I couldn’t decide what terrified me more: the possibility that he might discover my pregnancy… or the possibility that he already knew and simply didn’t care.
Cold metal slammed into my spine.
The next thing I knew, I was strapped into a reinforced medical chair inside the famiglia’s private infirmary. Steel restraints bit into my wrists. I lifted my head just enough to see Don Zachary Moretti standing across from me, arms folded, expression distant—like I wasn’t worth the effort of emotion.
“So this is it?” I let out a hollow laugh. “You drag me back to bleed me like contraband?”
He didn’t even flinch.
“Stop being dramatic,” he said coldly. “You’re contributing. Make yourself useful.”
Something inside my chest cracked clean in half.
“Useful?” I scoffed. “Is that what I was? A walking blood bank with a marriage contract?”
“You’re emotional,” he replied instantly. “You always were. You confuse hysteria with loyalty.”
“That’s rich,” I shot back. “Coming from the man draining his wife while his mistress rests like a queen.”
He crossed the distance in two strides.
His hand snapped around my jaw, fingers pressing hard enough to bruise.
“Watch your mouth,” he warned.
“Or what?” I whispered, fury burning through fear. “You’ll humiliate me again? Strip whatever dignity I have left?”
His lips curved into a cruel, amused smile.
“You’re breathing,” he said softly. “Be grateful.”
“You already have her,” I snapped. “You got the heir you wanted. So why am I still chained to this chair?”
The irony nearly crushed me.
She lay in another room—guarded, pampered, surrounded by doctors and silk sheets—while I bled for her survival. For her child.
While my own baby stayed hidden, clinging to me in silence.
I said nothing.
I couldn’t.
He would weaponize it. He would turn my child into leverage, the same way he turned love into ownership.
So I swallowed the truth and stared at the ceiling, letting the sterile lights blur as I refused to cry.
“This is what loving you cost me,” I said quietly. “Defending your name in every council meeting. Standing between you and every enemy. Acting like a partner instead of property. I should’ve left the moment I realized you never loved me—you claimed me.”
“Then why didn’t you?” he snapped. “Because you needed me. You always did.”
“And you,” I whispered, “were too much of a coward to ever let me go.”
His smirk deepened.
“Why would I?” he said calmly. “You never stay gone.”