Chapter 3

The first time Cecilia hit me was over a glass of water.

Sera had a migraine. Cecilia ordered me to bring a cold compress and a glass of filtered water — not tap, not sparkling, filtered.

I brought sparkling.

The glass shattered against the wall three inches from my head.

"Are you stupid, or do you just enjoy making Sera suffer?"

I stood there, water dripping down the wallpaper, a shard of glass embedded in my shoulder.

"I'll get another one."

"You'll get another one, and you'll apologize to Sera for being so thoughtless."

I looked at Sera, propped up on silk pillows like a Renaissance painting, her migraine miraculously forgotten.

"I'm sorry, Sera."

"It's okay." She reached out and squeezed my hand. "I know you're trying."

Her nails dug into my skin hard enough to leave marks.

When Cecilia left, Sera's face changed.

"You know what's funny? She used to hit Dominic's first wife too. But that one had the sense to run." She tilted her head. "Where are you going to run, Valentina? Your father doesn't want you back. Your mother can't save you. And your husband doesn't know you exist."

"So just... be good. Stay quiet. And maybe I'll let you die in peace."

She knew.

I saw it in her eyes — she knew I was sick.

My medical records. Someone in this house had accessed my medical records.

"What do you want?" I whispered.

"Everything you were supposed to have. The Ferro name. The empire. Dominic." She smiled. "I've been building this for ten years. You're just the placeholder until I'm officially in."

"Once you're gone — and you will be gone soon — I'll comfort him at the funeral, and by spring, I'll be wearing your ring."

I wanted to fight. I wanted to scream.

But my body betrayed me. The pain buckled my knees and I grabbed the doorframe to stay upright.

Sera watched me struggle with the same expression a child wears while pulling wings off a butterfly.

That night, I wrote in my journal:

"She wants me to disappear quietly. She wants to erase me from this family like I was never here."

"Maybe she's right. Maybe I was never here at all."

But something small and stubborn inside me — the last ember that cancer and cruelty hadn't extinguished — refused.

I opened my laptop and began to dig.

If I was going to die in this house, I would not die blind.

The Ferro family had secrets. Sera had secrets.

And I had nothing left to lose.

At 2 AM, I found the first thread.

Sera Marchetti's parents didn't die in a random car accident.

The accident report had been filed by Ferro family lawyers.

The same lawyers who handled my marriage contract.

My hands trembled — not from pain this time.

What did you do, Sera?

The bedroom door opened behind me.

I slammed the laptop shut.

Dominic stood in the doorway, his tie loosened, his eyes unreadable.

It was the first time he'd ever come to my room.

"We need to talk," he said.