After the incident where someone had accidentally touched my belly, he had dismissed every last soul from the Forbidden Wing. Every servant. Every guard. Every living thing that breathed.
Proud and untamable as he was, he came here himself each day to care for me. The most dangerous man in the underworld, spooning broth and adjusting blankets with hands that had ended dynasties.
Ciro Marchetti had once been an honored guest, on friendly terms with the Don himself. A man who raised his glass to Dominic across the room like they were brothers.
Yet a single drunken misstep into the Forbidden Wing was enough for Dominic to kill him without hesitation, igniting a war that left mountains of corpses and seas of blood across three territories.
If those people outside made it in here, another massacre was all but certain.
I hauled myself out of bed and hurried into the courtyard, hoping to warn them away before it was too late. My right hand drifted to my abdomen, cradling the weight of what I was about to lose and did not yet know it.
But the moment I opened the door, a face stared back at me. A face that looked seven-tenths like my own.
Before I could utter a word, a hand cracked across my cheek.
"Where did this wretched little servant come from, wearing my face in the Don's private quarters? What, are you trying to steal his favor from me?"
The slap came out of nowhere, so hard my skull rang like a struck bell.
"A civilian with no connections whatsoever. How did you even get inside the Valente compound?"
"She must have slept her way in with some low-level soldier on gate duty. That would explain the pregnancy."
"Outsiders really are pathetic. She thinks that just because she bears a passing resemblance to our Lady Seraphina, she can hide here and seduce the Don?"
It wasn't until I heard their venom that I realized who had barged in and struck me. The woman standing before me was none other than Seraphina Castellano, the one Don Castellano had offered to end the war between the Castellanos and the Valentes all those years ago.
For years upon years, the Don could have had his pick of countless women. Instead, he spent every day at my side.
He had never spared a second glance at any woman other than me.
That was why, when he agreed to halt the war on account of Seraphina, a thread of doubt had wound through my heart.