Chapter 4

When I opened my eyes again, the white hospital ceiling greeted me.

Dante’s face was inches from mine.

He grabbed my hand tightly, his palm sweaty.

“Alicia! You’re finally awake! Last night I came back and saw you collapsed on the floor, vomiting everywhere… I was terrified something happened to you!”

The warmth of his hand was the same warmth that held Valentina last night.

My stomach churned.

I yanked my hand away like touching something filthy.

“I’m fine.”

“Fine?” His voice rose sharply, brows tightly drawn. “You’re getting worse! We need to listen to the doctor. You have to stay hospitalized, Alicia. This is for your own good.”

For my own good?

I looked into his gray-blue eyes.

Under that urgency was the calculation of someone eager to lock me away in an asylum so he could run off with Valentina.

Years of love.

The bullet I took for him.

And this was how he repaid me.

Pushing me step by step toward destruction.

My heart was frozen.

Only hatred burned.

“I want to be alone. Leave.”

He didn’t move.

Just as he was about to say something, the door knocked.

Valentina walked in holding a glass of water.

Her skin glowed, her eyes lazy and satisfied like someone who had been thoroughly fucked all night.

“You’re awake?” she said sweetly, placing the water beside my bed.

“That scared me so much last night. I’m glad you’re okay.”

I turned my head away.

She smiled lightly, then nudged Dante’s arm, her finger sliding across it deliberately.

“Dante, Alicia must be hungry after waking up. Go buy that cream mushroom soup from the restaurant downtown, the one she likes. I’ll stay and talk to her.”

Dante stood immediately.

“Wait for me. I’ll be back soon.”

He left without hesitation.

The door closed.

Valentina’s sweet expression vanished instantly.

She crossed her arms and walked to my bedside, heels clicking.

“Alright. No one else is here.”

She looked down at me like trash.

“Name your price, Alicia. How much money do you want to get the hell out of the Vittorio family?”

I slowly turned my head back.

“I want you and Dante dead. Can you afford that?”

Valentina froze for a second.

Then burst out laughing.

“Alicia, did that fall break your brain?”

“Look at you. A cripple in a wheelchair who can’t even walk.”

“Without Dante, you couldn’t crawl out of this hospital room.”

“What are you going to kill us with? Your tears? Or the two lumps of blood that fell out of your womb?”

Every word was a burning nail hammered into my heart.

So she knew.

Of course she knew.

Which meant Dante knew too.

“He could’ve just divorced me,” I said coldly. “Why torture me?”

“Divorce?”

Valentina leaned closer, perfume choking the air.

“Then he’d look like a bastard who abandoned his wife.”

“The Don’s reputation. The family’s authority. The Vittorio name across the East Coast — you think that doesn’t matter?”

“You have to be sacrificed, Alicia.”

She straightened and admired my pale face.

“Oh right. One more thing.”

“When those men were fucking you in that warehouse… when you screamed the loudest…”

“Dante was upstairs in the surveillance room.”

My breathing stopped.

“The harder you cried, the harder he fucked me.”

“And when those disgusting little pieces of flesh slid out of you while they were ruining your body…”

“He said you were disgusting.”

“AHHHHH!!!”

A scream ripped out of me like an animal.

I lunged forward in pure rage.

Valentina stepped back easily, smiling.

“Save your strength. Your asylum room is ready.”

“I’ll personally make sure they take very good care of you.”

She gave me one last mocking look and left.

I slumped in the wheelchair, breathing heavily.

Images colliding in my mind — Dante’s betrayal, Valentina’s cruelty, the warehouse, and my unborn Antonio and Sophia.

A few seconds later, I grabbed the armrest and slowly stood up.

They didn’t know.

My legs had already recovered.

I dialed a number.

The plan began.

Less than twenty minutes later, several men in black entered silently, wrapped me in a blanket, and took me through the emergency stairwell.

Half an hour later, in a rooftop restaurant downtown, Dante’s phone exploded with calls.

Luca’s panicked voice cracked through the line:

“Don! Our weapons routes and laundering channels are being ripped apart! The family is under attack!”