Chapter 3

After just one bottle of formula, Lia started throwing up over and over.

Late on the third night, her fever spiked to 102°F, and her cries had grown hoarse.

I carried her to find Dante. When the study door opened, Victoria was standing in front of him, favoring her injured leg, with blood on the hem of her pants.

"My other car lost control too," she said. "It had barely left the garage when the brakes stopped working."

Dante was already reaching for Lia.

Then Victoria swayed, and his hand stopped in midair and went to steady her instead.

"Lia throws up when she smells medicine." I fought to keep my voice from shaking. "Dante, her fever is 102. Take us to the hospital now."

He glanced down at the baby.

Lia's face was bright red with fever, and her little hand clutched weakly at my collar.

I thought he would at least take her from me.

Instead, he called the family doctor and sent him to check Victoria first. Then he had the armored car brought around for her and sent every guard on the estate to line the route to the hospital.

"I'll have a car and driver take you." He tucked Lia's blanket around her. "She's still crying, so it can't be that serious. Victoria may have just survived another assassination attempt."

I went cold all over.

"So her leg matters more than your daughter's life?"

"Don't say that." Dante frowned. "You know how to take care of Lia better than anyone. You'd never actually let anything happen to her."

Once again, he assumed I'd handle everything.

And that meant the doctor, the fastest car, and every last guard could all go to another woman instead.

I climbed into the regular sedan with Lia. She twitched in my arms, and I was so scared my fingers went numb. I kept calling her name the whole way.

The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror and asked if he should push through the traffic.

I looked at the traffic closing in behind Dante's convoy and could only tell him to hurry.

The ER admission, the blood tests, the fever medication, the overnight observation. I signed every form myself. Alone.

The doctor said that if the fever stayed this high, Lia could get dehydrated. He told me to watch her breathing and temperature all night.

I didn't dare close my eyes.

When a nurse asked where the baby's father was, my throat closed up. All I said was that he had something more important to do.

When the needle went in, Lia cried so hard she could barely breathe. I held down her tiny arm, and that was when I finally cried.

I wasn't afraid I couldn't handle it.

I was afraid Dante trusted me so much to handle everything that one day, it would cost our daughter her life.

He didn't show up until after dawn.

He had brought a thermos of my usual hot porridge. He touched Lia's forehead first, then asked the doctor to go over her test results again.

When he heard it was only an infection, he relaxed.

"Victoria was in real danger last night. If that crash had been just a little bit off—"

"Enough."

I opened the hospital's emergency contact page and deleted his name right in front of him. I put in Rosa and the family doctor instead.

The color slowly drained from Dante's face.

"Bianca, I'm her father."

"Not last night."

His hand froze in midair.

For the first time, I saw fear in his eyes. But it came too late, and that only made me angrier. When Lia needed him most, he'd already decided she would be fine without him.

I picked up Lia, who had fallen into a deep sleep once the fever broke, and walked past him.

At noon that day, he received the divorce papers along with a formal notice that he was no longer authorized to act for the De Luca family.