My Husband’s Mistress Was My Protégé,I Took Back Everything He Stole

I begged Dominic Mancini a hundred times, and he finally agreed to come with me and my mother on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady in the mountains.

But my mother left this world with that wish unfulfilled. He never showed.

His personal courier, though, posted photos of the two of them on horseback at a resort not far from the monastery.

"Anywhere I want to go, no matter how far, he'll be right there with me."

Their location pin was less than two miles from mine. I called him to demand an explanation, and he couldn't have cared less.

"This is who I am. If you can't deal with it, let's dissolve the union."

That was the 101st time he'd thrown that word at me.

This time, I didn't beg him to stay. And for the first time, he was the one with regrets.

I handled my mother's funeral alone. The old priest from the parish came. Two soldiers Dominic had assigned as my security detail stood at a respectful distance, hands folded, saying nothing. They were there for the Don's wife, not for me.

In just a few hours, Dominic's little courier Valentina Ferro had posted video after video. The two of them horseback riding together, doing a couples' photoshoot, lighting candles at a mountain chapel. Dominic, who never allowed himself to be photographed at public events, shared Valentina's post for the first time.

As good as a public announcement.

The comments were full of congratulations from associates and their wives. What a perfect match. Made for each other.

I tried to scroll past, but every image cut deeper than the last.

They were the perfect match. So what did that make me, the actual wife? The woman who'd signed the blood-union, whose family's money had built the Mancini empire from nothing?

Nothing.

Dominic was willing to fly halfway across the country for Valentina Ferro, but he wouldn't walk two miles for me. A hundred times I'd begged, and none of it weighed as much as a single word from her.

I sent Dominic one word: "Okay."

A few hours later, he called. His voice was cold, distant.

"Every single time with this. Don't you ever get tired of it?"

I almost couldn't speak. He was the one who brought up dissolution every time we fought. He knew I loved him. He knew I couldn't bear to leave. So every time he did something wrong and felt guilty about it, he'd throw it in my face, ice-cold: "If you can't deal with it, let's dissolve the union."

For six years, I'd backed down a hundred times.

This was the hundred and first. I was done backing down.

I chose to give him what he'd always asked for.

I took a deep breath. "My mother is dead. We don't have to keep up the act anymore for her sake."

Silence. When he spoke again, his voice had softened.

"I didn't know. Wait for me. I'm coming to you right now."

I waited an hour. While I was waiting, the sky split open and rain came down in sheets. I ran for cover, and the world lurched sideways around me. I couldn't breathe. My legs buckled and I tumbled down a slope, my head cracking against a rock, and then there was nothing.

When I woke, I was in a hospital bed with thick bandages wrapped around my head. No one beside me.

The nurse said my altitude sickness was severe, that I had a mild concussion, and that I'd need to stay under observation for two days.

Two days. Dominic never came. All I saw were Valentina's posts, updating one after another.

"Got caught in a little rain, came down with a cold. Lucky I have him taking such good care of me."

"He made me chicken soup from scratch today. I could cry."

"These two days I've been sick, he hasn't left my side for a second. Meeting him is the greatest blessing of my life."

I thought of how, not long ago, I'd had a fever and asked Dominic to make me a bowl of broth.

The look of pure irritation on his face.

"Serafina, my hands run a empire. They're not for cooking and doing your laundry. If that's not good enough for you, then dissolve this marriage and find someone else!"

It wasn't that he couldn't do those things. He just wouldn't do them for me.

A strange numbness washed over me.

Valentina Ferro was a girl from the disgraced Ferro family, a nobody whose education I'd personally sponsored. After graduation, she came to work as an errand girl in our operation. Back then, Dominic couldn't stand her. He complained to me constantly about how slow and clueless she was.

But somewhere along the way, her name started coming up more and more. While he had less and less to say to me. Until we were strangers sharing the same compound.

Meeting Dominic Mancini was the greatest blessing of Valentina's life.

Meeting Dominic Mancini was the greatest regret of mine.

I wasn't going to carry that regret any further. I messaged him: when we get back, we sit before the Commission. I want the dissolution papers signed.

This time, his reply came fast.

"Something urgent came up. Can't get away."

"Stop making a scene. Wait for me at the airport tomorrow, I'll fly back with you."

I didn't wait around for Dominic Mancini like a fool. Not this time.

I bought my own ticket and boarded the plane.

Somewhere over the clouds, I drifted off into a long, long dream.

In the dream, Dominic and I were still in love, and Valentina Ferro didn't exist yet. He wanted to build an operation of his own. I gave him every cent from the Caruso accounts, every route my father had left me. He needed someone holding things together at the estate. I stepped back from the family business to take care of him.

Step by step, we moved from a rented apartment above a social club to a fortified estate on the hill, traded a beat-up sedan for a Rolls-Royce with bulletproof glass. He made it. And through all of it, he loved me the same as the first day. Families across the territory used to call us the perfect union.

Everything changed the day I lost our baby.

I couldn't let the memories go any further. I fought my way out of the dream.

The plane landed, and I took a cab back to the compound alone.

Dominic didn't come back until three days later, in the middle of the night.

"I told you to wait so we could fly back together. Why didn't you keep your word?"

Jolted awake, my head throbbing, I squinted at him through the haze. "You're saying I should've sat in the airport for three days and three nights waiting for you?"

Dominic pressed his lips together. "Forget it. I'm not going to argue with you. Get up and make me some noodles."

I didn't answer. I pulled the blanket around me, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Dominic dropped his suitcase with a thud. "Marrying a woman like you was the worst luck of my life."

The door slammed behind him. Somewhere down the hall, a soldier on night detail shifted but said nothing. Nobody ever said anything.

I hadn't set an alarm, so I slept until my body was ready to wake up.

Before, I would have been up at six every morning, pressing Dominic's shirts and cooking his breakfast.

Not that it ever satisfied him. He complained that the shirts I pressed were never as crisp as the ones Valentina did for him at the social club.

If I cooked something light and clean, he said it had no flavor.

If I cooked something richer, he said it was greasy and unhealthy.

Hours of effort in the kitchen never moved him the way a single bowl of instant noodles from Valentina did.

If that was how it was, there was no point in falling over myself to serve him.

But today, Dominic had actually made breakfast himself.

He sat eating his congee in the kitchen without looking up. The morning light came through the barred windows of the estate and fell across his hands.

"I'm sad about your mother too. But you don't need to pick fights with me on a day like this."

"What day?" I blinked.

He reached behind him and produced a gift box.

"Serafina, I'm so disappointed in you. You actually forgot our sixth anniversary."

He stopped mid-sentence.

"What happened to your head?"

"While you were making chicken soup for Valentina, I was finishing my mother's funeral arrangements. The altitude hit me. I fell down a slope, cracked my head on a rock, and got caught in the rain."

I spread my hands. "No big deal, though. Her cold was way more serious."

Dominic stared at me, something unreadable shifting behind those dark eyes.

After a long silence he said, "Eat first. I made the seafood chowder you like. Then you can open the gift and see if you like it."

"No need. Today is July twentieth. Our anniversary was June twentieth. That was a month ago. And I'm allergic to shellfish."

A late gift meant nothing to me.

Late concern, late love. I didn't want those either.

The one who loved seafood chowder was Valentina.

The one who loved getting gifts was Valentina.

All I had ever wanted, from start to finish, was for Dominic to be there.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Things have been out of control with the operation. The trip to the mountains was strictly business. Don't overthink it. Valentina's young. A woman your age doesn't need to compete with a girl like that. Besides, there's nothing between us"

The second Valentina's name came up, Dominic always had plenty to say.

I didn't bother pointing out that a Don and his personal courier don't book one hotel room on a business trip.

So I just said, "You're right."

My tone made him bristle.

He slammed his chopsticks down.

"Serafina, can you stop being unreasonable for once? I keep a roof over your head, food on the table. What more do you want?"

I didn't respond. I was reading the dissolution agreement my consigliere had sent over.

Dominic kept lecturing. "I'm talking to you. What are you doing?"

"All you ever do is read those trashy novels online. That's exactly how your brain got this way. Why can't you learn a thing or two from Valentina? Look at how poised and classy she is."

Before, hearing those words would have crushed me. I would have spiraled into shame and self-doubt. Walking on eggshells. Second-guessing everything. And in the end, apologizing to Dominic in a small, beaten-down voice.

Now, all I felt was that he was exhausting.

"I have somewhere to be." I stood up.

"Serafina, I'm not finished talking!"

He reached for my arm. I flinched away from his touch.

In all these years, when had Dominic ever listened to me until I was done? Every time I said more than a few sentences, he'd get annoyed, slam the door, and leave me alone in the house crying in silence.

Was he really the only one in this blood-union allowed to walk out when he wanted and come back when he felt like it?

I didn't spare him another glance. I got in the car and drove straight to the consigliere's office.

After finalizing the details of the asset division with Enzo, I saw the message Dominic had sent.

"Something urgent. Come to the club."

I thought it over. If something happened to Dominic, fine. But if something happened to the operation, my share of the settlement would shrink.

I'd barely reached the front entrance of the social club when I heard a burst of laughter.

A cluster of girls working the front were giggling as they called out to Valentina.

"You were so right, Valentina. All you have to do is send a message from Don Mancini's phone and she comes running like a little lapdog."

A moment later, Valentina stepped out from the back hallway.

"Serafina! Here to see Don Mancini? He's busy. No visitors. Especially not outsiders."

She leaned hard on the word outsiders.

In everyone's eyes, Valentina was the woman Dominic had publicly claimed.

I was just the worn-out wife. The outsider.

I pointed at the group that had just been laughing at me. "All of you. Pack your things and get out."

My father's dowry had built this empire. I held a blood-right stake in every front business the Mancini name touched. Cutting loose a handful of low-rank associates was a single sentence.

Valentina's face hardened instantly.

"Who gave you the right to throw your weight around here? Decisions about who stays and who goes are between me and Don Mancini."

I didn't bother arguing. I was about to call Dominic when I saw him walking over from the back office, two soldiers trailing at a respectful distance.

"What are you doing here?"

I expected him to be angry. Every other time I'd come to see him, he acted like I was embarrassing him, barely hiding his irritation.

But this time, there was something like smugness in his voice.

Valentina rushed in first, voice already trembling with tears.

"I don't know what got into her. She barged in screaming that we were seducing you, threatening to throw all of us out."

"Serafina." Dominic's face went cold.

"I can live with you being stupid. I can live with you being plain. But this paranoid, suspicious act. It disgusts me."

He sighed. "I really regret being with you."

The girls at the front covered their mouths, stifling their laughter. The two soldiers behind Dominic kept their eyes fixed on the floor.

Valentina watched me with the look of someone who'd already won.

But the strange thing was, I felt nothing.

Or maybe it wasn't strange at all. I'd known exactly what Dominic would say.

Back when the affair with Valentina first started, men in the neighborhood had tried to talk sense into him. You don't abandon the wife whose family bankrolled everything you have.

He'd said: "You have no idea how suffocating she is. Any man would cheat on a woman like that. She deserved to be abandoned. Even her own family threw her away."

"She tries to control everything except her own body. A woman who lets herself go like that is a failure."

I'd gained weight because I was attending his sit-downs and Family dinners on his behalf, eating what was placed in front of me so no one would question the strength of the Mancini table.

After I found out what he'd been saying, I lived in a fog of shame and self-doubt.

The sight of food made me gag.

That's how the stomach problems started.

Eventually I stopped going to dinners. Stopped going out at all.

The weight came off, but the damage to my stomach never healed.

My health stayed fragile. One illness after another, year after year.

"Nothing to say? Guilty conscience? No wonder you couldn't hold on to Gioia. A woman like you doesn't deserve to be a wife or a mother."

At the mention of our lost child, the pain hit like a blade between my ribs.

Every fight, Dominic found the deepest wound and twisted the knife.

He'd goad me until I snapped, then stand there with that I knew it look, watching me fall apart like it proved his point.

But this time, I was calm.

"Then let's not force it anymore. The dissolution papers are ready. Let's end this."

I handed the agreement to Dominic, then casually plucked a long, brownish-gold curl from his jacket lapel.

His eyes flickered. His index finger twitched toward the whiskey glass on the counter beside him, but there was no glass there. Not here. Not in front of everyone.

"It's not what you think" He recovered fast, even managed a sigh. "Stop humiliating yourself. I really don't have the patience to forgive you again and again."

I kept my gaze fixed on him and watched the composure crack, watched him start to panic.

Then, keeping my voice steady, I said the words I'd been carrying for longer than I could bear.

"You don't get to say Gioia's name. I already know what you were doing the day I lost her."

The room went quiet. Not the polite quiet of people minding their business. The dead quiet of men who understood that something had just shifted and would not shift back.

The day of the miscarriage was the turning point of this blood-union.

It was also where Dominic and Valentina's story began.

I'd been running from that truth for a long time. Now I had to face it and cut clean.

"Serafina!" Dominic's composure shattered completely.

I held the pain down. My thumb pressed hard into the inside of my left wrist, right over the pulse.

"Do you want me to say it right here? In front of all these people?"