"I thought you were actually being generous when you agreed to the divorce! How can you be this two-faced? The baby is so small. He isn't even a day old, and you threw him on the ground!" His voice was a blade, each word precise and final, the voice of a Don delivering a sentence. "You're going to be a mother yourself. Aren't you afraid your own child will pay for what you've done?"
My cheek burned. I turned my head slowly and saw the hatred carved into his face. I could barely process what I'd just heard.
For the sake of Catarina's child, he had cursed ours.
The man I had loved for seven years. The man whose syndicate I had built from nothing, whose alliances I had secured with my own blood name, whose enemies I had kept at bay by being a Valente. He stood over me on that hospital floor with another woman's child in his arms and cursed the baby growing inside me.
"Yeah, Giovanna, how could you do that? She just gave birth. You shouldn't have hit her!" One of the soldiers' wives, someone who had eaten at my table, who had kissed my cheek at Sunday dinner.