Chapter 2

“Dominic, our baby is gone……”

I couldn't feel the heartbeat in my belly anymore. My eyes had gone numb as I stroked it gently.

“Really gone?”

“I don't have time to waste on you.”

“Baby's about to have lunch. We're in a hurry to go feed it.”

Hearing those two words, “Baby.”

My heart clenched, and my stomach heaved with the urge to vomit.

“Dominic, you can't use our baby's pet name to call that animal……”

The words came out one by one, and fury surged up through my chest.

The next second, the heat in the greenhouse climbed higher, the glass walls sweating around me like the inside of a furnace.

“Who said you could call my Baby an animal!”

“Dominic, Adriana has really gone too far!”

“Baby is the child I've raised with so much care. It may just be a lizard, but it understands everything!”

“Make her apologize to Baby right now!”

Gemma clung to Dominic's arm, pouting with rage, the pendant at her throat catching the light.

The skin where my body touched the scorching tile smoked in the heat.

“Did you hear that?”

“Adriana, apologize.”

Dominic's icy voice rang out before I could even react. A made man like him didn't need to raise it. The whole Family straightened when he spoke, and so did I, even here, even now.

Gemma suddenly pulled out her phone and started recording.

“I'm going to record this and send it to Adriana's mother, so she can testify for my Baby!”

“And let her get a good look at how the daughter she's so proud of lost to me, the bastard of the affair that ruined her precious Rizzo name!”

Gemma's mocking laughter drilled into my head.

I froze for a few seconds, then threw my arm up to cover my head.

A large patch of skin tore off my arm.

The pain was suffocating.

“Dominic, you can't let my mother see me like this!”

“She can't take it!”

“Dominic, you can't……”

Tears kept sliding down my face as I thought of my mother, already wasting away in the final stage of her illness, all that remained of a fallen Rizzo household.

I forced my body to curl up, trying to block Gemma's camera.

The next second, Gemma simply placed a video call to my mother.

“Signora Rizzo, it's me, Gemma, the bastard daughter you despise the most.”

“I'm video-calling you today just to show you something.”

Gemma's sneer had barely faded.

My mother's panicked voice suddenly came through.

“Is that Adriana?”

“Tell me right now, where are you?!”

“Adriana, does it hurt……”

“Mamma's coming to save you right now!”

My mother, kept alive on massive doses of the Family physician's painkillers, her mind long since clouded.

Yet in this moment, from nothing but a blurred figure on the screen,

she recognized me.

My heart hurt so much it nearly stopped.

I lifted my head and screamed at Dominic.

“Dominic!”

“My mother taught you once too, back before any of us wore this name!”

“I'm begging you, don't put her through this fear again……”

I screamed with every last bit of strength, and the moment the words left my mouth,

through Gemma's video call, I heard the heavy sound of my mother crashing to the floor.

“Oh no! Signora Rizzo has fallen down!”

“Dominic, we'd better call the Family physician right away!”

Gemma said the words, but the video on her phone stayed fixed on the wounds covering my body. She pressed the pendant to her throat and let the picture hold.

“Adriana, Mamma's coming to save you……”

“Is it the other children again, are they shaming you over your father's affair?”

My mother mumbled the words.

But her body inched, step by step, toward the window, and one foot stepped out.

My tears had nearly run dry.

I screamed until my voice broke.

“Dominic, I swear I'll never cling to you again!”

“You loathe me, you're disgusted by me, and I deserve all of it!”

“I shouldn't have loved you. It was my mistake!”

Screaming with everything I had, I scrambled up and pounded at the scalding glass with all my might.