The Don's Secret Heir

Chapter 8: Take What Belongs to You

Valentina POV

The nurse at the village clinic let me stay for exactly two days after Matteo was born. On the third morning, Rosalba handed me my small canvas bag, patted my shoulder with a heavy, sympathetic sigh, and told me I needed to make room for the next woman.

When I walked back through the front door of the Esposito house, the baby was wrapped in the small, coarse blanket Marta had given me. My body was a hollow ache. Every step felt like my insides were shifting, and the stitches between my thighs burned with a dull, constant fire.

Marta didn't look up from the kitchen table where she was shelling peas.

"You're late," she said, her voice dropping like a stone into the quiet room. "The laundry from Tuesday is still sitting in the basket. Franco's work shirts need to be scrubbed by hand today."

"I just walked two kilometers from the clinic, Marta," I said, leaning heavily against the doorframe, my arms trembling as I held Matteo against my chest. "My body is still bleeding."

She set a pea pod down and finally looked at me, her eyes cold and thin. "We gave you a roof, Valentina. We paid for the roof over your head while you grew that child. If you want to eat our bread, you work. The baby can sleep in the basket while you wash."

There was no grace period. That very afternoon, I was at the concrete wash basin in the backyard. The winter wind bit into my face, and the icy water turned my chapped fingers a raw, angry red. I had to stop every ten minutes just to lean against the stone wall, closing my eyes and waiting for the sharp, stinging cramps in my uterus to pass. Inside the kitchen, Matteo began to cry. I dropped the heavy wet denim of Franco's trousers back into the tub and moved toward the door, but Marta blocked the threshold.

"Finish the rinsing first," she said flatly. "A little crying won't kill him. It builds the lungs."

"He's hungry," I rasped, trying to push past her.

She didn't budge. She pulled a small black notebook from her apron pocket and tapped it with her fingernail. "Two days of rest at the clinic. Three meals a day for you. The soap you're using right now. I’m writing it all down, Valentina. It all adds up."

"I am doing everything you ask," I whispered, my voice shaking with a dangerous mix of exhaustion and fury.

"Then do it faster," she said, and shut the door in my face.

The weeks that followed were a blur of broken sleep and endless, grueling labor. By the time Matteo was three weeks old, my body had been brutally trained to wake up at exactly three o'clock in the morning. It wasn't an alarm that woke me; it was the sheer terror of knowing that Marta would be up at six, and the relentless cycle of the house would begin whether I was ready or not.

Tonight, however, was different.

Tonight was the last time I would ever breathe the stagnant, damp air of this room.

I sat up slowly on the edge of the cot, the springs giving off only a tiny, muffled creak. The room was freezing, the midnight air cutting right through my thin nightgown. I looked down into the small wooden fruit crate we used as a crib beside my bed. Matteo was sound asleep, his tiny, perfect fists curled tight against his chubby cheeks. He was three weeks old today. I had been waiting for this exact milestone since the fluid and blood had been wiped from his skin—waiting for my torn muscles to knit back together just enough so that I could run without collapsing.

I dressed entirely in the dark, my movements slow and deliberate. I pulled on a heavy black sweater, dark canvas pants, and a pair of soft-soled shoes that wouldn't make a single sound against the cold tile floors of the hallway.

Then, I reached into the crate and lifted Matteo.

He stirred slightly, his tiny mouth opening in a silent yawn, his eyelids fluttering. My heart stopped. I pressed him firmly against my chest, tucking his small head under my chin, and held perfectly still, barely breathing until I felt his little ribcage rise and fall in a steady, deep rhythm again. The long cloth sling was already tied securely around my shoulders. With agonizing slowness, I slid him down into the fabric, settling his warm weight directly over my heart.

Stay quiet, little one, I thought, staring at the shadows on the wall. Just a little longer.

The house was dead silent, locked in the deep sleep of the early hours. Over the last five months, I had memorized every rhythm, every breath, and every creak of this building. Franco was a heavy sleeper; his loud, rhythmic snoring usually echoed from the master bedroom until five in the morning. Marta had a weak bladder; she almost always woke up once to use the bathroom, usually around two o'clock. By three, she was always back in a heavy, snoring sleep.

I placed my palm against my bedroom door, turned the knob millimeter by millimeter, and pulled it open. No sound.

The hallway was a tunnel of pitch-black darkness. I stepped out into it with bare feet, carrying my shoes in one hand and my small canvas bag in the other. I avoided the center of the floor tiles, hugging the baseboards tightly. I knew exactly which tiles creaked and which ones were solid. I had scrubbed every single inch of them on my hands and knees.

When I reached the kitchen, the pale moonlight filtered through the clean windows, casting a silver glow over the counter. The metal cash box was kept in the deep drawer right next to the stove. I had seen Marta open it twice to count the grocery money, and I knew exactly where the key was hidden—buried right underneath the heavy ceramic salt shaker on the shelf. Franco thought he was incredibly clever hiding it there, but he was a fool.

I set my bag down silently on the floor. My hands were perfectly steady as I lifted the salt shaker, took the small brass key, and slid it into the drawer's lock.

The lock turned with a soft, metallic click. I pulled the drawer open.

Inside the metal box sat the cash. I lifted the lid. It was filled with crisp, neatly folded bills. One hundred euros each. I counted them swiftly in the moonlight, my fingers moving like lightning.

Forty bills, four thousand euros total.

A cold, hard sense of justification washed over me. I wasn't stealing. I had earned every single cent of this money with the skin of my palms and the ache in my bones. I had scrubbed their floors until my knees bled. I had folded Franco's heavy shirts, cooked their elaborate meals while heavily pregnant, standing on my feet for twelve hours a day while my spine screamed in agony. I had cleaned their toilets, their windows, and their stone porch steps in the pouring rain.

They had fed me scraps. They had given me a room that felt like a coffin. But they had treated me worse than an animal. A servant gets a wage. A servant gets a half-day off to breathe. I had received nothing but a black notebook tracking my supposed debts for laundry soap and cooking oil.

"It all adds up," Marta's voice echoed in my memory, her smug face flashing before my eyes.

Yes, I thought, sliding the thick stack of bills deep into the inner pocket of my dark sweater. It certainly does.

I closed the metal box, turned the key back to the left, and slid the key right back under the ceramic salt shaker. I closed the wooden drawer until it met the frame. I looked down at the clean countertop for a second. A part of me wanted to find a scrap of paper and a pen. I wanted to leave a note—something cruel, something sharp and clever that would make Marta's face turn bright red with rage when she found it at dawn.

No. It was too risky. It was a waste of precious time. I didn't need a final word. I just wanted to be gone.

I turned toward the back door, my fingers wrapping around the handle of my canvas bag.

Creak.

A floorboard groaned in the dark hallway directly behind me.

My entire body went rigid. My breath caught in my throat, and my heart hammered so violently against my ribs I was terrified it would wake the baby.

Marta's voice came drifting out of the darkness of the hallway. It was soft, thick with sleep, but completely awake.

"Valentina?"

I didn't turn around. I couldn't. If I turned, she would see the dark sweater, the canvas bag gripped in my hand, and the distinct, bulky shape of the cloth sling holding Matteo against my chest. She would see the total truth of what I was doing.

"Just getting a glass of water," I said, forcing my voice to sound casual, heavy with simulated drowsiness.

"The baby?" she asked, her footsteps shuffling a few inches closer.

"Asleep," I replied quickly, keeping my back to her, staring hard at the moonlight on the kitchen wall. "He woke up crying, but he's back down."

There was a long, terrible pause. The silence stretched between us until the air felt thin. I could hear the slow, heavy ticking of the clock on the wall.

"Get back to bed," Marta finally muttered, her voice retreating slightly. "You have the front floors to do in the morning. Don't waste the oil keeping the light on."

I heard the quiet drag of her slippers as she turned around, walked back down the hallway, and clicked her bedroom door shut.

I stood frozen in the dark kitchen, counting to sixty very slowly in my head. When the minute passed and the house remained silent, I reached down, picked up my bag, and turned the lock on the back door. I slipped out into the cool night air and clicked the door shut behind me without making a sound.

The night air was biting and sharp, the Sicilian sky a deep, starless black.

Matteo remained completely still against my chest, comforted by the steady rhythm of my walking. I moved fast, my soft shoes crunching softly against the gravel as I tore down the deserted road away from the house. At the very edge of the village, where the dirt road met the main highway, I finally stopped.

I turned around and looked back at the small, ugly concrete house in the distance.

A single light had just flickered on. The yellow glow of the kitchen window cut through the dark.

She knows, I thought, a cold, sharp thrill running through my veins. She went to check the cash box.

A slow smile crept onto my face, but it wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of a woman who had just survived purgatory and stolen her life back.

"Take what belongs to you, Marta," I whispered into the freezing wind.

Then, I turned my back on Castelmare, pulled the blanket tighter over my son's head, and walked directly toward the bus station.