Ashes of the Valdori

I was about to speak when I looked up and saw Cassius standing behind Eloise.

Those cold, imperious eyes, unchanged in ten years. Not by a fraction.

When I didn't respond, Eloise ground her teeth and snapped:

"I knew it! You've been playing hard to get this whole time! You say you don't want anything, you don't compete for anything, but the second I tell you to go to the Gate House, you won't do it! Liar!"

"Eloise."

Cassius said her name, just once, and every sharp edge on her smoothed out in an instant. She burrowed into his arms, small and pitiful.

The room had gone still the moment he appeared. Two bodyguards flanked the doorway behind him, but they might as well have been furniture. When the Don entered a room, the air itself deferred.

Even though I had given Cassius a daughter five years ago, Eloise was still the only child who existed in his eyes.

He'd even sent my baby away the day after I gave birth, afraid that having my own child would make me less devoted to Eloise. A baby I had nearly died delivering. Handed off to distant relatives at the Family's upstate property before my stitches had closed, carried out of the house in the arms of a woman I'd never seen before while I screamed into a pillow that Margherita Solano held against my face.

The agony of labor was nothing compared to the pain of being separated from my daughter.

But for the honor of my family, for my parents and brother running Marconi operations along the coast, I had pulled myself together and gone back to pleasing this father and daughter. The alliance had to hold. The Marconi name depended on my silence, my compliance, my perfect performance as the Don's wife in everything but standing.

Ten years, though.

I was done.

For the first time, I did not lower my eyes or greet Cassius with the deference the household expected. I looked him straight in the face.

"I've dishonored Isabelle's memory and failed in my care of Eloise. I'm requesting the Gate House."

My right hand drifted to the silver reliquary at my throat. The metal was warm from my skin. I held it there, steady, while his gaze tracked the gesture.

Cassius walked toward me, slow and deliberate. Those deep-set eyes betrayed nothing. His wedding band caught the light as his thumb found its edge and began the slow rotation that everyone in the household had learned to fear.

"Are you throwing a tantrum?"

"But you did dishonor Isabelle today."

I lowered myself to one knee and bowed my head. In this house, before this man, it was the old way. "The fault is mine. I'm asking you to send me to the Gate House."

I had said I, not your wife. Not even Angelica Valdori. Just the bare pronoun, stripped of any claim to his name. The same way I'd spoken ten years ago, before the alliance, before any of this began.

Cassius's brow furrowed tight.

"Eloise spoke out of anger. Why must you hold it against her? Besides, she can't do without you."

"Apologize to her nicely, right now, and I'll pretend I never heard any of this."

He assumed I would do what I had always done: lower my head and beg their forgiveness. The Don's word delivered like a verdict, and the room waited for me to comply the way every room always waited.

I didn't move.

Eloise, tired of waiting for her apology, balled her fists and charged at me, pounding blow after blow against my body.

"You're the one who wants to take my mother's place! Why won't you apologize to me!"

"You promised you'd never have children of your own besides me! You lied! You're the one who wronged me!"

Her fists struck the exact spot where I'd been injured half a month ago, saving her when she fell from a horse on the estate grounds. Pain tore through me so fast my face contorted.

Cassius only looked annoyed. "She's a ten-year-old girl. How hard can she possibly hit?"

Then the blood began seeping through my shoulder, staining the fabric dark.

Only then did his expression shift. He reached out and caught Eloise's arm. The rotation of his ring stopped.

Eloise stared at the spreading red, startled, but she still lifted her chin in defiance.

"You were already hurt. Don't you dare blame me for that!"

I looked at Eloise with a bitter half-smile. "The girl is absolutely right."

I had no desire to argue with a child. All I wanted now was to get away from this father and daughter as fast as I could.

I had promised Cassius I would never bear a child of my own. Every time I was called to his room, I took the contraceptive the household physician provided without fail. Obedient. Controlled. A wife in name who existed to serve someone else's daughter and warm someone else's bed and never, ever produce a complication.

But five years ago, Cassius had been drugged at a sit-down that went wrong. That night he was relentless, and I couldn't escape him.

I didn't wake until the following evening. I took the dose immediately.

Two weeks later, the routine check still came back pregnant.

Cassius said nothing at the time, but his brow stayed knotted, and it didn't ease.

The coast was in crisis then. Marconi operations were bleeding money and men. Morale among the crews had collapsed.

Cassius, still seething, had been withholding shipments and supply lines that the Marconi family depended on to hold their territory. To rally the crews, to give my parents and Tristan something to hold on to, I had no choice.

I let word of the pregnancy spread.

Cassius had no sons. For a dynasty built on blood and succession, there was no greater vulnerability.

So when news broke that I was carrying the Don's child, every allied family on the Eastern Seaboard believed the Valdori line finally had an heir.