I watched his retreating figure until it disappeared. Every last shred of hope in me went with it.
I curled into the corner, the pain splitting me open. I could feel it, every moment of it, the child slipping away from my body.
The child I had longed for day and night, killed by its own father on the very first day he learned of its existence.
I was unconscious through the night. The skirt beneath me soaked through with blood.
The door crashed open with a kick. Sienna Marchetti strode in, flanked by several older servants. The hallway beyond her was still. No guards intervened. No one in this house answered to me anymore.
She glanced at me, drenched in blood from the waist down, then settled into a chair by the table and poured herself a glass of wine as if she had all the time in the world.
"Don't blame me. The child in my belly has to be the firstborn heir. That's the only way I'll have any standing in the Delgado household. Surely you understand."
I braced myself against the wall, barely upright. "So you had my child killed."