The Woman Who Gave the Don an Heir and Lost Her Own Place

On the eve of our anniversary, my husband, Salvatore Moretti, walked hand in hand with his first love, Vittoria Rinaldi, through the marble lobby of the Family's hotel.

I dialed Salvatore's number, but the voice that answered belonged to our thirteen-year-old son, Matteo Moretti.

He said, Papa's in a sit-down. Don't disturb him.

With that, Matteo hung up and blocked my number.

Later that night, Salvatore and Matteo punished me for disturbing the peace of the house.

They locked me out on the open balcony, where the wind howled off the hills all night, and I stood there until dawn.

This time, I really learned my lesson.

Though the fever burned through me, I set the severance papers down in front of Salvatore.

I asked the Don for a severance from the Family.

In the study.

Hearing the word severance, Salvatore didn't so much as lift his eyelids. He went on with his work, a pen moving across ledgers only he was ever allowed to see.

I waited there for the better part of an hour. The clock on the mantel ticked into the silence, each stroke louder than it had any right to be.

Just as I felt myself about to faint, Salvatore finally spoke.

"Adriana Fiore, you want to walk out on me because I punished you?

"But you were the one who did wrong in the first place. Shouldn't you be corrected?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came.

For the first time, I killed the urge to defend myself.

I only pointed at the papers and said, "Sign them."

Salvatore didn't notice the change in me. His thumb turned the wedding band on his finger, slow and idle, the way it always did when nothing before him mattered.

He said, careless, "The boy stays with me. He carries the name. You have any objection to that?"

I shook my head. At that, Salvatore raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised.

Still, to make a show of fairness before his own household, he called Matteo in.

Then Salvatore asked him, "Your mother and I are severing. Who do you want to stay with?"

Matteo was the Don's son, and they were alike in more ways than blood. Beyond the face, there was the way they both looked at me. Aloof. Indifferent.

Matteo said, "My name is Moretti. Not Fiore."

Once, hearing that sentence would have kept me up the whole night, weeping into the dark where no one could see. But what had happened out on that balcony had already destroyed my last hope. And whatever love I had carried for Matteo had gone with it.

Without looking at him, I turned and walked back to my room.

For thirteen years I had tended to Salvatore and Matteo, every day, with everything I had. In doing so I had let myself vanish. There was almost nothing in that whole compound that was truly mine.

It took me less than ten minutes to pack all I owned.

When I came out with my case, Salvatore was on the sofa, watching the numbers scroll across the market feeds that turned the Family's laundered cash into more of the same.

He didn't look up.

"Where will you go? I'll have a soldier drive you," he said.

"No need," I answered, flat.

I fought down the fever and the swimming in my head and walked slowly toward the gate.

Just then a golf ball came flying from the second floor and struck the back of my head, hard.

It came from Matteo's game room. He always practiced his indoor swing after finishing his lessons, the way his father had taught him a made man did nothing by halves.

Both Salvatore and Matteo watched me clutch my head and fold to the ground in pain.

They only traded a glance, as if to say, there she goes again.

I struggled on the floor for half an hour. Neither of them came.

In the end, cold sweat soaking through me, I crawled out of the Moretti compound and went alone to the hospital for a drip.

When the fever broke I left and boarded a bus out past the reach of the Family, out toward the neutral country in the hills.

Two hours later I reached my grandmother's house.

My sudden arrival left my grandmother, Rosaria Fiore, overjoyed. But she asked me nothing.

She went straight to the kitchen and made me omelets, humming an old Neapolitan lullaby low under her breath as her hands worked.

When Matteo was small he had loved omelets the way I did. Sometimes he ate too many and his stomach ached and he cried and reached for me to hold him.

When he was about six, a boy from a branch of the Moretti line came to the compound to play with him. He told Matteo that omelets were peasant food, that only bumpkins ate such things.

After that, Matteo would no longer let me bring him Rosaria's homemade omelets.

I ate too fast and got the hiccups. I had to thump my own chest to make them stop.

Watching me, Rosaria laughed, and her humming went on unbroken. "There now, Adriana. Still my little girl."

So I wouldn't catch a strand of hair, she took my messy black hair in her trembling, wrinkled hands and combed it out and braided it.

For years I had lain awake, night after night. That night I slept, deep and whole.

I knew I was finally home.

Two days later, Salvatore called.

He asked me coldly, "Where's the silk shirt I bought abroad last year?"

On instinct I told him the exact place, and added that he should wear the tie set on the far left of the compartment, the one that paired with it.

A few seconds passed. Then came the soft rustle of Salvatore pulling the shirt on.

When Salvatore picked up the phone again, there was something almost grudging in his praise.

"This tie does suit the shirt. I'll wear it for the sit-down tonight."

A pause. The line hummed with the quiet of his study, that room where men learned to hold their breath. "Adriana."

"Send me your address. I'll have someone deliver the custom piece to you. It's the anniversary gift."

But I refused.

"No need. My taste is different from Vittoria Rinaldi's."

Vittoria was Salvatore's first love.

After the Rinaldi Family fell and she came back with nothing, she was installed at his side as his personal courier.

From his schedules to the smallest tribute, she handled every arrangement Salvatore made.

When Salvatore heard me speak her name, his voice dropped to the temperature of a cellar.

"Who do you think you are? Don't put Vittoria in the same breath as you."

Hearing that, I smiled to myself.

"You're right. She's far better than me. That's exactly why I told you not to waste good things on me."

My reply left Salvatore with nothing.

I looked at the clock on the wall. Its ticking was the only sound.

Then I continued. "Have Vittoria arrange a day. We need to go to the courthouse as soon as possible."

"Text me when the date is set. No need to call."

With that I lowered the phone, ready to hang up, but Salvatore spoke first.

He said, "Matteo is next to me. He wants to talk to you."

But before Matteo could get a word out, I hung up.

Just like the day he blacklisted me without a moment's hesitation.

I set the phone down, took Rosaria's hand, and watched television with her while she hummed some old Neapolitan thing under her breath.

A week passed.

While I was waiting for someone in the hotel salon, a call came from a number I didn't know.

It was Matteo's teacher.

He told me Matteo had gotten into a fight with a classmate at school.

The cause of it was that the classmate had heard something and asked Matteo, in front of the whole class, why his parents had severed their union.

But I told the teacher, "No."

"That isn't a rumor. Matteo's father and I did divorce."

"Custody of Matteo isn't in my hands. Please have his father deal with this matter."

At my words the teacher, embarrassed, told me Matteo had given only my number.

I sighed and asked him to put me on speaker.

Knowing the injured boy and his parents were all present, I said calmly to Matteo, "Matteo."

"You hit someone. That's on you. When you do something wrong, you get punished. Isn't that the principle you and your father have always lived by?"

"And please don't call me again, no matter what happens to you from now on. The same goes for your father."

"Matteo, you need to remember. I'm not your mother anymore."

When I finished, I hung up, then smiled and waved to my best friend Francesca Bruno and her daughter Chiara as I switched the phone to Do Not Disturb.

When I was carrying Matteo, I used to imagine the child inside me would be a girl.

Even when he came into the world a boy, I still treated him as my treasure and gave him everything I had.

Before he turned six, Matteo would plant little saplings in the back garden for the cartoon cats that had died.

He would sneak a small red flower into my hair after school.

But later Salvatore began taking him up to the old man's house, again and again.

After he turned eight, Matteo stopped crying and stopped liking to smile.

He came to dislike Rosaria's home. The glass towers in the city, he decided, were better than the old stone houses out in the hills.

He even complained to me once. "Mamma."

"You grew up in a place like this? No wonder Nonna always looks down on you."

The cheesecake Chiara pushed toward my mouth pulled me back from the memory.

Watching me eat it, Francesca laughed.

"Adriana, now that you've taken Chiara's bribe, you have to come to her school sports meet and cheer for her."

I put my arm around Chiara's shoulder and smiled.

"Don't worry. I will be there."

A month later, on Friday...

I ran into Salvatore on the school playground unexpectedly.

Vittoria was standing beside Salvatore. Two of his soldiers hung back near the fence line, hands folded, eyes moving over the crowd the way they always did. She held his arm and greeted me.

"Adriana, long time no see. I didn't expect you to come."

Matteo was the president of the school sprint club, so he had to take part in the game.

However, I didn't come for Matteo today.

I ignored Vittoria and walked straight to the bleacher. Seeing this, Salvatore finally reacted. He let go of Vittoria's hand and strode to me, and the nearest enforcer straightened without being told.

With sarcasm in his tone, he asked, "Adriana, didn't you say you were not Matteo's mom anymore? Then why are you here?"

I didn't want to waste my time chatting with Salvatore.

I just said, "Please don't stand next to me. I don't want others to misunderstand us."

"Misunderstand what?" Salvatore was confused.

I briefly explained, "Misunderstand that we are still a couple."

Upon hearing this, Salvatore was first stunned, and then his face gradually turned sullen. His thumb, which had been turning the wedding band in slow circles, went still.

He gritted his teeth. "Adriana, don't try to provoke me."

I didn't understand what he meant.

At this moment, I was just excitedly waving to Chiara who was on the runway.

Matteo stood only about 16 feet away from Chiara. I knew he saw me.

He obviously thought I was waving at him, otherwise, he wouldn't have shown disgust and disdain on his face. It was the same look the whole Family wore for common blood.

As the gun went off, the boys and girls started running at the same time.

To my surprise, Chiara actually ran very fast.

But unexpectedly, Matteo, who had always been outstanding, fell halfway through the race.

As soon as the race ended, Salvatore and I both ran towards the racetrack.

Salvatore was faster than me and strode to Matteo's side first, solemnly inquiring the school doctor about Matteo's injuries.

The school doctor was about to speak, but Salvatore made a pause gesture.

Then, he turned his face and looked at me unhappily. I was standing not far away from him, texting with my head down.

He asked with a frown, "Adriana, what are you doing there? Can't you see that your son is injured?"

Salvatore's reprimand attracted the attention of the surrounding teachers and students. The playground went quieter, the way a room does when the Don raises his voice.

I put away my phone and looked at Matteo, whose lips were pale, expressionless.

Matteo's knees were broken and swollen, covered in blood.

His left ankle joint was twisted.

Matteo instinctively reached out to me in pain, looking at me with helplessness in his eyes. His fingers closed around his own wrist, gripping it white the wrist I once held to cross him over the street.

But I found it a bit funny.

I sneered in my heart, What does this have to do with me?

Just as Matteo wrote in his composition last year, he had grown up.

In his eyes, I was just a mediocre and useless mother, a woman with dirt still under her nails from the hills, who only knew how to cook and mend at home. I couldn't even play a complete piano piece. He didn't need me or my care at all.

Under the crowd's gazes, I walked past Matteo directly and went to the girls with a smile on my face, embracing Chiara excitedly.

I praised, "Chiara, you did an amazing job. Congratulations on winning the silver medal."

Chiara rose onto the balls of her feet, unable to keep both heels down, grinning up at me.

"Let's go, sweetie. Your mom's waiting outside in her car. She said she'd take us to have the seafood feast. That's what you've been wanting to eat, right?"

I walked out of the campus in a relaxed and happy mood. As soon as I got in the car, Salvatore called me.

I didn't want to answer the call.

But Salvatore sent me a message. [It's about our severance.]

So, when we arrived at the restaurant, I asked Francesca to take Chiara in first. I would join them later.

It had been two months, and this was the first time I took the initiative to call Salvatore.

I waited only half a second, and Salvatore picked up the phone. His voice came from the other end, sounding somewhat frustrated.

"Adriana, where are you now?"

"No matter where I am, you can directly tell me when you have time to go to the courthouse." I sounded very calm.

Salvatore fell silent for a moment.

After calming down a little, he said in a softened tone, "You need to come to the hospital first. Matteo is seriously injured and may not be able to take part in the race in the future. In short, the doctor wants to discuss something with us."

"Oh, he can't take part in the race anymore, huh? That's fine. You don't need to tell me about such a trifle."

Salvatore couldn't believe what I had just said.

"Adriana, how can you say that? You're Matteo's mother!"

I leaned back against the soft pillow in the back seat of the car.

Then, I replied calmly, "Salvatore, it was you who called Matteo to the study in the first place. It was you who asked him to tell me in person who he wanted to live with in the future. He chose you because I was just an outsider to your Family.

"Why do you behave as if I'm the one who ditched him?

"Don't you think you and your son are very contradictory and ridiculous?"

Salvatore fell into a long silence again.

When I thought he was deliberately ignoring me, he spoke again.