Chapter 5

"Gently, Alessio..." Her voice was a honey-sweet poison.

A low grunt was his only reply.

Then came sounds that were even worse.

Aurelia's bold seduction. Alessio's strained replies.

A sharp pain twisted in my stomach, and I turned and ran out of the house, back into the storm.

The rain swallowed me whole. I ran blindly through the streets, rain mixing with my tears. I couldn't tell which was colder.

The memories flooded back.

A warm summer night. Alessio tracing the butterfly I’d just had tattooed on my back.

"Do you know what this means, Thea?"

"What?" I'd asked, looking back at him, my heart full.

"It's my mark on you. Forever," he whispered, kissing the butterfly's wings. "No matter where you go, this will tell everyone that you belong to Alessio Santoro."

"And you?" I'd laughed. "Will you get my name tattooed on you?"

"I don't need ink," he'd said, holding me tight. "Your name is already branded on my heart."

How pathetic that sounded now.

Whose name was really on his heart?

I collapsed on the sidewalk, rain soaking me, until my body was numb.

At two in the morning, when the lights in the estate were all out, I stumbled back inside.

The living room was finally quiet.

I dragged my soaked body back to my room and collapsed onto the bed.

I was burning up. My head felt like it was splitting open.

Fever.

Through the haze, I heard Alessio's voice, soft and gentle, from the other side of the wall.

"Hey, little one, want daddy to tell you a story?"

I thought he was talking to his daughter, until I heard Aurelia's delicate laugh.

"Alessio, can the baby even hear you when you talk to my stomach?"

"Of course," his voice was thick with affection. "The doctor said it's important."

Then he began to read. A passage from The Godfather.

"In this world, there are some people you can never refuse. That's family..."

My heart didn't just break. It shattered.

That was the bedtime story he had promised our child.

"Thea, when we have a son, I'll read him The Godfather every night," he'd once said. "So he knows what loyalty is. What family is."

Now, he was making good on that promise. For another woman's child.

I clamped my hand over my mouth, choking back a sob.

After the tears dried, I stumbled out of bed to get a glass of water. My eyes landed on something on the nightstand.

It was an exquisite snow globe music box. A gift from Alessio for our first anniversary.

He'd said that when he first saw me, I was like the scene inside: quiet, pure, the only sanctuary in his chaotic world.

The song it played was the waltz from our first dance.

Sanctuary?

The irony was a bitter poison.

The rage of betrayal and a bottomless grief swallowed me whole.

I lunged for it, grabbing the music box that held all our sweet lies, and with all the strength I had, I hurled it against the wall.

The glass sphere exploded. The clear liquid and glittering "snow" sprayed across the floor.

The sharp, shattering sound was deafening in the silent night.

The music box mechanism rolled out from the wreckage, plinking out a few strange, distorted notes before falling completely silent.

I sobbed, sinking to the floor. A shard of glass dug into my hand.

Just like our love. A beautiful, bloody mess.

The noise must have woken them.

Less than a minute later, my door was thrown open.

Aurelia stood there, disheveled. The belt of her silk robe was loosely tied, her face flushed, her eyes smudged with tears.

Behind her stood Alessio, his face as dark as a gathering storm.

He saw the wreckage. He saw me, a heap on the floor.

Aurelia froze for a second, then a flicker of pure venom crossed her eyes.

She let out a short, sharp scream and ducked behind Alessio, her voice trembling with manufactured terror.

"Alessio! She's lost her mind! Is she trying to kill herself to curse me and the baby? Is she trying to use her own death to haunt us, to make us live in guilt and shadow for the rest of our lives?"

Those words hit their mark.

He looked at the broken glass, at the hysterical woman on the floor who was once his world. The last traces of guilt in his eyes were burned away by anger and raw frustration.

What he needed now, more than anything, was for the chaos to just be quiet.

"Get the doctor," he ordered the guard at the door, his voice cold.

The family's private doctor arrived in minutes.

Alessio pointed at me. His tone was calm, chillingly so.

"Doctor, as you can see, Thea's previous trauma has left her completely unstable. She's showing severe self-harm and violent tendencies."

He gestured to the floor. "For her safety, and to keep her from hurting herself further, I need you to give her a sedative. Something to help her calm down."

"No! I didn't!" I finally found my voice, scrambling to get up. "Alessio, you can't do this to me! It was you..."

My cries, my protests, only served as the final proof of his diagnosis.

"You see," Alessio said to the doctor, shaking his head with a mask of false pain. "She can no longer communicate rationally."

Under the guise of "for your own good," the guards pinned me down. A cold needle slid into my arm.

I felt my strength drain away, my consciousness sinking.

Before the darkness took me completely, I saw Alessio standing over me.

His expression was a mix of things I couldn't name, but the warmth I once knew was gone.

For the next few days, I drifted in and out of a medicated haze.

My body was heavy, useless. Lifting a finger was a monumental effort.

The door was no longer locked, but what did it matter? I didn't have the strength to walk to it.

But the sounds, I couldn't escape the sounds. They were a new kind of torture.

I could hear them decorating the manor for Christmas, their happy laughter echoing in the halls.

"Alessio, can you put the star on top of the tree? I can't reach," Aurelia's voice was sickeningly sweet.

"Of course, my princess," Alessio's voice dripped with affection.

I heard them cuddling by the fireplace, drinking mulled wine, discussing the baby's future.

"This wine is so warm. It reminds me of winter back home."

"If you like it, I'll have the cellar send up a few more cases. You can drink it all winter long."

On the third night, I heard the cruelest conversation of all.

"Alessio, darling," Aurelia’s voice dripped with manufactured sweetness. "After the baby is born... can we move to Tuscany? I want an estate there. I want a garden full of white roses."

A beat of silence. Then his voice, a low rumble of indulgence. "Alright. We'll go to Tuscany. I'll buy you the biggest estate. You can be its queen."

The words cut me like a knife.

I remembered a snowy winter night, huddled together in our tiny apartment. He kissed my forehead and whispered, "Thea, when this is all over, we'll go to Tuscany. We'll open a little flower shop that only sells white roses. I won't be the master of anything, except your heart."

Now, the white roses were just decorations for Aurelia's garden.

Tuscany, the place I had dreamed of day and night, our safe harbor, was being handed over to another woman without a second thought.

I curled into a ball on the bed, biting down hard on the blanket to keep from screaming.

Laughter echoed outside my door. And I was nothing. A ghost in a locked room, listening to my life being stolen piece by piece.