That was why he had given me everything, day after day. His resources, his protection, the full invisible weight of his empire restructured around my survival.
It kept me hidden and untouchable, and it remade my life until the barrier between our worlds slowly dissolved.
Even so, it had taken us years of failed attempts and quiet grief to conceive this child.
"Everything I've said is true. If anything happens to this child, no one here will survive the Don's wrath. He will reduce the Five Families to ash and ruin!"
Under the Don's protection, my body had long surpassed anything a civilian should have endured.
But now, broken and bleeding, I could feel my life draining away with terrifying speed.
I poured every last scrap of strength into those words, praying Seraphina would spare my child.
She only gave a cold, thin smile.
"The harder you beg for this bastard's life, the more I want to kill him."
She raised my son high and hurled him at the ground.
"No!"
The scream ripped from my throat. It changed nothing.
All I could do was watch as my son slammed into the stone.
"He's still alive?"
Seraphina stared at the infant still squirming on the ground, murmuring to herself.
"Let's see just how hard this little mongrel is to kill."
She lifted her foot and brought it down on him.
The impact shook the floor.
The blow carried her full, devastating force.
It cratered the stone beneath him.
Every soldier there was certain the child was dead.
But his tiny hands still moved, waving as though nothing had happened.
"I refuse to believe I can't kill one worthless mongrel!"
Seraphina's composure shattered. She called for white phosphorus and sent it crashing down on my son.
White-hot flames engulfed him in an instant.
I was close enough to feel the searing heat scorch my skin.
Fear and anguish devoured me from the inside out.
My child was not just the future of the Valente bloodline.
He was the culmination of years of hope between the Don and me.
Three years I had carried him in secret. My own flesh and blood.
All those years, the Don and I had treasured him more than our own lives.
And this tiny, newborn boy had never even been held. Not once.
He was swallowed by merciless flame before he ever knew what an embrace felt like.
Tears streamed down my face, covering every inch of it.
Seraphina looked at the charred, motionless body and let a smile play across her lips.
"The little mongrel is finally dead."