"Oh, I won't be breastfeeding. You think these are natural? Why would I ruin them? You know what Tomasso told me?" She tilted her chin up, the hospital light catching her collarbone like she was posing for a painting. "He said you're boring. No fun at all. And your body doesn't compare to mine. I'm an E cup, sweetheart."
So even her chest was fake.
Tomasso really had no standards. The Don of the Rossetti Family, the man I had built from nothing, couldn't tell the difference between a woman who would die for him and one who was performing for his wallet.
"Are you done?"
"Not even close. I'm telling you to get lost. Stop standing between us, or I'll make your life a living hell. My husband is dead. I need a new one, and Tomasso is the man I picked. I'm never letting him go—"
Before she could finish, my hand was already in the air.
The slap cracked across her face.
The sound was clean. Final. It cut through the hum of the fluorescent light and the distant beeping of monitors and left a silence so absolute that the room seemed to hold its breath. My wedding band caught the light as my hand fell back to my side. I turned it once with my thumb. Twice.
Then I stopped.
"You hit me?!" She froze, one hand flying to her cheek. The red was already blooming across her skin, vivid against the white hospital sheets behind her. She lunged to hit me back, but I caught her arm and swung again.
"You—"
"Yeah, I hit you." My voice was steady. Not raised. Not shaking. Steady the way my father's voice was steady when he passed judgment in his study, the way Valente women have always sounded when they've stopped asking and started telling. "That first one was for being shameless enough to seduce another woman's husband."
A second slap landed clean. Her head snapped to the side. The room was so quiet I could hear the bodyguard outside shift his weight again, uncertain, listening.
"That one's for climbing into a married man's bed when your own husband hasn't been dead five months and you were nine months pregnant. Fausto took a bullet for Tomasso, and this is how you honor his memory."
Then a third.
The sound of it hung in the air like the last note of a bell.
"And that's for destroying a family and not feeling an ounce of remorse."