vessel.

I had endured three years of humiliation and cold neglect, only for it to end with my father being tortured to death in a prison cell. Alessio had not only snatched away the twins I had nearly died birthing, but he had also personally destroyed the one and only reason I had left to live.

"Does Alessio know you're here telling me this?" I raised my head to look at her. There was none of the breakdown or hysteria she had been anticipating in my eyes—only a suffocating, absolute dead silence.

My stare seemed to unnerve her. The smugness on Bianca's face faltered for a fraction of a second before she forced herself to maintain her composure. "He doesn't need to know. His mind is completely consumed by me and the babies right now. To him, you are just a troublesome defect. If he wasn't afraid of the other families accusing him of burning bridges, do you really think you'd still be breathing?"

"So, you're going to kill me." It wasn't a question; it was a statement.

Bianca stood up and stepped right in front of me. She lowered her voice, hissing like a venomous snake. "Tomorrow, Alessio is sending a car to take you to a private sanitarium in Manhattan. My people have already tampered with the car's brake system and the fuel tank. On those winding mountain roads, the moment the car goes over eighty miles per hour... there will be a beautifully perfect accident."

"Why are you telling me your plan?" I stared up at her twisted face.

"Because I want your last twenty-four hours on this earth to be consumed by absolute fear and despair!" Bianca glared at me viciously. "I want you to watch yourself march helplessly toward your own death, knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do! Don't even bother telling the guards—they've been on my payroll for a long time."

Bianca let out a maniacal laugh, turning on her heel and leaving. Her footsteps echoed down the hall until they vanished. The room sank back into a deathly silence.

I looked down at the grainy photograph of my father in the newspaper. Slipping to my knees, I gently traced his face on the paper.

A colossal, suffocating wave of grief hit me, wrenching my insides apart inch by inch like a rusty, dulled blade, reducing my heart to a mangled mess.

A wail of despair tore from my throat, sounding like the cry of a dying animal. I collapsed against the floor, sobbing until I thought I would die from the pain, weeping until my very last tears were permanently burned dry.

Finally, a grim, desolate smile curled on my pale, tear-stained face.

"Fear?" I murmured to the empty room. "No, Bianca. I should be thanking you."

I dialed a number, pulling the very last ace my late father had secretly left me. When his loyal former subordinate Luca answered on the other end of the line, I gave my final order.

Alessio. Bianca. If you want my life, I'll grant your wish, and die a clean, absolute death.