The Mafia Queen's Revenge

POV: Vita 

Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep...

The beeping of the ECG monitor was the only sound in the room, steady and indifferent, as if it hadn't noticed that my whole world had just ended.

I woke slowly, my mouth is dry, so dry that my lips could crack if I make any sudden move to speak. My limbs feels heavy with whatever they'd given me.

For a moment I didn't remember, and I wish it stayed that way. But it didn’t...

I looked down...

God, I looked down and saw it. I saw the dark stain soaked through the pristine white sheets, and my body remembered before my mind did. I felt empty in places that used to be full and heavy.

The moment it clicked in my head, I almost passed out from the sheer shock. The sound that came out of me wasn't a scream. It was smaller than that, and worse, a broken, animal sound I didn't recognise as my own voice.

“Oh God no...

Not again, not me... Not again!” I cried. I pressed both hands over my mouth to stop it, because somewhere in my head, and instinct, some old and exhausted survival reflex, still knew better than to let the whole hospital hear a Marino woman fall apart.

The VIP suite at Chicago Medical Center was the kind of room money bought. It offers privacy along with comfort with it’s soft lighting, flowers, I mean real flowers, not the plastic kind hospitals usually kept. Everything in this hospital room screams luxury, and wealth.

I should be comfortable here, that’s the whole idea of getting a private VIP suite. But what I’m feeling right now is nothing close to comfortable. My hands were shaking so badly I couldn't hold the glass of water on the bedside table.

So I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the empty, hollowed-out place, the empty space in my belly where my son had been three days ago. It hurts...

It hurts so badly...

Three days ago he'd kicked inside of me. A small, stubborn flutter under my ribs, and I'd pressed my palm flat against my stomach and laughed, actually laughed, alone in my bathroom, because it had felt like a secret just for me.

I hadn't even told Dominic yet. I'd wanted to keep him to myself a little longer, this tiny, fierce thing that was mine before he belonged to anyone else, before he belonged to this family and its rules and its blood debts.

I wanted to keep it as a secret between us, just me and my brave little one. Now there was nothing left to keep secret, there was nothing left at all. I’m just an empty shell lying on a stupid hospital bed.

Dr. Aris came in first...

He hung his head low as he walked in, his white coat immaculately clean as always, his tablet held against his chest like a shield. His voice, when he spoke, was careful and gentle, the tone doctors must practise for exactly this moment. I bet they learn it in school as well, that stupid annoying calm voice they use to deliver bad news.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Salucci. You lost the baby. It was still in the late second trimester. There was nothing anyone could have done. Please accept my heartfelt condolence," he said sadly.

I heard the words...

I understood every single one of them. And still, somehow, my mind refused to let them land all at once, my mind keeps pulling the grief out to me in pieces because the whole of it would have crushed me flat.

It just doesn’t make sense...

Twenty-two weeks...

Twenty-two whole weeks of morning sickness I'd hidden behind closed doors, of choosing names in the dark while Dominic slept beside me, of imagining a small face that would never exist now.

Twenty-two whole weeks...

It just doesn’t make sense...

It was supposed to be a boy, our son, Dominic’s heir who would after his father someday. This is the second time I am losing my pregnancy and it’s always around the end of my second trimester.

How can this be happening to me?

Why me... Why?

The tears came before I could stop them, hot and endless, spilling down into my hair, into my ears, soaking the pillow beneath me. I didn't sob prettily, I cried the way you cry when something has been physically taken out of you.

My sobs came out fast, It was ugly and gasping, my whole body curling in around the emptiness in my belly as though I could still protect him, as though there was still something left to protect.

I don't know how long I lay there like that before the door burst open and Dominic entered the room. His presence filled the room the way he filled every room.

He crossed to the bed in three strides and dropped to his knees beside me, taking my limp, shaking hand in both of his, and he wept. This is the second time it’s happening to us, the second time we’ve lost our precious child.

I felt his tears land on my knuckles, warm and sad. Some small, drowning part of me wanted to comfort him, to tell him not to cry anymore because we would certainly have another baby.

But there was another part, a small part of me that wanted, desperately, for someone else in this room to be as destroyed as I was. I am hurting , and I just want to hurt someone too.

Dominic is the closest to me right now, so I turned my hand over and gripped his fingers hard enough to hurt, because for one unguarded moment I needed him to be real, need him to know how I’m hurting too.

"My love," he said, his voice cracking, the pain evident in his tone.

"My love, I'm so sorry, I should have been here, I should never have left you alone at that meeting." He sobbed, crying harder.

He kissed my knuckles, and pressed his forehead to the back of my hand. I let him, still crying, still shaking, my chest so tight I could barely draw breath around the sobs.

Then, in one smooth motion, he rose and turned his grief into rage, slamming his fist into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. I flinched at the sound, my whole body jerking against the mattress.

"If this was the Castellanos," he snarled, to no one, to everyone, to the room itself,

"If they somehow did something to cause this, to stress her, I swear to God, I will bury every last one of them." he swore in tears.

I watched him through the blur of my own tears, and somewhere underneath the grief, I felt something warm in my heart. He is enraged for our child’s sake, and that felt really good.

“If I find out anyone has a hand in this, I won’t spare their entire family. I will keep them alive long enough to peel of their skin and toss their bones to my dogs.” He swore, sending chills down my spine.

But somewhere in the midst of his tears and threats, I noticed something. It’s the way he looked at everyone while he spoke, it’s seems off and I hated myself, in that moment, for noticing it at all.

But five years married to this man had taught me things I didn’t want to know I knew. I had learned, slowly, the way you learn a language by living inside it, that Dominic’s rage made everyone flinch and cower in fear.

His rage and love were both instruments he played with equal skill. Everyone feels his love when he’s happy, and when he’s sad and enraged like this, everyone usually gets on their knees to escape his wrath.

But they all stood and just stared at him as if he was ranting rubbish. Yes they bowed their head in submission, but they weren’t looking scared of his threats and that felt odd.

I wanted so badly to simply grieve, to be nothing but a wife who had lost her baby, without this second, watchful self standing just behind my own eyes, observing everything.

He gathered me up against his chest, and I let my body go soft and small there, because I didn't have the strength to do anything else, because the tears were still coming and coming and I thought, absurdly, that I might drown in them.

It was over his shoulder, while he murmured promises of vengeance against enemies but known and unknown that my ever watchful eyes saw something I shouldn’t. I caught Dr. Aris watching us.

He wasn't looking at me the way a doctor looks at a patient he's failed to save. He was looking at me the way a man looks at something he's afraid of, like he’d rather be anywhere else but here.

Sweat had beaded along his hairline, though the room was cool. His hand, the one holding the tablet, trembled just slightly, just enough that I noticed through my own tears, because even shattered, even drowning in grief, I had spent five years learning to notice things because I am the Donna, the mafia Queen or Godmother.

He held my gaze for less than a second before he looked away, tucking the tablet under his arm and reaching for the door, murmuring something about giving the family privacy, about checking on my levels again in the morning.

But guess what?

He didn't check on my levels again in the morning, I never saw him again. That morning when I didn’t see him, I asked for him. Of course, I did. I was informed that earlier this morning, Dr. Aris left the hospital. He was already be gone.

Initially, I was just suspicious about the timing and the way it happened so fast. But now I’m pretty much convinced that something is definitely going on in this hospital.

Someone was hiding something, and in this family, secrets were never harmless. I don’t care if I’m in pains and still grieving my child, I was going to find out what it was, even if it broke what was left of me to do it.