His Mistress Killed My Baby, So I Killed His Throne

After I lost the child, I often lay awake until the sky went gray at the windows of the Falcone estate, and my condition kept getting worse.

My husband took me to a specialist the Family kept on retainer, a quiet man in a quiet office, who said it was the grief of a lost pregnancy settling into something darker.

"How is it treated?"

"Plenty of company from family"

The doctor hadn't finished when Salvatore Falcone's phone started buzzing against the polished table.

I saw his little courier's photo light up the screen.

He was on his feet before he knew it, one hand already smoothing his tie flat.

"Admit her. The best rooms, the best machines, whatever it costs. I want her nerves put right, no matter what."

Then he turned back to me, as if he owed me the courtesy of an explanation.

"If I weren't bringing you here, I'd never have sent the girl out on Family business alone."

"Gemma Vitale's stranded at the club in the rain right now. I have to go for her myself."

"You stay here and get well like a good girl. The moment you're better, I'll be the first one through that door to bring you home."

He left in such a rush he gave me no chance to speak.

He seemed to have forgotten that I fell and lost the baby because Gemma spilled a bowl of hot soup across my feet at Sunday dinner.

And now, for her sake, he was arranging to have a doctor treat me like something broken and inconvenient, the kind of woman the Family quietly buries in a private sanatorium.

In that moment, I finally understood: the child I'd fought so hard to carry meant nothing beside carrying an umbrella out to his courier.

"Mrs. Falcone, there's really no need to admit you. I can prescribe something so you won't lie awake all night."

"Once your body has recovered, you can try the treatments again."

The doctor had watched Salvatore brush me aside, and he offered his advice with genuine kindness, keeping his voice low the way men do in that house.

"No need for the medicine. And I won't be doing the treatments anymore."

The doctor looked a little startled.

"You're stopping? Then you and Mr. Falcone may find it very hard to have a child in this lifetime"

"If we don't, we don't."

I had plenty of ways to have a child. After all, the one who couldn't sire one wasn't me. It was Salvatore, with his severe infertility. In a bloodline where the throne passes only through true blood, it was the kind of flaw that ends a man.

For the sake of his pride, and to keep his place as successor to the Falcone throne, I had never told him the truth.

I had even quietly paid the family doctor to draw a sample under the cover of a routine checkup.

After more than two hundred injections, the doctor finally cultivated a single child for us.

And in the end, the child I'd struggled so hard to conceive was gone the day after it was confirmed, thanks to his courier, Gemma.

The doctor said that getting even one child from Salvatore was a miracle, and he couldn't promise the miracle would come twice.

So what I'd lost was most likely the only child we would ever have.

And what he was about to lose was his claim to the Falcone throne.

For a man in his world, that was a fatal blow.

How laughable, that I'd worried myself sick for his sake while he slept soundly through every night.

And still had the energy to run an umbrella out to his little courier.

If he wasn't the least bit worried about the seat beneath him, why should I be the one sweating over it for him?

Once I saw it all clearly, the knot of resentment lodged in my chest dissolved completely.

Walking out of the doctor's office, I called a consigliere and asked him to draw up the terms that would end our union.

I'd barely gotten back to the estate when my mother-in-law seized my hand, twisting the heavy ring on her right one, her fury barely held in check.

"Your father-in-law has his counselor drafting a pact right now to sign thirty percent of everything over to that bastard's name! All because that woman is carrying twins for him!"

"You give me a straight answer this minute. When exactly can you and Salvatore give this family another child!"

"Otherwise the next head of the Falcone Family is going to be that bastard, and soon!"

The bastard she meant was the Old Don's disowned true-blood son, Lorenzo Falcone.

I smiled a little and told her softly,

"Regina, he and I. We can't have children"

Before I could get to the part about wanting out of the marriage, her face turned grave, and her fist closed hard over that ring.

"Since you can't have them, then let the one who can!"

I froze for a beat, then let out a soft laugh.

"Fine. As long as it makes the two of you happy."

My mother-in-law, who'd been coiled tight with fury a moment ago, suddenly broke into a light, breezy smile. She twisted the heavy ring on her right hand, one slow rotation, the way she always did when the numbers were falling in her favor.

"Adriana Rossi, I told you I'm never wrong about people!"

"Once Gemma has the baby, we'll let you raise it! Consider it a reward for being so generous!"

It took me a long moment to catch up. Gemma was pregnant.

I hurried to open the message on my phone.

After I lost the baby, Lorenzo had sent me word telling me to take a good, long look at exactly what kind of animal Salvatore really was.

At the time the child was slipping out of me, and given which side of the blood Lorenzo stood on, I'd assumed he was only trying to drive a wedge between us. I hadn't even opened the attachment.

Now, with trembling hands, I opened it.

It was a ledger. Every hotel Gemma had charged to the Family's laundered accounts over the past year, courier's expenses signed off without a blink.

More than half of those dates lined up exactly with Salvatore's business trips out of the city.

So while I bled through every ordeal just so Salvatore could have an heir to hand the throne, he'd been keeping his courier warm behind my back the whole time.

Only, was the child in Gemma's belly really Salvatore's?

The doctor had told me plainly. Salvatore's chance of putting a child in a woman naturally was zero. In this world, that single fact could unmake a bloodline's claim to everything.

The thought pulled a scornful laugh out of me before I could stop it.

But Regina took it for me forcing down my grief and putting on a brave face.

She caught my hand and gentled her voice.

"Adriana, I know this is hard to swallow right now. For Salvatore's sake, just bear it a little longer. Once he's confirmed successor and the Commission ratifies him as heir to the Falcone throne, you can deal with Gemma however you like."

"You know I hate a kept woman more than anything. But circumstances change..."

She and Salvatore really were mother and son.

Once, Salvatore had told me the man he despised most in this world was the kind who cheated.

He'd sworn to me he would never become the man his father was.

And what came of that?

Now he was doing exactly what the old Don had done, letting the kept woman carry the first child.

And Regina Falcone, the very woman who'd once swallowed all that pain and humiliation herself, was sitting here telling me to just bear it.

She was welcome to play the endless martyr. I couldn't stand another second of it.

Once she'd gone, I got the Counselor on the phone.

"Redraw the terms. I want him walking away from this union with nothing."

When Salvatore came back, Gemma was trailing at his heel.

She wore his suit jacket around her shoulders, her face flushed and rosy, not looking the least bit like a woman who'd been caught in the rain.

Salvatore steered her to stand in front of me and spoke, all contrition.

"Adriana, Mom told me you're happy that Gemma and I are having the baby. Happy enough that even your illness lifted on its own. If I'd known, I'd never have kept it from you!"

But there wasn't a trace of a cheater's guilt anywhere on his face.

It made me sick enough to gag.

At once he softened into concern.

"Adriana, if you're not feeling well, don't push yourself..."

I put the terms of my release straight into his hand.

"Sign this, and I'll be completely cured."

He glanced down at the pages, and his eyes filled with shock. His fingers went to his tie, straightening a knot that was already straight.

"Repudiate the union?"

"I won't agree to it..."

Before he could finish, Gemma sneezed.

His brows knit together in an instant, and his tone toward me turned flat with impatience.

"Gemma got caught in the rain at the club because of you today. She nearly lost the baby."

"If you've got any conscience left in you, don't make a scene at a time like this."

When I went down and lost our child, when the blood soaked my white dress red to the hem, he'd stood over Gemma and called it an accident and told me to be generous.

Now Gemma sneezes once, and I'm the one guilty of some crime beyond forgiving.

Love, and the absence of it, laid itself bare in that single moment.

But some stubborn thing in me made me hold his eyes and ask the question I knew would only humiliate me.

"Salvatore, our baby is gone. Aren't you really, truly not sad at all?"

He paused for a second, his voice dripping with impatience.

"I already told you it was an accident. Why do you keep dragging it up?"

"There'll be another baby soon enough, won't there? You don't even have to carry it yourself!"

Gemma cupped her belly and chimed in with a smile, her hand going flat and possessive against the swell of it.

"Ma'am, the doctor said it's because your health is just so poor that a little fall was enough to make you miscarry."

"Once my baby is born, I'll hand it over to you to raise. Call it my way of making it up to you."

Salvatore didn't contradict her. He handed me a folded set of papers, the kind the Family used when they needed a story that would hold up in front of the old Don.

"You'll go live in the house outside Palermo with Gemma for a few months. We'll put it out that you fell pregnant again and went abroad to keep the pregnancy safe."

"Once you've looked after Gemma and she's delivered the baby, we'll set it down as ours in the blood."

"Then my father won't have anything to fear, not even with Lorenzo's twins in the running for the throne."

He actually wanted me to wait on Gemma through her entire pregnancy.

And then wait on her through her recovery after.

I looked at the man in front of me, my expression cold.

I couldn't fathom how he could say all this as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

But I asked nothing.

I only spoke, calmly.

"Are you sure Gemma's baby is even yours?"

"Of course it's mine. And she caught the first time, too, unlike you"

Salvatore offered no explanation for how the two of them had a baby at all. He tugged once at the knot of his tie, then ordered me with plain distaste.

"Go to the kitchen and make Gemma a bowl of soup to chase off the chill. She caught cold today."

I didn't move.

He glared at me for a full minute, and when he was certain I wouldn't go, he simply turned and walked into the kitchen himself.

I stared at his back, too stunned to speak.

Back when he doted on me most, he'd said he would only ever cook for one person his whole life, and that was me. In a house where soldiers were fed by other hands and even the matriarch was served, that had meant something.

Even Regina had never tasted anything he'd made.

And yet now, Gemma, too, could make him do it with his own hands.

I pulled my gaze back and let the corner of my mouth curve.

I reached over to stop the video recording on my phone.

Whether or not the baby was Salvatore's, everything I'd just captured was more than enough to leave him with nothing. In a world where blood was the only currency that bought the throne, a man passing off another man's child was a crime the Family answered in one language only.

Gemma suddenly leaned in and held her check-up slip from the doctor up to my face.

The date on it was three days before I lost my child.

In that instant I knew for certain: she had spilled that bowl of chicken soup at my feet on purpose.

Before I could open my mouth to confront her, she leaned in close to my ear with a smile.

"Ma'am, you really are useless. You couldn't even hold on to your own baby."

"If you knew your place, you'd actually let him repudiate the union and step aside, instead of taking up space you can't use!"

I knew she was waiting for me to lose my temper, waiting for me to lay a hand on her.

Then she could put on her whole wounded-victim act.

But I swallowed my anger and didn't move. My thumb pressed flat against the base of my ring finger, bracing against something already gone.

I needed this baby to turn Salvatore into a laughingstock before the whole Family.

"I have no interest in performing with the two of you. Get him to sign the terms, and you'll have exactly what you want. Otherwise, I don't mind letting him know you caused my miscarriage on purpose."

Seeing that I was recording, Gemma wasn't the least bit rattled. If anything, she looked smug.

"As if you'd ever be willing to let him go? Playing hard to get might work on Salvatore, but it won't work on me."

"Go on, guess. Is Salvatore going to believe you, or me?"

Then she deliberately threw herself backward onto the floor and cried out at me.

"Ma'am, all I did was beg you not to send those private photos you took of me around. Why would you shove me?"

Salvatore heard her scream and came bolting out of the kitchen.

Gemma, meanwhile, crawled and knelt in front of me, weeping.

"Ma'am, please, I'm begging you"

Salvatore scrambled to help Gemma up and looked her over from head to toe.

Then he turned to me, his eyes full of fury.

"Adriana! Have you lost your mind? Give me your phone!"

I watched the two of them, one performing, one shielding her, and my calm was terrifying.

"Whatever you say it is, it is!"

Only then did Salvatore sense something was off. His hand went to his cuff, straightening it. He softened his tone and asked me.

"What did you record?"

I had just drawn the phone from my pocket when Gemma tore herself out of Salvatore's arms, sobbing until she choked on the words.

"Signora, is it because you don't want the baby in my belly that you'd hurt me?"

Salvatore snatched the phone from my hand and slammed it hard against the marble.

"Adriana! This child is going to call you 'mother' someday. How could you raise a hand against your own blood? Just because it isn't yours?"

The screen went black in an instant.

But Gemma still wasn't satisfied. She lurched to her feet and bolted for the door.

"Since the Signora doesn't want it, I'll go be rid of the baby right now!"

She hadn't even crossed the threshold before she crumpled to the floor.

Only then did I notice the thin slick of oil by the door, though I couldn't say when it had gotten there.

Gemma clutched her belly and cried out.

"Why is the floor so slippery"

Salvatore saw the oil too. His head snapped around toward me, and he roared.

"Adriana! How can you be this vicious? How many times do I have to say it. Gemma only spilled that broth the other day because the bowl was too hot!"

A flash of triumph crossed Gemma's eyes as she gripped her belly and sucked in a sharp breath. Her hand went flat and possessive against the swell of it, nothing tender in the gesture at all.

"Ah, my stomach hurts so much"

Sick with worry, Salvatore scooped her up and carried her straight out toward the doctor the Family kept on retainer.

Before he left, he didn't forget to say to me, cold as ice:

"You'd better pray Gemma and the baby are fine."

"Otherwise I won't let you off."

I stood where I was.

Staring at the shattered screen in pieces on the floor.

And then I laughed out loud.

He was right. My baby was gone. I shouldn't let him and Gemma off the hook.

I carried the dead, cracked phone to a man who fixed such things quietly, and thank God, everything on it could be recovered.

The consigliere I had quietly retained watched the recording and said I could walk away from Salvatore with everything, and leave him with nothing. He steepled his fingers and tapped the tips together, slow and certain.

And that I could make Gemma answer for the harm done to my body.

"Then I'll leave it in your hands, Consigliere Greco."

The phone buzzed. It was Lorenzo reaching out.

"Do you really intend to spend the rest of your life wasting away over some child of unknown blood?"

I couldn't help freezing.

"Aren't you the one who's actually"

Lorenzo cut me off and told me a story.

It turned out that Lorenzo's mother, Carmela Greco, had been Vittorio Falcone's true first wife.

To help Vittorio raise the Family from nothing, she had poured in every cent her people had.

But once Vittorio's name carried weight in the city, he tricked Carmela into signing away the union with the lie that it was only paper, a formality to move property, then turned around and took Salvatore's mother, already pregnant, into his house.

Carmela later learned the truth and went to demand an answer for herself and for Lorenzo, only to be branded a kept woman and slandered by my mother-in-law.

The truth was the complete opposite of everything my mother-in-law had ever told me.

For a moment I didn't know who to believe.

Lorenzo read straight through what my silence meant and let out a sigh.

"It's fine if you don't believe me. I just don't want to watch you end up like my mother, played for a fool by a man with no honor in him."

I went and had it confirmed right away.

And the moment I knew that everything Lorenzo said was true, Salvatore came back.

He seized my wrist and dragged me off toward the doctor by force.

"Apologize to Gemma!"

"I did nothing wrong!"

His eyes were full of disappointment.

"You nearly killed her baby!"

"Adriana, when you turn into someone like this, how am I supposed to keep living under the same roof with you?"

When Gemma had let my baby die right in front of me, he hadn't offered a single word of blame, let alone made her answer to me.

I lifted my head and looked at him, and I smiled.

"Then let's not keep living together."

He was stunned for a moment, then said with a cold face, one hand rising to straighten a tie that didn't need it:

"Your parents' atelier lives under the Falcone protection. The day you repudiate this union, they lose everything."

My parents' work was the labor of their whole lives.

Back when Salvatore was courting me, he had handed the Family's protection pact to the Rossi name of his own accord.

I thought it was love.

I thought he cared for my people.

Only now do I understand that with that pact in his hands, it was simply the leverage he held over my throat.

Seeing me stay silent, he finally softened his tone.

He crossed the room and reached out to touch my hair. The old estate was quiet around us, the kind of quiet that only settled when a man was used to no one refusing him inside his own walls.

I turned my head away.

He didn't get angry. He pulled his hand back and sighed, then reached up and smoothed his tie flat against his chest.

"Just cooperate, and your father's atelier stays under Falcone protection. The pact holds. No one touches the Rossi name."

"Gemma's baby will be yours once it's born. You won't have to worry about a thing."

"You get to be a mother without going through nine months of it. Aren't I good enough to you?"

So that was what he called being good to me.

I looked into his eyes, the eyes that once held nothing but tenderness when they looked at me.

Now there was only calculation and entitlement in them.

I said nothing.

He wasn't wrong. My father's business survived because the Falcone Family let it survive.

But if I put a different heir on that throne, the threat above our heads would cease to exist.

I sent Lorenzo a message beneath the table, my thumb pressed flat against the bare base of my ring finger.

I can help you take back everything that belongs to you. But I have one condition.

The moment it reached him, Lorenzo fired back:

I'm across the water. I'll be back tomorrow. We talk then, in full.

With his reply in hand, I looked at Salvatore with resolve and said it again:

"Repudiate the union."

Confusion flickered through Salvatore's eyes, and an uneasiness he couldn't explain settled in his chest.

"Adriana, I've never once thought about casting you out..."

Gemma's face went pale all at once, and she asked me through tears, one hand sliding flat and possessive across her stomach:

"Signora, why won't you just let me go?"

Salvatore glanced at her phone, then lifted his own and spoke low to the Don's hand waiting beyond the door.

"Send them up."

Something felt wrong. The garlic and old leather smell of the house turned to something colder. I stood, ready to leave.

But Salvatore stepped into my path, and his fingers went to his cuff, twisting it straight.

"Selling a woman's private photographs to the wrong people is a serious matter, cara. Ugly business."

"For the sake of you carrying my name, I'll smooth it over with Gemma so she lets it lie. But this sickness of yours needs proper care. Somewhere quiet."

The words had barely left his mouth when four men came through the door. Soldiers. They moved the way soldiers move, without hurry, because they already knew how this ended.

"Signora. You'll forgive us. You need to come with us."

I refused with everything I had, and Salvatore's face darkened as he said, cold and even:

"Adriana. It's too late to be frightened now. I know you're not well. That's the only reason you'd do something so vicious."

"Don't worry. I've already spoken with the man who runs the place. Cooperate, and you'll be home soon."

The four enforcers closed in and pinned my arms.

I struggled with all my strength, and it was useless.

Salvatore took the chance to snatch away my phone, sliding it into his own pocket without looking at me, straightening his tie again with his free hand.

As they dragged me out through the silent hall, past men who kept their eyes low because omert meant you saw nothing when the underboss buried someone, Gemma mouthed the words at me:

"You lost."

At the sanatorium the Family kept for people it needed to disappear, two women in white forced a glass of water down my throat.

Within minutes, my arms and legs began to go weak.

They dragged me to a chair and strapped down my hands and feet.

The drug took hold fast, and as the treatment went on, step by step, I sank into blackness completely.