Chapter 4

“Dominic, I want the finest surgeon in the city, the one who works on the wives of senators.”

“You know how I am about my face. I can't let it be ruined!”

Gemma's coaxing voice drifted over the leather seats.

The welts on her skin had already faded to almost nothing.

This was never an allergic reaction at all.

Lying in the back of the car, I felt the pain in my body slowly ebbing away.

My body grew lighter and lighter.

The bought physician's warning surfaced in my ears again.

“Miss Rizzo, if you lose another pregnancy, you'll die.”

Die?

That would be good.

I closed my eyes, and the blurred image of Dominic surfaced before me, back from the days before his mind was turned against me.

He spoke, furious and helpless all at once.

“Adriana, you really don't take care of yourself at all!”

“You can't even tell when you're having an allergic reaction!”

“Once you leave me, who else is going to carry allergy medicine around for you.”

The car lurched over a seam in the road, and a large box of allergy medicine tumbled loose from beneath the seat.

It landed right in Dominic's lap where he sat behind the wheel.

On the box, a few words were scrawled in bright red marker.

【Adriana's only. Three pills each time.】

【The medicine's bitter. Remember to buy her the sweet milk tea to take it with.】

Dominic looked down at the few bright red words.

For an instant his eyes went blank.

He picked up the medicine box without thinking.

“Didn't I throw this out? How is there still……”

But he didn't finish.

Gemma cut him off with a shriek, one hand flying to the pendant at her throat, her laugh coming a half-second too soon.

“Dominic, I feel awful!”

“Get me to the hospital, quick!”

Panic in her eyes, Gemma snatched up the large box of allergy medicine and hurled it out the window into the dark.

Dominic went still, and then the thing in his eyes was buried under hatred once more.

Ten minutes later, the car stopped at a private clinic the Family kept on retainer.

Gemma pulled Dominic away, quick and anxious.

The car door was shut.

And then the locks dropped, all of them at once.

I lay collapsed across the seat, feeling the temperature climb higher and higher.

The allergic reaction on my body grew worse and worse.

The airless car couldn't match the scorching heat of the greenhouse where the Family settled its debts.

But the space was smaller.

The air was thinner.

Time slipped by, and the breath stopped at the tip of my nose.

My pupils dilated and blurred, bit by bit.

I was completely free.

My consciousness was no longer trapped in my body. I drifted out of the car.

The first thing I saw was Dominic, standing at Gemma's side while the doctor examined her.

His face held no doting, no love.

Only a trace of irritation.

“Don Falcone, the conditioning you had me swear to, that story of the mind turning within three years. It's already been a week.”

“Miss Rizzo has come to me several times. I can't keep the lie in my mouth any longer……”

The familiar voice came through the phone pressed to Dominic's ear.

I went very still, my eyes full of disbelief.

Then I heard the thick hatred he forced out of his throat.

“Adriana broke faith with me first. I'm only making her pay a little.”

“Let her feel the pain I once felt too.”

“In another three days, I'll let her know the truth……”

But before he could finish.

A woman in a white coat came hurrying across the floor to him.

“Don Falcone, I haven't been able to reach Miss Rizzo. I need to know how the child she carries is doing.”

“Child?”

Dominic frowned.

The doctor spoke urgently, her voice dropping the way people's voices drop inside these walls.

“Miss Rizzo didn't tell you?”

“Her body can't survive another miscarriage.”

“If she loses this pregnancy, she'll die.”

She had more to say. She never got the chance.

Out beyond the doors, near the black Cayenne idling under the lot lights, someone suddenly shouted.

“It's an oven in this car!”

“Get her out, hurry!”

The glass shattered inward.

My ruined body was lifted out.

“She's not……she's not breathing!”

The panicked voices carried across the still night air to Dominic, every word of them landing.

The thick hatred gathered in his eyes was blown apart, bit by bit, like storm clouds scattering before a wind he couldn't name.

“What do you mean Adriana is gone?”

“I haven't finished punishing her. How can she be dead?”

The moment he heard I was gone, Dominic came apart at the seams.

His mind went blank and empty.

“Adriana!”

“What right do you have to die?”