Chapter 3

Something flickered behind Dominic's eyes.

It vanished fast, swallowed again by a tide of hatred.

"Then get down on your knees and apologize to Baby!"

"Okay, okay, okay!"

"I'll apologize! I'll beg!"

I dropped to the greenhouse floor in a panic and slammed my head against the stone, thud, thud, thud.

When I lifted it again, blood streaked my whole forehead.

"Dominic, I apologized."

"Please, send one of your men to save my mother—"

I never finished.

My eyes went wide, my pupils shaking violently.

My mother had thrown herself from the twenty-third floor of the tower.

"Oh dear."

"Carlotta Rizzo really wasn't careful. She actually mistook the window for the door."

"Dominic, no need to call the family physician. Let's just have the men handle the body directly."

Gemma smiled faintly at the corner of her mouth and touched the pendant at her throat, then cut the video call dead.

Staring at the darkened screen, my mind went blank, and I crumpled to the floor.

"Dominic, it's time to feed Baby."

"Let's hurry."

Gemma pouted, careless, as though a woman had not just fallen through the air on the other end of that call.

But Dominic froze for a few seconds.

His eyes locked onto me.

Emotion surged and thrashed wildly in them.

A few seconds later, it settled back into calm and hatred.

"Let's go."

He pushed open the greenhouse door without a thought and tossed in a folded sheet of paper.

"Since the child in your belly is already gone, sign this. We break the bloodline pact. Now."

The papers that severed the alliance union were already stained with my blood.

All at once I remembered the Dominic who had thrown himself from the seventh floor without hesitation to save me when I was drowning in the dark years ago.

The year my father took Gemma's mother as his mistress and shattered the Rizzo name within the Cosa Nostra.

My mother, out of her mind, made a scene where all the Families could see.

She stripped Gemma's mother bare and doused her whole body in paint.

At the gate she hung a long banner, spilling the record of the affair for every made man to read.

I was pushed over the edge, and I stood on the seventh floor and jumped.

It was Dominic who tied a rope around himself and leapt after me without a second's hesitation, wrapping his arms tight around me.

Scene after scene of the love we once shared surfaced in my mind.

I lay on the floor, feeling my breath fading, thinner and thinner.

I don't know how long it was before a basin of ice water, reeking sharply of alcohol, was suddenly dumped over my head.

"Adriana, what did you do to the sheets in her rooms?!"

The vicious sting jolted me awake.

I opened my eyes to Dominic's face, flooded with hatred and disgust.

"Gemma broke out in an allergic reaction over her whole body, nearly went into shock. Did you do this?!"

He roared it at me. In the doorway behind him, an enforcer went very still, eyes dropping to the floor, unwilling to witness what the Don did in this room.

Dominic's shirt hung open, covered in dense clusters of kiss marks.

Behind him, Gemma was mottled with red, swollen hives.

"Dominic, I feel awful."

"Am I going to be scarred for life?"

"I love wearing my dresses more than anything. Adriana did this on purpose!"

"She did it on purpose, I'm sure of it!"

She laughed, a half-second too soon, her fingers flying to the pendant at her throat. "She's jealous that you love me!"

Shrieking in fury, Gemma clawed hard at her own face.

In an instant, several livid red streaks appeared.

"Adriana, how can you be so disgusting?"

Dominic bit out each word, then took out a single unlit cigarette and rolled it slowly between two fingers. He lifted his phone and made a call.

"Bring me seafood. As much as you can get."

The instant I heard the word seafood.

My body flinched on instinct.

He set the cigarette flat on the table.

The next second, my mouth was pried open and stuffed with heap after heap of fishy-smelling seafood.

My throat kept swallowing, until I couldn't swallow anymore.

Red hives broke out all over me.

My throat began to close, my face swelling more and more.

"Adriana, an eye for an eye."

"Whatever you did to Gemma, you deserve to suffer the same."

Dominic's words drifted farther and farther from my ears.

My consciousness started to peel away from my body, bit by bit.

But someone was dragging that body and shoving it into the car.