Chapter 4

The moment I pushed open the door of the Marchetti estate, Vittoria's shrill laughter greeted me.

My entrance shattered the warm hush of the sitting room. Every head turned, and every brow creased at once, as if I were some uninvited outsider who had wandered past the soldiers at the gate and into a family that was not mine.

My husband, my brothers, my sister. Not one of them remembered that I had only just been released from the Family's clinic.

To this house, I was worth less than a stranger.

Salvatore rose from his chair, something like hesitation crossing his face.

"Serafina. I'm sorry I didn't send a car for you. There's been too much on my plate. Business with the Family."

I looked at him without feeling and stepped aside, avoiding the hand he offered me.

His expression hardened. Before he could say anything more, Vittoria draped herself along his arm and drifted toward me.

She wore that familiar smile, sweet on its surface, a glint of provocation buried underneath.

"Sister, you're home," she said softly. "I'm sorry we didn't come for you. Ever since I found the travel guide you put together, I've wanted to see the Maldives for myself."

The smug light in her eyes told me everything.

This was only another one of her thefts.

Taking what I loved had always been Vittoria's favorite pastime.

"If you like it, then take it," I answered calmly.

She clearly hadn't expected that. The smile on her face slipped for half a breath.

She reached toward me, malice flickering in her gaze.

"I heard you wanted to bring the baby traveling too. Maybe next time," she whispered, leaning close to my ear.

"As long as he isn't already a pile of rotten flesh."

I shoved her hand away hard, fury surging through my eyes.

"Get lost!"

Vittoria curled her lips, satisfied, and let the push carry her. She staggered back and folded to the floor.

Matteo shot to his feet, rage exploding across his face.

"Serafina! Have you lost your mind? Vittoria's body is so weak, how could you put your hands on her?"

Gennaro was worse. The eldest Lombardi son, the man who handled the Family's affairs, took a slow step forward, and the room seemed to tighten around him.

"You put her in that car accident, and now you're hurting her right in front of us. I should have you buried somewhere quiet until your head clears."

"The one in the accident was me!" I shouted. "If anyone should be answering for it, it's Vittoria!"

I thought I could stay calm. But when every one of them planted himself firmly on Vittoria's side, I finally broke.

Salvatore looked at me with disappointment and bent to help Vittoria up.

"Serafina, even now you keep lying," he said, his voice flat and final. "Vittoria has cancer. Where would she find the strength to push you?"

"Don't speak of my sister that way," Vittoria said tearfully. Her hand pressed flat to her chest as if her heart were failing, though the fingers pressed a half-beat too soon, before the grief could arrive. "I know she can't accept my coming back so easily. I'm willing to apologize properly."

I ignored the performance and looked straight at Salvatore.

"Whether Vittoria has cancer or not, I don't know," I said quietly. "But that day, I lost our child."

Before I could finish, Vittoria's face changed utterly. She clutched her head and screamed.

"Dio, Matteo shouted. "She's having an episode. Get her medicine, now!"

Salvatore shoved me aside without a second thought and went to her.

In an instant they all crowded around her.

No one listened to me anymore.

The familiar scene made me want to scream, but the days of torment had already drained every ounce of strength from my body.

In the end I didn't even glance back at the farce unfolding behind me. I turned and climbed the stairs.

The moment I opened the bedroom door, I went very still.

My clothes, the photographs from our union ceremony, everything I had carefully placed in this room across seven years of blood-alliance marriage, all of it was gone.

In their place were designer bags, high heels, dresses cut to bare more than they covered.

They were tangled together with Salvatore's tailored suits, breathing a blatant intimacy.

I even saw used contraceptives in the wastebasket.

While I lay alone in the clinic, Salvatore and Vittoria had been twined together, in the master bedroom that belonged to me.

My body trembled violently.

Just then Salvatore's voice came from behind me.

"I let Vittoria move into the master bedroom."

He said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

"She's sick. She needs the best room to recover. You're the older sister. Be more accommodating. Your room is over there now."

He pointed carelessly toward the guest room.

"Why did you change the moment Vittoria came back?" I asked softly, despair thick in my eyes.

A trace of hesitation moved through Salvatore's gaze. But after a glance down the stairs at Vittoria, his face closed again.

"Serafina," he said coldly, "everything you had belonged to Vittoria seven years ago."

"I'm only returning what was hers from the beginning."

I didn't cry anymore.

I turned numbly toward the guest room.

If all of it had always been Vittoria's, then I would give it back, and vanish from their lives completely.

That night Vittoria's moans carried endlessly from the master bedroom, sharp and cruel through the walls.

I wiped every last tear into the fur of the sleeping puppy beside me. Feeling the warmth of its small body, the tearing pain in my chest finally eased, just a little.