Chapter 2

I barely had time to wedge the communicator back into the mattress when the door was violently pushed open, leaving me no chance to tend to my bleeding stitches.

Two armed guards blocked the doorway. "Donna Elena demands to see you in the greenhouse. Immediately."

The asylum had taught me that in the Moretti estate, Elena's word was second only to Domenico's.

Tasting copper, I dragged my battered body down the corridor, every step grinding my pelvis to dust.

The sun glaring through the greenhouse glass was blinding. Elena languished in a wicker chair, her silk robe immaculate.

Beside her stood Leo, looking every inch the mafia prince in a relentlessly tailored miniature suit.

Then I saw Luca.

Barely twenty-four hours old, the naked newborn lay casually discarded on a cold table. He let out a weak, reedy wail, his tiny limbs mottled a sickly purple.

"His crying gives me a migraine," Elena sighed, admiring her pearl-painted nails."Did you pass your madness down to him? I don't even want to touch the thing."

I knew reacting would destroy my carefully crafted facade, but as a chilled draft swept in, maternal instinct instantly shattered my numbness.

I lunged forward. "At least wrap him in a blanket! You're going to freeze him to death!"

"Step back."

The command was bone-chillingly cold, yet unmistakably childish.

Six-year-old Leo stepped in front of the table, shielding it.

With a sharp snick, he flicked open a small, obsidian-handled switchblade—Domenico's gift for his sixth birthday. The razor-sharp tip leveled directly at my throat.

He was my firstborn. I had carried him for nine months. Yet he looked at me like I was festering trash. "Don't infect my brother with your sick mind. On your knees. You're scaring my mother."

My mother.

Those two words gutted me deeper than the blade at my throat.

Annoyed by my hesitation, Leo gave the guards a sharp nod. "Hold her down. She takes one more step, break her legs."

A brutal kick to the back of my knees sent me crashing onto the sharp gravel.

My fresh sutures ruptured completely. Hot blood snaked down my thighs, blooming across the gray pavers.

"What's the meaning of this?"

Domenico's low voice cut through the air. He strode into the greenhouse, a dark tailored suit hugging his broad shoulders. My heart plummeted.

Some pathetic snippet of hope believed he would at least confiscate the blade his son aimed at my throat.

Instead, his indifferent gaze swept over me kneeling in a pool of my blood, before his calloused hand reached out to affectionately ruffle Leo's hair.

"Well done, Leo," Domenico murmured with paternal pride. "A Moretti man must remain ever vigilant against any potential threat to protect your mother and brother."

Any potential threat. That's all I was.

Not the mother of his three children—just a ticking time bomb of madness, a piece of garbage his son needed a knife to ward off.

A suffocating wave of despair crashed over me, spiraling into the sickening vertigo of blood loss.

My racing heartbeat went dead silent. The world tilted, and I collapsed onto the freezing stone, letting the blackness swallow me whole.

---

When consciousness clawed its way back, the suffocating gloom of my bedroom greeted my blurred vision.

Domenico stood by the washbasin, aggressively scrubbing my blood off his hands with a damp towel.

Irritation radiated from every line of his face. "Playing dead won't work. You know Elena is fragile. Why the hell did you lunge at her like a lunatic? You nearly made Leo cut himself with that blade!"

I stared at the ceiling. My throat felt scoured with sandpaper, my voice frail. "She left Luca naked. On a freezing iron table. And Leo... Leo was going to stab me. Domenico, that is my son. You taught him to point a knife at HIS OWN MOTHER?"

"He only has ONE mother, and that is Elena!"

Domenico barked, cutting me off with a vicious snap. Disgust ignited in his eyes.

"If you hadn't spiked her drink seven years ago to rob her of her fertility and slither into my bed, do you honestly think I'd ever let a venomous bitch like you in my house? You're nothing but a breeding vessel paying off a debt!"

The ringing in my ears suddenly stopped.

If I hadn't spiked her drink.

The words abruptly shattered the one delusion that had kept me breathing for seven years.

Back when Elena orchestrated that catastrophe to ruin my reputation, everyone cursed me as an ungrateful snake. Everyone except Domenico.

He had held my violently trembling body in the dead of night, kissing my tears and whispering, "I know you wouldn't. I believe you."

I had willingly marched into hell for that "belief." I let them use my body, genuinely thinking if I remained obedient, he would eventually pull me from this nightmare.

But staring at the unfiltered disgust in his eyes now, the sickening puzzle finally clicked into place.

He hadn't protected me. He had manipulated a desperate, broken girl into becoming a docile womb to replace what Elena lost.

Taking my babies away time and time again wasn't just mafia cruelty—it was because, to him, I was never their mother. I was just the monster who poisoned his true wife.

"You never..." My cracked lips twitched, and I slowly turned, fixing my dead, hollow eyes squarely on him. "You never actually believed me, did you?"

Domenico stiffened. A crack fractured his icy facade, revealing an unconscious flash of panic.

"That's not what I meant—" His Adam's apple bobbed.

A shrill ringtone abruptly shattered the tension. He glanced at the screen.

There it was, flashing the name that eternally commanded absolute priority: Elena.

Domenico answered the call. The panic vanished, instantly replaced by sickening tenderness.

"Elena? Don't be afraid. Just breathe. I'll be right there."

Without sparing me another glance, he turned on his heel and strode out. The deadbolt locked into place with a terrifying finality.

I lay in the suffocating dimness for a long time. An ache burned behind my eyes. Yet, when I brushed my cheek, my skin was bone dry.

I suddenly understood. When a soul finally rots away in this dungeon, there are genuinely no tears left to shed.

The very second Don Vincenzo's promised document was smuggled into this room, I would sign my name without a single moment of hesitation.

The countdown had begun.