He Betrayed Me For His Secretary, I Married He Most Powerful Rival

The year we loved each other most,Salvatore Moretti raised a hundred-meter tower for me in the heart of Family territory.

When other women tried to get close to him,he would chain them to the top of that tower and let them suffer,just to prove his loyalty to me.

He spoiled me into the most envied woman in the Five Boroughs,until couples from every corner of the world came to stand beneath the tower each day,wishing they would never be parted.

Then one day,without warning,the tower came down.In its place rose a fairytale theme park,built on ground that still answered to the Moretti name.

I rushed forward,half out of my mind,ready to demand an answer.But at the gates of that park,I found Salvatore,dripping with sweat,pinning down the very woman he had once chained to the top of the tower without a second glance.

"Chasing Adriana Bellandi was just about novelty,and that face that matched my ideal type.It's almost funny how she believed I actually loved her."

He looked at Bianca Falcone with something close to obsession.

"Bianca's younger,prettier.So what if I spoil her into a fairytale princess?"

I stood among the ruins of the tower,and everything in my sight turned to ash.

So this love story that had stunned the entire world,this legend of the century the whole city had stood in awe of,had only ever been a powerful man's game and my own foolish dream.

If that was how it was going to be...

With my heart burned to nothing,I dialed a number I had sealed away for years.

"That bet we made ten years ago.I've lost completely.Seven days from now,I'll marry you."

...

By the time I got home,the rain had soaked me through.No soldier had been sent to drive me.No car had waited at the curb.

On the sofa,an old,battered umbrella sat quietly.

Twelve years ago,Salvatore had been across the ocean,settling a matter with an allied family.The moment he heard I was trapped at the foot of a mountain in a downpour,he walked out on a deal worth more than most men launder in a lifetime and flew a helicopter back himself.

Just to hold an umbrella over me.

Yet now,only two hours ago,he had ordered me to walk back to the Moretti estate through the rain,step by step.

All because I had made his precious little girl cry.

I toweled my hair dry,every motion ragged,and with a bitter twist of irony I threw that umbrella I'd treasured all these years into the trash.

I lifted my head,and everything I saw was a gift from Salvatore.

The plush carpet covering the entire floor,the wall hung with photos of the two of us,the countless his-and-hers household things.

Even the nightgown on my body had come from him.

He used to say he loved owning every part of me,that he wanted me to be his from the inside out.

Yet after he had forced his way into my life,he discarded me without a flicker of hesitation.

And gave every ounce of devotion that had once belonged to me alone to someone else.

My face had gone deathly pale.I looked at the food on the table,long gone cold,and in the end I couldn't stop myself from calling Salvatore.

"Today is our tenth anniversary.Are you..."

"I won't be coming home tonight.It took me forever to calm the girl down.I have to take her to buy a villa to make it up to her."

"There's a check on the nightstand,more than this Family moves in a quiet year.That's your tenth-anniversary gift."

The line went dead with a sharp click,and when I tried calling back,I found I'd been blocked.

His impatience needed no explanation now.

I gave a bitter smile,and without thinking,my thumb found the thin gold band on my left hand and twisted it once.Then I pressed my palm flat against my thigh.

The Salvatore of the past had kept his world so clean there hadn't been a single woman among the men who served him.

To prove his loyalty to me,every woman who tried to get near him had been chained to the top of the Adriana Tower by his ruthless hand.

Even Bianca had once been just one of those women.

Back then,Bianca had sprawled across his desk nearly stripped bare,and all he'd said was,cold as the room had gone the moment he spoke,

"Take her to the top of the tower."

But somewhere along the way,he began mentioning Bianca more and more,his expression growing softer each time.

A dread settled in me,and again and again I lost myself,screaming and raging at him.

At first,to soothe me,he was even willing to kneel and crawl toward me in front of all his men for three days and three nights.

But later,he could bring Bianca into our home without his face changing at all.

There was a thread of irritation in Salvatore's voice when he spoke,the way a made man's voice tightens just before he stops bothering to lie.

"Adriana Bellandi,you still don't get it?When I came for you back then,it was only because you happened to fit my ideal type."

"Bianca is younger now,and she fits even better.Why shouldn't I want her?"

I cried myself into the Family physician's quarters,and still my heart refused to believe it.This love the whole city had watched,the legend that kept his enemies in awe,this could not be a lie.

So I swallowed the bitterness and waited,day and night,for him to turn back to me.

I told myself that no matter how he played around with others,the only one he truly loved was me.

After all,there was only one tower in Moretti territory,only one high-rise raised stone by stone that bore my name.

But two months ago,for Bianca Falcone,Salvatore tore my tower down.

I saw it with my own eyes,the way he looked at her,drunk on her,the two of them giddy together in their fairytale kingdom built on the rubble of mine.

That hungry delight on his face was exactly the same as when he'd chased me.

In that moment,it finally hit me.

Salvatore had never loved me.

Just as he said,to him I was a thrill,a novelty,a conquest.

Everything but love.

He had been clear-eyed the entire time.I was the only one who believed all those sweet words that cost him nothing.

And I had buried my own future,given up everything,holding nothing back to stand silent beside him.

I opened my phone and saw the headline running through every whisper in the Five Boroughs

#The Love of the Century Shatters!The Moretti Don Has a Change of Heart,and the Tower That Bore Her Name Comes Crashing Down!

Below it,countless people had left their words,every one of them eager

I knew this day would come.Where would real love ever come from in families like theirs?Don Moretti chased Adriana Bellandi loud enough for the whole city to hear,and now he's casting her aside the second he feels like it!

Right?I'm dying.Adriana Bellandi used to be the most envied woman in the boroughs,and now that she sees the Don doting on someone else,her face must be twisted with rage.

If I were her,I wouldn't have the nerve to keep living.Anyone want to guess how long before he hands her the papers between bloodlines?

My tears spilled over before I could stop them.

With trembling hands,I made a single call

"The bet we made ten years ago,does it still stand?I lost.Seven days from now,come and marry me"

On the other end,across the ocean and far beyond the Family's reach,Lorenzo Vitale went still.

Then,with a kind of joy he could barely hold down,he answered.

"Yes,Adriana.Our bet stands forever.As long as you turn back,I'll always be here."

"Seven days from now,wait for me to come for you."

The call ended quickly.I couldn't help thinking back to the girl I'd been,full of fire,betting Lorenzo that Salvatore meant it.

That no matter how much time passed,no matter how the territories burned around us,he would stay true to me,and only me.

And yet here I was now,defeated completely,not a shred of me left standing.

I sat there hollow through the whole night,and the next morning,Salvatore finally came home.

He looked at me,this wretched shell of a woman who seemed to have lost her very soul,and something flickered in his eyes.Reluctance,maybe.

But mostly,it was annoyance.

"Adriana Bellandi,so I didn't spend our tenth anniversary with you.Didn't I leave you laundered cash enough to drown in?Why do you always have to put on this pitiful little act?"

Pity?

For a moment,my mind went blank.

To the Salvatore I used to know,one tear from me was enough to make him want to pluck the stars and the moon from the sky and lay them at my feet.

Once,just to coax a smile out of me,he'd set aside the pride that made grown soldiers lower their eyes,and lit up the whole skyline over Family territory with a single line written above the city

"I was wrong.Don't hold it against me,my darling Adriana."

But that was only the past.

Later,when I cried and pleaded in front of him,he shoved me away,impatient,the gold signet ring turning once around his finger before his hand went flat and still.

"Adriana Bellandi,aren't you exhausting?All you ever do is cry!I've given you the life of a Don's wife,respect and rank most women in this life would kill for.So I strayed,big deal.What made man in our circle doesn't?"

"I thought you were gentle,reasonable.I never imagined you'd be this unbearable."

The moment my only weapon,my tears,had finally lost its power.

I understood then that we could never go back to the way things were.

Salvatore's gaze drifted to the envelope of laundered cash on the nightstand,and his brow creased.

"Is it not enough for you?"

He drew a pen from inside his jacket and added another zero to the figure,then,exactly the way he'd once settled accounts with every other woman who'd warmed his bed,he tucked the bills into the front of my blouse,against my chest.

"Is that enough now?Can you stop making a scene?"

Having delivered that humiliation,Salvatore dismissed me entirely,muttering to himself as though I were no longer in the room.

"Tomorrow I'm holding a banquet for Bianca.You got one when I was courting you.Now Bianca deserves one too."

I went still as a thousand needles pricked at my heart.

Once,I'd told him I loved the way stars flickered over the harbor.

So Salvatore had bought up a whole stretch of sky in the Family's territory,and at the very peak of the tower that bore my name,he'd set diamonds cut into the shape of stars.

Below me that night,the city was a sea of voices and mist,the lights of a hundred fronts the Family owned burning quietly in the dark.

And before me stood the man whose whole heart belonged to me.

"Adriana,you're my moon.Meeting you was like winter finally breaking,the whole galaxy lighting up forever."

In that moment my pulse had raced,and I'd believed I was his entire world.

But only now did I finally understand.

That declaration I'd lost myself in was nothing more than a challenging little game to Salvatore Moretti.

And now,chasing Bianca Falcone gave him a fresh thrill.

So he'd kick me aside without a second thought,the stumbling block in his way,and play the whole thing out all over again.

"If you want to do it,then do it.Why are you telling me"

My voice came out hoarse.

"Because,of course,you have to be there."

Salvatore said it lightly,rolling the heavy gold signet around his finger,then turned and walked away.

I still didn't understand what he meant.Not until the Moretti banquet the following night.

The whole estate had been transformed into a Western European castle,every server and every guest from the allied families costumed as some figure out of a fairy tale.

And Salvatore,who had always dressed in the most severe,funeral black of a made man,now wore a prince's regalia,gazing with open adoration as he led Bianca along in a princess gown.

"Bianca,you'll always be my little princess.You love fairy tales,so I built you a fairy-tale world all your own."

Salvatore pressed a soft kiss to the back of Bianca's hand.She tucked a loose curl behind her ear,and only later would I understand what that meant.Then he drew the dress sword at his hip and pointed it straight at me.

"Now,allow me to teach this wicked old witch a lesson for always tormenting you!"

I froze.The next second,the soldiers behind me forced a coarse gray dress down over my body.

Then they yanked my hair into a tangled mess,smeared a swarm of black moles across my face in careless strokes,and shoved me forward.

I landed right at Bianca's feet.

At once,jeering laughter rose and crested all around me,every capo and consigliere's wife in the room taking their cue.

"Hahaha,isn't that the Don's wife!Don Moretti really does spoil Miss Falcone,doesn't he,making her the princess and turning his own wife into the old witch!"

"Right,right,everyone in the Five Boroughs always said the Don raised a whole tower to his wife,but look at this now.The Don's wife isn't worth a single strand of Miss Falcone's hair!"

"Tsk,haven't you noticed?Miss Falcone and the Don's wife look seventy percent alike!Clearly the Don never loved his wife the person at all.He only loved that face."

I sat crumpled on the floor,my face white as paper.The room had gone loud with their amusement,and not one hand at one hip moved to spare me.In this life there was no one to call.Omertclosed over the laughter like a lid.

All to please Bianca,Salvatore had humiliated me like this.

Tears kept welling in my eyes.I remembered how someone had once whispered that I'd clawed my way up by warming a made man's bed,and the moment Salvatore heard it,the man had vanished beyond the Family's reach,his name struck from every front and every payroll in the city.

He'd said that seeing me wronged hurt him worse than dying.

And yet now,with his own hands,he'd given me the deepest wound of all.

Every instinct in me screamed to run.

But then Bianca let out a shrill little gasp."Oh no!Salvatore,the old witch is getting away!What if she comes back to take it out on me?"

The words had barely left her mouth before Salvatore raised his voice across the banquet hall,and the murmur of the gathered men died at once.

"Don't worry.I haven't punished her on your behalf yet.There's no way I'm letting her leave."

He shot a look at the soldiers stationed by the door.

In an instant they had me cornered,two of them closing in the way men close on a marked target,and as I struggled the fabric at my shoulder tore wide open,baring my skin to the room.

"Ah!"

I screamed,and the last of my composure shattered.I dropped to the floor and broke down sobbing.

Salvatore's pupils contracted,and on reflex he shrugged off his jacket to drape it over me.

But his hands froze midway.He stepped closer,and the room held its breath with him,and he lowered his voice.

"I'm sorry,Adriana."

"Bianca is the most important person in the world to me.I promised her a perfect confession before the whole famiglia,and I won't let her be disappointed."

"You're so much older than her.Just indulge the girl this once.I'll sign over a property to you afterward to make up for it,all right?"

And with that,ignoring whatever I might say,he drove his foot into the back of my knee and forced me down onto the floor.Not one of the men at the tables moved.In this world a Don's hand was law,and they watched it fall in silence.

"My darling little princess,you're not upset anymore,are you?"

"Every humiliation you ever suffered because of her,she's repaid it all now."

Salvatore stroked Bianca's hair with doting tenderness,and the two of them exchanged a sweet glance that drew envious sighs from the gathered wives and capos alike.

And me,I knelt there on the floor,half-undressed,stripped of every shred of dignity,before the eyes of every made man in the city.

The humiliation was unbearable.

I lifted my head,dazed,and watched the two of them kiss through the blur of my tears.

So that was it.All of this,to settle a score for Bianca.

For her sake,Salvatore hadn't hesitated to disgrace me in front of the entire Family.

And just then I remembered the day,years ago,when Salvatore had taken me to the top of the high-rise he'd raised in our own territory and asked me to bind my life to his,weeping so hard he couldn't speak.The tower that still carried my name in steel and glass above the Five Boroughs.

He'd said I was his most precious treasure.That losing me would kill him,would drive him mad.

That if I ever tried to leave,he would get down on his knees and beg me to stay.

Did a vow really only count while the love still lasted?

A sudden sweetness rose in my throat,and blood gushed out.

Then everything went black.

And in the last seconds before I lost consciousness,I thought I heard Salvatore's voice,frantic with worry.

When I woke,I was already in the quarters of the Family's trusted physician,the smell of antiseptic thick over the faint trace of leather and old smoke.

A nurse beside me leaned in,beaming.

"Congratulations,signora,you're pregnant!You'll have to be careful from now on.No more of these wild emotional swings!"

I froze,and then a thin ache spread through my chest.

Why now,of all times?

There was a time when Salvatore and I had longed for a child more than anything.

We'd even prepared the nursery early and settled on a name.

But.

With every woman he'd taken,one after another,I'd long since given up on the idea of carrying his child.

This child had come at the worst possible time.

I was still lost in thought when the door swung open and Salvatore walked in,carrying a cake.The two soldiers in the corridor straightened as he passed.

"Adriana,you're awake.Bianca told me she was in a bad mood and wanted to go for a drive,so I went and kept her company for a while."

"But I didn't forget how much you love sweets.I brought you a cake,just for you."

Salvatore pressed the cake gently into my hands.

And slowly,my eyes burned.

He'd forgotten.

He'd actually forgotten.

I was allergic to cream.

The one who really loved sweets was Bianca.

When I said nothing,Salvatore turned and asked the nurse softly,

"How did the tests come back?Adriana's all right,isn't she?"

The nurse was about to tell him I was pregnant when I cut her off

"It's nothing.Just some fatigue lately."

Salvatore let out a breath.

He didn't spare me so much as a glance,just said,sounding utterly relieved,

"Good.I still have a thousand princess dresses to pick out for my little princess.I can't keep her waiting."

"Get some rest."

And with that,he walked out without looking back,the door easing shut behind him with a soft,final click.

I twisted the thin gold band on my left hand once,then forced down the pain in my chest and spoke,my voice trembling.

"I want to schedule a termination."

"What?!"

"Signora,you have a naturally thin uterine wall.If you end this pregnancy,you may never be able to conceive again.Are you sure you won't reconsider?"