THE RAIN ON CASTELLANO STREET Chapter 5

Dom arrived late.

He walked in still wearing his suit jacket, phone in one hand, scanning the room the way he always did — cataloguing exits, reading faces, checking for threats. It was second nature. He probably didn't even know he was doing it anymore.

His eyes found Vanessa first. Then me.

Something shifted in his expression — too fast for anyone else to catch, but I saw it. A flicker of guilt, there and gone, replaced instantly by the smooth mask he wore like a second skin.

He crossed the room and kissed Vanessa's cheek. "You look beautiful," he murmured, low enough that only she could hear.

Vanessa touched his hand. "I missed you."

I looked down at my plate.

Dinner was long and loud and full of the kind of conversation that sounded normal on the surface but was really something else entirely. Vincent asking about "the situation downtown." Lucia steering topics away from anything that might upset the peace. Adriana trying desperately to talk about something — anything — that wasn't business or babies or the careful, choreographed performance of a family that had perfected the art of looking perfect.

I ate in silence. No one talked to me. No one asked how I was doing, what I was thinking, whether I was okay. I might as well have been a piece of furniture.

At one point, Vanessa leaned across the table and touched my hand.

"Mara, are you all right? You've barely touched your food."

Her voice was sweet. Concerned. The voice of someone who genuinely cared.

I looked at her hand on mine — her fingers slim and pale, nails painted a soft pink — and felt a surge of something so hot and so ugly that it frightened me.

"I'm fine," I said. And pulled my hand away.

After dinner, the men retreated to Vincent's study for coffee and cigars and whatever it was they actually discussed behind closed doors. The women stayed in the living room. Lucia sat in her usual armchair, Vanessa on the sofa beside her, both of them radiating a warmth that filled the room like sunlight.

I stood near the window, holding a glass of wine I wasn't drinking, and watched them.

Vanessa was telling Lucia something — her face animated, her hands moving expressively. Lucia was listening with genuine interest, nodding, asking questions. At one point she reached over and patted Vanessa's knee with real affection.

"You're going to be a wonderful mother," Lucia said. "I can already tell."

Vanessa's eyes glistened. "Thank you, Lucia. That means so much to me."

I set down my glass.

"Excuse me," I said. Neither of them looked up.

I walked into the hallway, then into the study, without knocking.

Dom was mid-sentence when I walked in — something about a shipment, a timeline, numbers that meant nothing to me. He stopped talking the moment he saw my face.

Vincent, sitting behind his desk, looked up with mild curiosity. Two other men I didn't recognize shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

"Dom," I said. "I need to talk to you. Now."

Dom's jaw tightened. He held up one finger — wait — and kept talking to his father.

I didn't wait.

"Now, Dom. Please."

The word "please" cost me something. I could feel it — the effort of keeping my voice steady, of not letting the fury show, of maintaining the composure that four years in this family had taught me was absolutely essential at all times.

Dom excused himself. Followed me into the hallway. His face was stone.

"What are you doing?" he hissed. "You don't walk into my father's study during a meeting—"

"I need to tell you something."

"It can wait—"

"It can't wait. It's about us. About the baby."

Dom went very still.

"What baby?" he asked. His voice was careful. Controlled. But I could see something move behind his eyes — a flash of something he didn't want me to see.

"Vanessa's baby," I said. "The one you helped create. The one your mother is already knitting sweaters for. That baby."

Dom's shoulders dropped — just slightly. Relief. He thought that was all this was about.

"Mara, we've already talked about this—"

"Have we? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you and Vanessa have been having a very cozy time, and I've been sitting at that dinner table like a ghost."

"You're being dramatic."

"I'm being honest. For once in this marriage, I'm being completely honest with you." I took a breath. "I saw you at the hospital, Dom. I saw the way you looked at her. I saw the notes you were taking on your phone. I saw the way your mother looks at her — the way she has never once looked at me."

Dom's expression flickered. "My mother—"

"Your mother has been waiting for a grandchild for four years. And Vanessa just walked in and gave her exactly what she wanted. So now I'm invisible. I'm the wife who couldn't deliver. The placeholder. The one who gets moved to the corner of the table."

"That's not—"

"Then tell me I'm wrong." My voice cracked. I hated it. I pressed my nails into my palms and forced myself to keep going. "Tell me that your mother hasn't already decided that Vanessa is the real family now. Tell me that you haven't already made the same decision."

Dom looked at me for a long time.

He didn't say anything.

And in that silence, I heard everything I needed to hear.

I turned to walk away. Dom caught my arm — not hard, but firmly, the way he always did when he wanted to stop me from leaving.

"Let go of me," I said.

He didn't.

"Dom. Let. Go."

His grip tightened. Not painfully. But enough. Enough to make a point. Enough to remind me, in the most primal way possible, who had the power in this relationship.

I yanked my arm free so hard that I stumbled backward and knocked into the hall table. A vase wobbled. Dom reached out to steady it — and in that moment, his hand caught the edge of my sleeve instead, and I spun around, and we were suddenly face to face, inches apart, both breathing hard.

"You want to know the truth?" Dom said, low and dangerous. "The truth is that I have obligations. Obligations that existed before you and will exist after you. Marco is dead. His widow is alone. His family — my family — expects me to take care of her. That is not a choice. That is a duty."

"And I'm what? Just a duty too?"

Something ugly flashed across his face. "You're my wife."

"Then act like it."

Dom's hand shot out — fast, reflexive, the kind of movement that came from years of training his body to react before his brain caught up. His palm connected with my stomach. Not a punch. An open-hand strike, meant to push me back, to create distance.

But I was already off-balance from stumbling into the table.

I went down.

Not gracefully. Not like something out of a movie. I went down hard — my hip hitting the marble floor, my elbow cracking against the baseboard, my body folding in on itself in a way that felt sudden and wrong and completely beyond my control.

The pain was immediate. A white-hot bolt through my lower abdomen that took my breath away so completely that I couldn't even scream.

I curled onto my side, both hands pressed against my stomach, and the world went grey at the edges.

Dom was saying something. I couldn't hear him. The blood was roaring in my ears — loud, rushing, drowning everything out.

I could feel something warm and wet between my legs. I looked down.

Red.

"Mara—" Dom's voice, sharp now. Scared. The mask cracking for the first time in years. "Mara, what—"

I looked up at him from the floor. My vision was blurring. The hallway was tilting sideways. Someone was shouting somewhere — Lucia, maybe, or one of the staff.

I reached into my bag with one shaking hand. My fingers closed around the envelope I had been carrying for three days. The divorce papers. Already signed on my end. All they needed was Dom's signature.

I threw it at him.

It landed at his feet, the envelope splitting open, the papers fanning across the marble like white feathers.

"We're done," I said.

My voice sounded far away. Like it was coming from someone else's mouth.

Dom stared at the papers. Then at me. Then at the blood on the floor.

"Mara—"

But I was already sliding sideways, the grey closing in, the pain pulling me under like a current I couldn't fight.

The last thing I heard before the darkness took me was someone screaming my name.