My Husband Faked an Illness to Punish Me,Until I Left for Good

“Dominic, our baby is gone……” I couldn't feel the heartbeat in my belly anymore. My eyes had gone numb as I stroked it gently. “Really gone?” “I don't have time to waste on you.” “Baby's about to have lunch. We're in a hurry to go feed it.” Hearing those two words, “Baby.” My heart clenched, and my stomach heaved with the urge to vomit. “Dominic, you can't use our baby's pet name to call that animal……” The words came out one by one, and fury surged up through my chest. The next second, the heat in the greenhouse climbed higher, the glass walls sweating around me like the inside of a furnace. “Who said you could call my Baby an animal!” “Dominic, Adriana has really gone too far!” “Baby is the child I've raised with so much care. It may just be a lizard, but it understands everything!” “Make her apologize to Baby right now!” Gemma clung to Dominic's arm, pouting with rage, the pendant at her throat catching the light. The skin where my body touched the scorching tile smoked in the heat. “Did you hear that?” “Adriana, apologize.” Dominic's icy voice rang out before I could even react. A made man like him didn't need to raise it. The whole Family straightened when he spoke, and so did I, even here, even now. Gemma suddenly pulled out her phone and started recording. “I'm going to record this and send it to Adriana's mother, so she can testify for my Baby!” “And let her get a good look at how the daughter she's so proud of lost to me, the bastard of the affair that ruined her precious Rizzo name!” Gemma's mocking laughter drilled into my head. I froze for a few seconds, then threw my arm up to cover my head. A large patch of skin tore off my arm. The pain was suffocating. “Dominic, you can't let my mother see me like this!” “She can't take it!” “Dominic, you can't……” Tears kept sliding down my face as I thought of my mother, already wasting away in the final stage of her illness, all that remained of a fallen Rizzo household. I forced my body to curl up, trying to block Gemma's camera. The next second, Gemma simply placed a video call to my mother. “Signora Rizzo, it's me, Gemma, the bastard daughter you despise the most.” “I'm video-calling you today just to show you something.” Gemma's sneer had barely faded. My mother's panicked voice suddenly came through. “Is that Adriana?” “Tell me right now, where are you?!” “Adriana, does it hurt……” “Mamma's coming to save you right now!” My mother, kept alive on massive doses of the Family physician's painkillers, her mind long since clouded. Yet in this moment, from nothing but a blurred figure on the screen, she recognized me. My heart hurt so much it nearly stopped. I lifted my head and screamed at Dominic. “Dominic!” “My mother taught you once too, back before any of us wore this name!” “I'm begging you, don't put her through this fear again……” I screamed with every last bit of strength, and the moment the words left my mouth, through Gemma's video call, I heard the heavy sound of my mother crashing to the floor. “Oh no! Signora Rizzo has fallen down!” “Dominic, we'd better call the Family physician right away!” Gemma said the words, but the video on her phone stayed fixed on the wounds covering my body. She pressed the pendant to her throat and let the picture hold. “Adriana, Mamma's coming to save you……” “Is it the other children again, are they shaming you over your father's affair?” My mother mumbled the words. But her body inched, step by step, toward the window, and one foot stepped out. My tears had nearly run dry. I screamed until my voice broke. “Dominic, I swear I'll never cling to you again!” “You loathe me, you're disgusted by me, and I deserve all of it!” “I shouldn't have loved you. It was my mistake!” Screaming with everything I had, I scrambled up and pounded at the scalding glass with all my might.

Something flickered behind Dominic's eyes. It vanished fast, swallowed again by a tide of hatred. "Then get down on your knees and apologize to Baby!" "Okay, okay, okay!" "I'll apologize! I'll beg!" I dropped to the greenhouse floor in a panic and slammed my head against the stone, thud, thud, thud. When I lifted it again, blood streaked my whole forehead. "Dominic, I apologized." "Please, send one of your men to save my mother—" I never finished. My eyes went wide, my pupils shaking violently. My mother had thrown herself from the twenty-third floor of the tower. "Oh dear." "Carlotta Rizzo really wasn't careful. She actually mistook the window for the door." "Dominic, no need to call the family physician. Let's just have the men handle the body directly." Gemma smiled faintly at the corner of her mouth and touched the pendant at her throat, then cut the video call dead. Staring at the darkened screen, my mind went blank, and I crumpled to the floor. "Dominic, it's time to feed Baby." "Let's hurry." Gemma pouted, careless, as though a woman had not just fallen through the air on the other end of that call. But Dominic froze for a few seconds. His eyes locked onto me. Emotion surged and thrashed wildly in them. A few seconds later, it settled back into calm and hatred. "Let's go." He pushed open the greenhouse door without a thought and tossed in a folded sheet of paper. "Since the child in your belly is already gone, sign this. We break the bloodline pact. Now." The papers that severed the alliance union were already stained with my blood. All at once I remembered the Dominic who had thrown himself from the seventh floor without hesitation to save me when I was drowning in the dark years ago. The year my father took Gemma's mother as his mistress and shattered the Rizzo name within the Cosa Nostra. My mother, out of her mind, made a scene where all the Families could see. She stripped Gemma's mother bare and doused her whole body in paint. At the gate she hung a long banner, spilling the record of the affair for every made man to read. I was pushed over the edge, and I stood on the seventh floor and jumped. It was Dominic who tied a rope around himself and leapt after me without a second's hesitation, wrapping his arms tight around me. Scene after scene of the love we once shared surfaced in my mind. I lay on the floor, feeling my breath fading, thinner and thinner. I don't know how long it was before a basin of ice water, reeking sharply of alcohol, was suddenly dumped over my head. "Adriana, what did you do to the sheets in her rooms?!" The vicious sting jolted me awake. I opened my eyes to Dominic's face, flooded with hatred and disgust. "Gemma broke out in an allergic reaction over her whole body, nearly went into shock. Did you do this?!" He roared it at me. In the doorway behind him, an enforcer went very still, eyes dropping to the floor, unwilling to witness what the Don did in this room. Dominic's shirt hung open, covered in dense clusters of kiss marks. Behind him, Gemma was mottled with red, swollen hives. "Dominic, I feel awful." "Am I going to be scarred for life?" "I love wearing my dresses more than anything. Adriana did this on purpose!" "She did it on purpose, I'm sure of it!" She laughed, a half-second too soon, her fingers flying to the pendant at her throat. "She's jealous that you love me!" Shrieking in fury, Gemma clawed hard at her own face. In an instant, several livid red streaks appeared. "Adriana, how can you be so disgusting?" Dominic bit out each word, then took out a single unlit cigarette and rolled it slowly between two fingers. He lifted his phone and made a call. "Bring me seafood. As much as you can get." The instant I heard the word seafood. My body flinched on instinct. He set the cigarette flat on the table. The next second, my mouth was pried open and stuffed with heap after heap of fishy-smelling seafood. My throat kept swallowing, until I couldn't swallow anymore. Red hives broke out all over me. My throat began to close, my face swelling more and more. "Adriana, an eye for an eye." "Whatever you did to Gemma, you deserve to suffer the same." Dominic's words drifted farther and farther from my ears. My consciousness started to peel away from my body, bit by bit. But someone was dragging that body and shoving it into the car.

“Dominic, I want the finest surgeon in the city, the one who works on the wives of senators.” “You know how I am about my face. I can't let it be ruined!” Gemma's coaxing voice drifted over the leather seats. The welts on her skin had already faded to almost nothing. This was never an allergic reaction at all. Lying in the back of the car, I felt the pain in my body slowly ebbing away. My body grew lighter and lighter. The bought physician's warning surfaced in my ears again. “Miss Rizzo, if you lose another pregnancy, you'll die.” Die? That would be good. I closed my eyes, and the blurred image of Dominic surfaced before me, back from the days before his mind was turned against me. He spoke, furious and helpless all at once. “Adriana, you really don't take care of yourself at all!” “You can't even tell when you're having an allergic reaction!” “Once you leave me, who else is going to carry allergy medicine around for you.” The car lurched over a seam in the road, and a large box of allergy medicine tumbled loose from beneath the seat. It landed right in Dominic's lap where he sat behind the wheel. On the box, a few words were scrawled in bright red marker. 【Adriana's only. Three pills each time.】 【The medicine's bitter. Remember to buy her the sweet milk tea to take it with.】 Dominic looked down at the few bright red words. For an instant his eyes went blank. He picked up the medicine box without thinking. “Didn't I throw this out? How is there still……” But he didn't finish. Gemma cut him off with a shriek, one hand flying to the pendant at her throat, her laugh coming a half-second too soon. “Dominic, I feel awful!” “Get me to the hospital, quick!” Panic in her eyes, Gemma snatched up the large box of allergy medicine and hurled it out the window into the dark. Dominic went still, and then the thing in his eyes was buried under hatred once more. Ten minutes later, the car stopped at a private clinic the Family kept on retainer. Gemma pulled Dominic away, quick and anxious. The car door was shut. And then the locks dropped, all of them at once. I lay collapsed across the seat, feeling the temperature climb higher and higher. The allergic reaction on my body grew worse and worse. The airless car couldn't match the scorching heat of the greenhouse where the Family settled its debts. But the space was smaller. The air was thinner. Time slipped by, and the breath stopped at the tip of my nose. My pupils dilated and blurred, bit by bit. I was completely free. My consciousness was no longer trapped in my body. I drifted out of the car. The first thing I saw was Dominic, standing at Gemma's side while the doctor examined her. His face held no doting, no love. Only a trace of irritation. “Don Falcone, the conditioning you had me swear to, that story of the mind turning within three years. It's already been a week.” “Miss Rizzo has come to me several times. I can't keep the lie in my mouth any longer……” The familiar voice came through the phone pressed to Dominic's ear. I went very still, my eyes full of disbelief. Then I heard the thick hatred he forced out of his throat. “Adriana broke faith with me first. I'm only making her pay a little.” “Let her feel the pain I once felt too.” “In another three days, I'll let her know the truth……” But before he could finish. A woman in a white coat came hurrying across the floor to him. “Don Falcone, I haven't been able to reach Miss Rizzo. I need to know how the child she carries is doing.” “Child?” Dominic frowned. The doctor spoke urgently, her voice dropping the way people's voices drop inside these walls. “Miss Rizzo didn't tell you?” “Her body can't survive another miscarriage.” “If she loses this pregnancy, she'll die.” She had more to say. She never got the chance. Out beyond the doors, near the black Cayenne idling under the lot lights, someone suddenly shouted. “It's an oven in this car!” “Get her out, hurry!” The glass shattered inward. My ruined body was lifted out. “She's not……she's not breathing!” The panicked voices carried across the still night air to Dominic, every word of them landing. The thick hatred gathered in his eyes was blown apart, bit by bit, like storm clouds scattering before a wind he couldn't name. “What do you mean Adriana is gone?” “I haven't finished punishing her. How can she be dead?” The moment he heard I was gone, Dominic came apart at the seams. His mind went blank and empty. “Adriana!” “What right do you have to die?”