Chapter 2 - The Sins of the Silent
The memory of the cold medical office in New Jersey flooded back into my mind,
bitter and suffocating like the smoke of a guttering candle.
I could still see the fluorescent lights,
still hear the humming of the air conditioner,
and still feel the presence of my mother,
Sophia Valenti,
standing behind me like a dark omen.
"The tests are conclusive,
Dominic,"
the doctor had said,
his eyes never meeting mine as he slid the report across the desk.
"Elena is infertile."
"She cannot carry the Valenti heir."
I had looked at Elena then,
and she had been so small,
so pale,
so utterly shattered by the words.
My mother had put a hand on my shoulder,
her voice a poisonous honey.
"A Valenti without an heir is a king without a throne,
my son."
"Do what must be done for the family."
I had listened to the tradition instead of my heart.
I had signed the papers,
ignoring the way Elena’s hand had trembled when she took her pen.
I had believed the science,
and I had believed my mother’s "loyalty."
But standing here,
looking at Isabella’s black-and-gold eyes,
the truth revealed itself in a blinding,
horrifying flash.
The doctor had been on my mother’s payroll.
The report had been a work of fiction,
designed to remove a girl my mother deemed "too soft" for the Valenti throne.
I had been a pawn in a game played by my own blood,
and the price of my ignorance was the first five years of my daughter's life.
"Who told you?"
I asked,
my voice a hollow rasp that seemed to rattle in my chest.
"Who told you that you could leave?"
Elena let out a short,
bitter laugh that carried no humor.
"No one told me,
Dominic."
"I found the real reports in your mother's study the night before I left."
"I knew if I stayed,
she would find a way to make the 'infertility' real."
"She would have drugged me,"
"or worse."
"So I ran to the only person who hated the Valentis as much as I did."
She looked up at Julian Vane,
who stood like a stone sentinel beside her.
"He didn't want my money,"
"he didn't want my name."
"He just wanted to see your mother lose."
I felt a surge of rage so pure it threatened to consume the room.
My mother had stolen my wife.
She had stolen my child.
And she had made me the monster of my own story.
I looked at Isabella,
May you like
who was watching me with those impossible eyes,
and I realized that the war I had been fighting on the docks was nothing compared to the war that was about to start in my own house.
