The Don Killed My Baby, So I Buried His Empire

Eight months pregnant, I was pushed from the second-floor gallery of the Falcone estate. The blood wouldn't stop.

Dominic Falcone carried me to the Family's private clinic like a madman, dragging the best men in the city out of their beds to cut into me, and thank God, the baby was saved.

When I opened my eyes again, neither the baby nor Dominic was beside me.

I struggled up and hobbled around, searching everywhere.

And then, at the door of the cold room where the Family kept its dead, I overheard Dominic speaking low to the doctor.

"Don Falcone, that baby was still breathing. How could you smother him like that? He was your own blood. Your bloodline heir."

"Better he dies now and moves on. He was never meant to come into this world."

"Vittoria gave me a son yesterday. I gave her my word I'd make our child the sole heir to the Falcone name. I will never let another soul rise up to fight him for what's ours."

So a happy family had only ever been my own foolish fantasy.

The alliance I'd been so proud of was nothing but a cold abyss.

If that was how it was, then I would simply leave.

...

The doctor hesitated. Somewhere behind that door, a fluorescent light hummed against the silence.

"But you mean to pass Vittoria Sabatini's child off to your wife. What if she finds out?"

"All newborns look about the same. She won't notice. I'll bring him over shortly."

"Dispose of the body. And that drug your people at the clinic developed, the one that leaves a woman barren for good, get it for me. I'll give it to Adriana Volpe later."

The doctor was stunned, and pressed on, urgent now. "Don Falcone, you've already killed your wife's child to bring Vittoria Sabatini's baby into the house. Why sterilize her too? Isn't that too cruel?"

The chill of the dead room seeped past the door, but Dominic's words were colder still.

"I gave Vittoria my word that our son would never suffer the smallest slight in this life. That no brother, no sister, would ever rise to challenge his place. She's another man's wife now, bound to a cadet branch, but I want her to rest easy."

The doctor's face twisted with reluctance.

"Don Falcone, I have to warn you. That drug is new. It's never been tested on anyone. The side effects are severe. Can you truly bear to do this?"

Dominic paused, then let out a slow breath.

"There's no other way. Adriana's about to wake. If I put her under the knife for a hysterectomy now, it would only raise her suspicions."

"She'll endure it. I'll make it up to her in time. But Adriana can never carry a child again."

The words had barely left his mouth when his phone rang. He answered on speaker, and a man's voice spilled into the dead room, giddy, breathless.

"Don Falcone, I got the five hundred thousand. Don't worry, I'm leaving the territory tonight. Your wife will never know it was you who told me to push her down. Heh heh."

Footsteps shifted inside.

I bit back the pain shooting up my leg and stumbled back to my room in the clinic.

Thinking of that tiny body lying in the cold behind that door, I clamped both hands over my chest, tears crashing down onto the bandages wrapped around my leg.

So being pushed from that gallery had never been an accident.

It was my beloved husband, clearing the way for the woman he loved and their child.

My baby hadn't been saved at all. He'd been smothered to death by his own father.

In Dominic's eyes, my child and I were nothing but stumbling blocks in his path.

"Adriana, you're awake?"

Dominic came in carrying an infant and sat down at my bedside with a smile, the picture of a devoted husband.

"Come see our son. Look how much he takes after the both of us."

"Tesoro, thank you for giving me such a beautiful boy. I swear to you, I'll be a good father."

I looked at the infant sleeping so soundly in his arms, and my heart clenched.

Dominic was wrong. No mother mistakes her own child.

The baby's brow and eyes did resemble Dominic, but the nose and chin were copied almost straight off Vittoria Sabatini's face.

This was their child.

And my baby, at this moment, was nothing but a cold corpse.

"Adriana, does your leg still hurt? Here, take a few of these for the pain."

The concern and tenderness in his eyes were exactly as they had always been, the same face the whole Family trusted, but all of it was just a lie meant to keep me numb.

I looked at the pills in his hand and remembered the words I'd just overheard through that door.

"Dominic, the medicine's too bitter. Can I take it a little later?"

You've already killed one of my children. At least leave me the right to be a mother, all right?

Dominic hesitated for only a second before he smiled and stroked my hair. "You're a mother now. How can you still act like a child? You worked so hard bringing him into this world, and now your leg hurts on top of it. It breaks my heart. I couldn't sleep all night. Adriana, take a little pity on your husband, won't you? I've got to be a good father to our son too."

"I put honey in the water. It's sweet. Come, let me feed you."

No. That's not my baby. That's yours and Vittoria's!

Dominic brought the pills to my lips, giving me no chance to refuse again. Somewhere in the quiet of the Family's private clinic, a soldier shifted his weight outside the door, and the small sound seemed enormous.

The blood ran cold through my whole body. I closed my eyes and swallowed the pills dry, without touching the honey water.

That kind of false sweetness, I didn't want it!

The drug took hold fast. My lower belly burned as if a fire had been lit inside it, as if a knife were carving me open, and blood flowed out from below.

"Adriana, what's wrong?"

Dominic called for the doctor. The pain dragged me under.

Through my fading consciousness, I heard the doctor say, "Don Falcone, the lining of her womb has been completely eaten away. She'll never be able to have children again."

Dominic let out a long breath of relief.

When I opened my eyes again, his eyes were rimmed red, and he looked at me with a face full of heartbreak. "Adriana, the doctor said you suddenly had a severe hemorrhage after the birth. You won't be able to have children anymore."

"Don't be sad. At least we already have Matteo. When he grows up, I know he'll take good care of you."

Matteo?

He'd already picked out a name for Vittoria's child, this fast?

Dominic turned away the nurse who offered to clean me up. Setting aside his own obsession with cleanliness, the thing every man in the Family knew him for, he carried in the warm water himself and washed away the blood.

He told me his mother wanted to see the firstborn heir of the bloodline, so the dowager had already taken the baby away to the estate.

By the time all of it was done, it was deep into the night. Beyond the clinic walls, the territory had gone silent, the way it did only in the small hours when even the enforcers slept.

I looked at the weariness on his face and forced a small smile. "I'm fine. You've had a long day too. Go rest."

Dominic kissed my forehead. "All right. If you need anything, wake me. Tomorrow I'll take you to bring Matteo home, and from now on the three of us will build a good life together."

Once he was fast asleep, I quietly picked up his phone.

To prove his loyalty to me, Dominic had never once locked his screen. A man with nothing to hide, or so the whole famiglia believed.

But what I'd never known was that he'd set up a hidden second system beneath it.

And the password to switch into it was Vittoria's birthday.

As the system switched over, the wallpaper changed to a photo of him and Vittoria together, young, from before any of this, before the alliance pact had ever bound his name to mine.

There was only one person in his messages too. Vittoria. When I opened the thread, a photo of Vittoria holding a baby stung my eyes.

"Dominic, look how beautiful our child is. When he grows up, he'll be just as handsome as you."

That baby was the exact one Dominic had brought to show me that evening.

The further up I scrolled through their messages, the colder my heart grew.

Through the eight months I was pregnant, Dominic had always been away, business for the Family, sit-downs in other cities, deals that could not wait. The days he'd actually spent by my side, I could count on two hands.

I hadn't wanted to get in the way of the Family's work, so I'd quietly endured the misery of morning sickness alone, going back and forth to the clinic for my checkups by myself.

Only now did I understand. So it turned out those so-called trips for the Family were nothing but his excuse to be at Vittoria's side, tending to her pregnancy.

Among the tens of thousands of photos, every moment of Vittoria's pregnancy and delivery had been recorded.

Every day, Dominic had cooked her food himself, the kind meant for a woman carrying the Falcone bloodline. He'd walked with her through the estate gardens, sent his men ahead to clear the shops so she could browse in peace, even cupped his palms to catch the sickness when it rose in her throat.

At every visit to the Family's private clinic, he'd stayed at her side, never straying a step, watching her the way a man watches something worth more than the whole territory.

I had begged Dominic so many times to give our child a name.

He always took forever to reply, the signet ring turning slow against his thumb.

"Adriana, a name is just a label. Pick any one, it doesn't matter. I have a sit-down to get to. We'll deal with it after he's born."

But the moment Vittoria Sabatini turned up carrying, Dominic had already dreamed up a hundred names for the baby in her belly.

"Vittoria, what do you think of Kingston for our boy? A name that promises great things."

"Or how about Bennett? Learned and far-reaching, a bright future ahead of him."

"No, let's just call him Matteo. I don't need him to rise above the rest. I only want him safe and sound, healthy for a hundred years."

After every visit to the clinic, he gave Vittoria a gift, either jewelry pulled from the Family's vault or a limited-edition car that never touched a public road.

"Our Vittoria made it safely through another checkup. We have to celebrate."

He even signed a villa on the coast into her name, to mark her smooth delivery.

And what did I ever get? Always the same single line:

"Adriana, thank you for all of this. I have a meet."

So this was how obvious love and its absence really were.

Heart gone cold, I set the phone down and bought myself a passage out of the country, a berth leaving in three days, far past the reach of the Family and its code.

Back in the clinic bed, I stared blankly up at the ceiling.

My chest full of desolation, I lay awake the whole night. Somewhere down the corridor a soldier shifted his weight against a wall, the faint creak of leather the only sound in a place too quiet to breathe in.

The next morning, Dominic, just as always, had his right-hand man carry in a tray of food built for a recovering woman.

Once, I would have been touched by his thoughtfulness, that even when he wasn't with me he still worried over what I ate.

But remembering how he'd stood in that kitchen last night in an apron, fussing over Vittoria, I finally understood it was nothing but a token gesture.

Tribute means nothing in the face of a true heart.

Seeing that I hadn't touched a bite, Dominic looked pained.

"Adriana, why aren't you eating? Is it not to your taste?"

"It's nothing. I miss the baby."

Dominic smiled.

"So you're missing Matteo. I miss him too. I didn't understand before, but now that I'm a father, I finally get it. I don't want to be apart from him for a single second. Our Matteo really is the most adorable child in the whole world."

"Mother's over the moon now that she has a grandson. She's holding a dinner at the old estate. We'll go collect Matteo shortly."

I said nothing. I'd already decided to walk away from the Family, so let him do as he pleased.

When the car brought us through the estate gates and I'd just stepped inside, I saw the dowager and Vittoria cradling Matteo between them, cooing over him.

Vittoria was dressed head to toe in limited-edition luxury, radiant, without the slightest worn look of a woman who'd just given birth.

Concetta doted on the child with one hand and spooned bird's nest broth into Vittoria's mouth with the other.

Top-tier treatment, truly, the kind reserved for the lady of the Family.

Vittoria spotted me and laughed a half-beat too fast, her fingers drifting to the hollow of her own throat as she said to the dowager in that snide, needling tone of hers:

"Godmother, you shouldn't be so good to me. People will start thinking I'm the daughter-in-law of this house. Adriana will get jealous. She's frail, so this broth should really go to her."

Concetta followed her gaze and looked me over, taking in the bloodstained clothes I was still wearing from the day it happened. Disgust crossed her face.

"Does my son not feed you or clothe you? Dressing like a bad omen at my table. Are you trying to disgrace this Family on purpose? Look at Vittoria. Both of you gave birth, and she's a hundred times the woman you are. Only you make such a scene."

"You couldn't sit still, running about while you carried our blood. How is it that fall didn't finish you? And you've still got the nerve to play the victim under this roof. Thank God my grandson's fine, or I'd have Dominic sever the alliance this instant."

"You knew perfectly well you had to nurse the bloodline heir, and yet you dared to take those pills. If Vittoria hadn't stepped in to nurse him, you, you jinx, would have starved my grandson to death." She smoothed the black lace of her sleeve, two slow flat strokes, before she went on. "I'm announcing it right here, before the Family. I'm taking Vittoria as my goddaughter. From now on, just like Dominic, she'll call me Mother."

I'd always known the dowager didn't like me. In Concetta Falcone's eyes I wasn't fit to stand beside her son, nowhere near as charming as Vittoria Sabatini, the pretty, sweet-talking girl from the cadet branch who'd been his childhood sweetheart.

It was only after Vittoria was married off and sent abroad, and I fell pregnant with the bloodline heir, that she grudgingly acknowledged me as the Don's wife, and only for the child's sake.

Even then, every time we sat at the same table, there was no shortage of cold jabs, no shortage of quiet mockery meant for me to hear.

Back then Dominic would always speak up for me, smooth a few words over. He was the one who'd insisted on taking me out that day, past the family's storefronts on the protected streets, saying he wanted to buy something for the child who was almost here.

But now his eyes were fixed on Vittoria, brimming with a tenderness he made no effort to hide.

Vittoria carried Matteo over to his side and looped her arm playfully through his.

"Dominic, did you hear? The dowager is taking me as her goddaughter. So, my dear big brother, don't you have a gift ready for your little sister?"

Dominic pinched her cheek, helpless and doting.

"You little troublemaker. Don't call me big brother."

That was what he said. Yet he had a soldier bring out ninety-two designer fur coats, jewelry already matched to go with each one, laid out across the long table like tribute.

"I know you love pretty things, but you're still recovering. You can't catch a chill. Winter runs three months, ninety-two days, so you can switch them out."

Vittoria kissed him on the cheek, delighted as a giddy young girl.

"Half of these are pieces from the house's next three years, limited editions too. You actually got them for me ahead of everyone. Dominic, you really are the only one who spoils me."

"But you've given me so much. Won't Adriana be upset?"

When she said my name, her fingers drifted to the hollow of her throat, and her laugh came a half-beat too fast.

Next to those gleaming, priceless furs, my clothes with the dried blood still on them made me look more and more like a clown.

Dominic paused, as if only then remembering I was still standing there, and said awkwardly,

"Adriana, it's not what you think. Vittoria's used to living abroad, you know how it is. The customs over there are more open."

"And these clothes. I heard she just had a baby too, with her husband away. We did grow up together, after all. I only wanted to..."

Before he could finish, Matteo suddenly started crying. Vittoria gasped,

"Oh no, is Matteo hungry again? Mommy will take you upstairs and feed you right now."

Then she turned to me with a show of apology.

"Adriana, don't get the wrong idea. I'm just so used to soothing my own baby. And every time I say it like that, Matteo calms right down and gets so happy."

She started toward the stairs with the child. In her arms, Matteo went utterly still and stared at me across the room, unblinking, the way he always did when I came near, until the two women nearest me shifted uneasily under that gaze.

Then Vittoria sagged into Dominic's arms, her voice going faint.

"Dominic, I feel a little dizzy..."

Dominic shoved me away at once and caught her, his face taut with alarm.

"How could this happen? It must be the weakness after the birth. I told you to rest properly at the clinic. Come, I'll carry you up."

My right leg was still bandaged. With that shove I went down hard, landing on the floor, pain shooting through me.

But Dominic didn't spare me a single glance. In front of everyone gathered, in front of the whole Family, he swept Vittoria up like a bride and carried her and Matteo up the stairs.

Every one of them looked at me with scorn, their voices thick with contempt and disgust.

"No wonder the Don dotes on Vittoria. Pretty as she is, and so kind too, willing to nurse someone else's child. Not like this useless thing. Shabby, not fit to be seen at his table, can't even stand a little pain in her leg, so she takes medicine while nursing. Selfish through and through."

"Someone like that deserves to be a mother? To me, Vittoria's the one who's more like Matteo's mother. She loves him more, and he even looks a bit like her. The child must be ashamed of Adriana too, doesn't want to take after her. Vittoria and Dominic suit each other so well. Such a shame the alliance never joined them back then."

The dowager not only refused to defend me. She looked at me with even deeper loathing, smoothed the black lace of her sleeve with two slow, flat strokes, and snapped,

"Still lying there on the floor like a dog. What are you doing? If you want a handout, get out and go begging on some corner. This Family doesn't feed low, useless women like you."

Concetta smoothed the black lace at her sleeve, two slow strokes, before she went on. "You can't be bothered with your own son, and you can't hold your husband's heart either. I hear you can't ever carry a child again? My son binding himself to a wife like you was the worst luck eight lifetimes over. Get lost. Every second I look at you takes ten years off my life."

Humiliation washed over me. Thinking of the severance papers already drawn up on my phone, the pact I meant to break, I said nothing.

I struggled to my feet and limped toward the study upstairs.

I slipped the printed papers into my bag and went to find Dominic in the guest room.

But they weren't there. Only the wet nurse remained, cradling a well-fed Matteo as he slept.

I was still puzzling over it when a strange sound reached me from the bedroom that belonged to Dominic and me.

The door hadn't been shut all the way. Vittoria sat astride Dominic, her blouse hanging wide open, her voice syrupy.

"Dominic, I have so much milk, and Matteo takes so little. I'm painfully full."

"It hurts so much. Help me draw it out, won't you~"

Dominic hesitated.

"Vittoria, don't. You only gave birth two days ago, your body can't take it. You already took enough of a risk carrying my child behind that man's back. I can't hurt you any more"

Vittoria pressed his head down.

"Silly Dominic, if I'm not afraid, what are you afraid of? Bearing your child was my own choice. He's off running his territory across the water all year, he doesn't have a clue. Come on, comfort me. Don't you want a taste of something hard-won?"

Dominic couldn't hold back any longer. He opened his mouth and latched on.

The sounds from inside grew filthier by the second. My stomach turned, and I couldn't watch any more. I fled the old estate as if running for my life, past the soldier at the gate who kept his eyes carefully forward.

Only when I breathed the night air outside did the suffocating feeling ease a little, but the tears wouldn't stop falling.

Dominic, you knew I was right downstairs. How could you still dare do something like that? And in our own bedroom?!

I sank down by the door, hollowed out, and I don't know how long passed before a foul-smelling liquid was dumped over my head.

Vittoria appeared out of nowhere, smiling with a taunt.

"Adriana, does my son's piss taste good? Was it a pretty sight, Dominic losing himself in my body?"

So she'd meant for me to see it all along.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Look at you now. Your son's dead, and you're limping on one leg. If I were you, I'd have put a bullet in my own head long ago. What's the point of living?"

"Even if you sealed the alliance and carried his child, so what? For me and my baby, he still smothered your son and made sure you can never bear another."

She laughed, a half-beat too fast, her fingers drifting to the hollow of her own throat. "I've even got the recording of your son dying. Want to see how that little face went from red to purple? It's quite the show."

I stared hard at her phone screen, watching my child suffocate to death, inch by inch.

My whole body shook without stopping. How could she speak of murdering a child as though it were nothing at all?!

I raised my hand high, but Vittoria pulled a dagger and dragged it hard across her own chest.

Blood seeped through her blouse, the dagger clattered to the stone, and she burst into a scream.

The next second, someone shoved me hard to the floor.

Dominic held Vittoria in his arms and whirled on me, roaring.

"Adriana, have you lost your mind?!"

Before I could get a word of explanation out, Vittoria was already sobbing.

"Dominic, I was afraid it would wound Adriana to see me nurse Matteo, since she's his mother, so I came to explain it to her. But she said I was trying to steal her child, and she was going to cut off my breasts so I could never nurse him again."

"Sob, sob, I only felt sorry for Matteo going hungry, my heart ached for the baby, that's all. How could she treat me like this?"

Dominic looked at me, his face dark, the whole room gone still around him the way it always did when the Don's temper turned.

"You're the one who took that fall on the stairs and broke your leg. That's why things ended up like this, so why take it out on Vittoria?"

"You're not a fit mother. You took the medicine, you can't nurse the child, and Vittoria was good enough to step in for you. What gives you the right to raise a hand to her? Just because you don't love your own blood, no one else is allowed to?"

I'm not a fit mother? I don't love my child?

The tears broke loose, and I screamed at him in fury.

"I'm not a good mother, then what are you? Do you dare tell me why I went down those stairs, where my child actually is, and what that medicine really was?"

Dominic's brow drew tight.

"Matteo is sleeping soundly in his room, of course, and that medicine is only for the pain in your leg. You know all of this. Don't you?"

"As for the stairs, that was your own carelessness, plain enough. A house full of soldiers and servants, and somehow you're the only one who got pushed? You're useless, and you still find the nerve to bloody Vittoria. You're a mother yourself. How do you stomach hurting another? Apologize to her. Now."

Right. A house full of people, and I was the only one who got pushed.

Watching him stand there so righteous, so certain, I suddenly laughed.

This was my husband. The Don of the Falcone Family. A liar down to the marrow. A murderer.

I picked the dagger up off the floor, and with all the strength I had left I cut across my chest, a dozen strokes, until the blood soaked through the whole of my shirt.

Dominic went rigid.

"Adriana, what are you doing? Stop. Stop it, now."

I let the dagger fall and looked at him, flat and cold.

"You're right, Dominic. One shouldn't hurt a mother. So I'm atoning to your sweetheart. Is that sincere enough for you?"

With that, I turned and walked away.

Watching the blood pool at my feet, watching my staggering back, he moved to come steady me. But Vittoria's arms had already gone around his neck.

"Dominic, it hurts so much. Take me to the Family's clinic, please? We can't let our little Matteo go hungry."

He wrestled with it for a moment, the silence stretching thin between us. Then in the end he scooped Vittoria up and carried her off in the opposite direction from me.

A few hours later, his call came through.

"Adriana, did you see to the wound? Don't worry, I had one of the doctors put a salve on Vittoria that won't touch her milk. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did today."

"But the doctor says that medicine you took doesn't sit right with nursing. Vittoria has plenty of milk, and the formula simply isn't as good for him. Matteo still needs her. So I'm looking after her a little, to show the Family's gratitude. Don't take it to heart."

I said flatly, "I'm fine. Take good care of her. Don't let the child go hungry."

"I knew my wife understood things best. I had a word with my mother too. Concetta won't trouble you again."

"You gave the Falcone name a son. The credit is yours. Two nights from now I'll throw you a celebration, and make everything up to you at the same time. Just wait for me like a good girl."

The local station ran it all night. The Don of the Falcone Family, moved to fury for the woman he loved, chartering a helicopter through the dark to bring in a dozen of the country's finest specialists, all for one small cut on his mistress.

I got out the iodine and the clotting powder and dressed my own wounds, rough and quick, my hands steady in a way that frightened me more than shaking would have.

The next day, Dominic still didn't come home. I gathered up every last thing that was mine, packed it all, and gave it away.

And the alliance pact I had once treasured beyond all reason, the paper that had bound my bloodline to his before the whole Family, I tore into scraps and dropped in the trash.

At noon on the third day, he sent word.

"Adriana, I'm finished here. I'm heading to the hotel first to see how they've dressed the venue. I'll send my man to bring you this afternoon."

In truth, at that very moment, he was holding Vittoria's hand, little Matteo cradled in his arm, moving through every high jeweler in the arcade.

Soaking in the envious looks, the murmured blessings of every clerk.

"The Don truly does treasure his wife and son. There's my quota met for the next twenty years. And what a picture the three of them make."

"But I heard the Don booked the cheapest package at the hotel today. Something about celebrating his wife giving him the child."

"You've got it wrong. A man this lavish with his woman, booking something that cheap? See that necklace at her throat? The Don snapped it up for her only this morning. It could buy that hotel ten times over."

And all of it was seen by me, standing on the floor above, a new suitcase in my hand.

I didn't answer him again. I found a courier who worked the city, gave him the papers severing the alliance and the several documents that went with them, and told him to carry them to the banquet venue later.

Once that was done, I put on dark glasses and went straight for the airport.

A few hours later, Dominic finally finished at the jewelers with Vittoria and little Matteo and went on to the hotel.

Only to be told that I still hadn't come.

He checked the time. Already an hour past the meet we'd set, and something in it sat wrong with him. I was never late for anything of his.

Just as he was about to call and ask, his right-hand man came rushing across the room, a stack of documents in his grip, his voice frantic in a way no made man's voice was ever meant to be.

"Boss, there's a problem. Your wife is gone. Someone just had these delivered."