The two people who had sworn a blood oath to protect me had just locked me up, leaving me in so much pain after the trauma I'd gone through in two days.
I was kidnapped, thrown from a moving car, lost my baby, all because of Nadina, and I'm the one who hurt her and should apologize.
That night I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. My laughter sounded hollow, like someone who had lost her mind. The sound bounced off the tile walls and came back to me wrong, distorted, the laughter of a woman locked inside a room that smelled of bleach and her own blood in a building the Russo Family owned from basement to roof.
By morning, the cleaners found me passed out on the restroom floor. They took me to the Family doctor, who sighed when he saw me.
"What have you gotten yourself into, Liliana?" he asked me with a weary sigh.
I gave him a teary look. "I have no idea, doctor."
"You've lost so much blood, Liliana. You've been through a lot of stress. I'm afraid if you don't rest and recover, your body could face irreversible damage," the doctor advised me.
I nodded. "Thank you, doctor."
"Also, the nurse will bring the bill. You don't have coverage under any Family account on file with us," the doctor informed me.
I sat up on the bed, wincing and frowning. "What do you mean, doctor? I have coverage under my husband's account."
The doctor frowned as he tapped on his phone. "I'll call the nurse in accounting to come sort this out."
Shortly after he left, the nurse stepped inside holding a laptop.
"Miss, please, what's your husband's name?" she asked.
I felt bile rise in my throat. I hated acknowledging him now, but I had no money to pay for my bills.
"Giacomo Russo," I answered.
The nurse tapped furiously on her keyboard and then looked up at me with a frown.
"I'm sorry, there's no record of you in our system. The person recorded under Giacomo Russo's account is Nadina Greco and their daughter, Angela Russo," the nurse informed me.
For a moment I forgot how to breathe as I stared at the nurse with my mouth hanging open.
"W…what?" I stuttered.
My husband had registered someone else under his account, leaving me out to dry. As if I had never existed inside that house. As if the years I spent in the Russo compound, cooking their Sunday dinners, pressing his shirts before sit-downs, waiting up past midnight while he conducted Family business, had simply never happened.