#44 - Two Sides

#44 - Two Sides
Caterina Bellini

My arm was marked.

Adrian had reached the bottom of his mental collapse, and that buried for good any kind of consideration I might still have had for him.

I was full of adrenaline, but once it faded, I was left only with the hollow feeling of isolation.

I looked at my phone, the screen completely cracked on the carpet. I think I had lost this battle, at least for now. Adrian had managed to cut me off from the world, especially from Vincenzo, his main rival now. A war he was fighting alone.

But he was wrong if he thought that would be enough to destroy my motivation.

I will find another way. I needed a backup plan to contact Vincenzo as soon as possible.
I had to warn him that I wasn’t there because I had decided to give Adrian a second chance or anything like that, but because it was necessary.
Deep down, I hoped he already knew that.

Bruno had been checking on me every now and then, and during one of those visits, the key was left behind. I took the chance to get out and saw that the hallway was empty and quiet.

Adrian must have been up to something, but at that moment, his absence meant freedom for me to move around.

“Freedom” was a funny word to use, though. It felt more like a walk through my luxurious prison.

As I went down the stairs, I moved slowly, searching for any sign of life wherever I went.
And that was when I found a venomous snake.

Nathalia was coming from the hall, wearing one of the dresses I had discarded. That was funny.

“It actually looks good on you,” I said with disdain and a smug smile. “Does Adrian like replicas?”

She rolled her eyes. It was insane how her whole attitude changed when we were alone. The sweet and innocent one gave way to the bold and mocking one.
Two in one.

Convenient.

The tension between us was always visible, so thick you could cut it with a knife. After all, we hated each other, and the contempt was mutual. Only that I had reasons, while hers came purely from spite.

“Caterina,” she said, her tone full of fake surprise, “I thought you were resting after your argument with the Don.”

“It’s hard to rest when the air in this house is so full of bad energy,” I replied.

I kept walking down the stairs, forcing her to meet me at eye level. Seeing how easily she was affected by my presence these days, I decided to take advantage of it a little.

“You know, I actually admire that about you,” I whispered. “That blind loyalty that lets your man keep his wife around just for show.”

“I’m loyal to Adrian and to the Famiglia. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Of course you are, but isn’t it exhausting?” I murmured, stepping closer. “Keeping two personalities, always pretending. Does Adrian even know the real Nathalia? I mean, unless you’re hiding something even deeper.”

There were two sides of her, and one would eventually win. The woman who had killed me wasn’t the sweet servant, she was the one obsessed with control, the one who wanted to be the Donna of a family.
She had her secrets, her motives, but she hid them well, locked away tightly. That had to mean something beyond what I could see.

Her smile vanished completely. For a brief instant, I saw the fear of being exposed, of being truly seen for who she was.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you hit your head, Donna Caterina. You don’t sound very sane right now.”

“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” I murmured, stepping back just to see her reaction. “Soon you’ll get tired of this. Adrian can be exhausting. I get why you want this, you have no perspective. But you can keep him, I don’t care. Just try to mess with me or anyone I love again. Try to make one wrong move, and I’ll dig into your life from top to bottom. I know how far you’d go, so you better know I’m ready to drown you first this time.”

Her eyes widened, as if I had just revealed something she kept buried deep inside.

I left her standing there. Nathalia might not be who she pretended to be. And now, she knew that I knew more than she could ever imagine.

\---

Vincenzo Leone

I was alone in my room, in the dark, just as I had been since the day Caterina left this mansion.

My chest ached, anger mixing with disappointment. I could barely breathe. It felt like all that emotion was piling up inside me, making it impossible to live.
Adrian’s words echoed in my mind.

“We’re trying to have a baby.”

His mocking voice over the phone hit me like a bullet. The provocation was filthy, inhuman, and he knew exactly where to strike. He wasn’t humiliating me as a Don, he was trying to destroy me as a man. Or at least, trying to.

He wanted to prove that he had her, that he owned her. And if he was using her the way he implied…

I punched the wall, the sharp pain offering only a weak relief for the hell that burned inside my soul.
It felt like an open wound.

“Don?” The door opened slowly, and I heard my right-hand man’s voice. Outside, two soldiers stood guard—I recognized them by their voices.

“Get out, all of you,” I ordered, without moving to look at them.

“Don Leone, you need to eat something. We’ll get Donna Bellini back soon.”

“She knows how to take care of herself, Boss,” one of them added. “If something truly bad had happened to her, we’d know. The information network would’ve already brought the news. His silence is a tactic, you know that.”

They were trying to comfort me with Mafia logic. And technically, they were right. If Adrian had truly harmed Caterina, chaos would’ve already begun, and the news would have spread fast. His silence was, in fact, his most dangerous weapon.

He wanted to isolate her from me to drive me insane, and it was working. I couldn’t act, not without risking the lives of all my men by invading another Don’s mansion to take his wife by force.
I was powerless.

I took a deep breath, clinging to that logic as the only thing keeping me together. She was strong, that much I knew.
Just as I was trying to calm my thoughts, the door opened again.

It was Luca, once more. He looked tired but was holding something in his hand.
He was carrying Victoria’s phone, saying someone wanted to speak to me.

“It’s Victoria,” he said. “She called the base number using her own phone. She wants to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

I jumped to my feet. The darkness of my room suddenly felt less important.