Chapter 2

Mirella's POV

The morning after the wedding, I walked down the main staircase beside Niccolo, my legs still weak. He hadn't touched me last night; he merely held me as we slept. It only made my mysterious new husband harder to read.

"Well, look who it is."

Pietro leaned against a doorframe, a coffee cup in hand, his shirt unbuttoned. Livia clung to his arm, looking incredibly smug.

But when she turned her head, I caught sight of what her high-collared silk dress couldn't hide—dark, overlapping bruises trailing all the way down below her collarbone.

Noticing my stare, Livia looked down. Her face flushed red, and she frantically pulled her collar up like a cornered cat.

"What are you looking at, hillbilly?"

Pietro sneered, looking past Niccolo to glare at me like a venomous snake. The memory of my screams in that basement exploded in my head. Instinctively, I shrank behind Niccolo.

A large, warm hand perfectly caught my cold, sweating fingers. Niccolo stepped half a pace forward, completely shielding me.

"Watch your eyes." His voice wasn't loud, but it was bone-chilling. "Staring at another man’s wife first thing in the morning breaks Ferraro rules."

Pietro slammed his coffee cup down.

"Rules?" Pietro scoffed. "You dragged a country brat in here. You really think she can breed an heir?"

"Whether my wife is fit or not isn't for you to judge," Niccolo said, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "You, on the other hand, picked the loudest one. Better pray she's actually useful—don't end up with all bark and no bite."

Pietro’s face turned livid, his fists cracking. Livia quickly grabbed him. "Let it go. Don Ettore is waiting for us at breakfast."

He glared at us murderously, grabbed Livia, and stormed off.

I let out a long breath, my back drenched in sweat.

Niccolo turned, his calloused thumb gently rubbing the back of my cold hand. All the hostility was gone from his face.

"Don't be afraid. I'm here."

I looked up at him, utterly baffled as to why this man was guarding me so fiercely, or what he was plotting.

Three months later, a bombshell rocked the estate—Giovanni's wife, Clara, was pregnant. Pietro was the first to snap. Livia's empty womb became the perfect trigger for his abuse.

One autumn evening, I was carrying pastries toward the West Wing. As I turned the corner of the corridor, an antique porcelain vase shattered against a doorframe three meters away.

"Useless! What good are you to me if you can't even give me a child?!"

Pietro stormed out, ripping at his tie, his eyes bloodshot like a rabid dog. I pressed myself into the shadows against the wall, holding my breath.

Once the hallway was dead silent, I crunched over the debris and pushed open the cracked door. The heavy stench of antiseptic hit me. Two doctors were just leaving with their kits.

The person on the bed made my stomach drop. In just three months, Livia had wasted away. Her once-proud face was severely sunken, her skin ashen. She looked like a hollow, broken doll propped against the headboard.

Hearing footsteps, she snapped her head up. When she saw me, her vulnerability instantly vanished, replaced by barbed defensiveness.

"What are you doing here? Come to laugh at me?" She yanked a blanket over the bruises on her legs, tilting her chin up. "Get out, I don't need your pity!"

I set the pastry box on the table.

"Livia, stop lying to yourself. If this continues, he'll beat you to death before you ever get pregnant."

"You don't know shit!" she shrieked like a madwoman, her nails digging into the bedsheets. "The doctors said I'm fine! If I keep taking the treatments, I'll get pregnant! And once I give birth to the eldest grandson, every woman in this house will be kneeling to shine my shoes!"

Looking at her delusional, power-hungry face, I finally lost my patience.

"The doctors can't find anything wrong with you because you aren't the problem!" I took a step forward, staring directly into her bloodshot eyes, dropping the truth I had bought with my life. "Listen to me—Pietro is completely sterile. You could die in this bed, and you would still never have his child."

Dead silence. Then, absolute, twisted panic and fury erupted in Livia's eyes.

"Shut up! You toxic bitch! You're jealous! You're cursing me!"

She threw herself off the bed like a lunatic, grabbed my hair, and violently shoved me toward the door.

"Get out! Get the hell out!" Livia screamed at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her face, her voice violently shaking. "I will get pregnant! I will give birth to the master of this family! Get out!"