Nine Years Raising His Mistress’s Sons, One Day I Walked Away

At the sit-down where they blessed the union, Lorenzo Falcone held the twin sons of his dead first love in his arms and asked me, in front of the whole famiglia, for my understanding.

Adriana gave her life for these boys. I cannot let them grow without a mother. Serafina, are you not the gentlest soul in this house?

Under the eyes of every capo present, I nodded, my face pale.

A year later, my hand resting gently on my pregnant belly, I watched Lorenzo Falcone's face change.

"Get rid of it. I gave Adriana my word we'd wait three years before any child of ours."

"You're still young. We'll have our own later."

But in the eight years that followed, I never carried again.

I raised those twins as though the blood in them were mine.

Until the evening I came home early to make ready for their birthday, and found Adriana, the woman I had mourned as dead, folded sweetly into Lorenzo's arms.

"All it took was Lorenzo switching out her medicine, and Serafina spent nine years a woman kept in this house without a name."

Their laughter carried through the rooms while Lorenzo stroked Adriana's belly.

"This is what she earns for stealing the union that was yours."

"Nine years of a honeymoon should settle the debt of faking your death. With her doing the raising, we had the years to travel, and now we're expecting our third."

By the tall windows, their shadows braided together in the moonlight.

I was shut out of the estate the whole night, shivering on the stone as I made a call.

"Help me renounce this union before the Family, and I'll agree to your terms."

When I stepped inside, the noisy talk cut off all at once. The way they looked at me made me feel like an outsider who had walked past the wrong door.

Lorenzo's expression froze for a second. "You're back? Good. Go make up the guest room."

"You see, Adriana's back too. There was an accident, years ago, and now the sisters are together again. She stays here."

The others were quick to fall in behind him.

"Sister, you took the union out from under her once. You won't begrudge her a roof now, will you?"

"Everyone always took Adriana for the true wife of this house. If you hadn't slipped in between, how would a girl from the orphanage ever have carried the Falcone name?"

Then their eyes settled on the ruined birthday cake in my hands.

"Look at that. She has the nerve to walk in with a smashed cake. What did anyone expect. Not real blood of this family anyway."

"Orphanage girl. No manners in her."

I held my breath, ready to answer. But Adriana suddenly knelt on the floor in front of me.

"Sister, I wronged you before. You have every right to hate me."

Her fingers pressed delicately to her collarbone, tapping once, too fast, against her own skin before the tears came.

"But now, I only want to be near the boys. Please. Just let me live."

She wept like some fragile flower, and Lorenzo's eyes filled with pain. "Serafina, hurry and get the guest room ready. The past is the past."

The past. Climbing the stairs, I turned those three words over and over in my head.

When we were girls, she starved me down to skin and bone.

Later, she stole my work and swore before everyone that I was the cheat. She even framed the woman who took me in from the orphanage, left her buried under a debt she'd never asked for. Could all of it truly be waved off as "the past"?

When I pushed open the door, my heart nearly stopped. The twins were tearing apart the photograph of the woman who had raised me.

"Matteo! Marco! Let go of that!"

I rushed toward them, and one of them stuck out a foot. I went down hard against the floor.

The photograph had already come apart, and still they stamped on the pieces.

"Bleh! You're not getting it back!"

"You're the old mommy! Time for the new mommy!"

They laughed as they stamped, and the little clay charm at my throat, the one I'd shaped with my own hands on a month-long pilgrimage in Beaufort, swung against my skin, mocking every foolish hope I'd ever hung on it.

Marco tipped his chin up, holding my eyes too long, and sprayed something rose-scented straight at my face.

My breath caught. My skin went hot and red.

Within a minute my throat was swelling shut. I couldn't breathe.

Curled on the floor, I saw Matteo holding my allergy medicine. I begged him. "Matteo, give Mommy the medicine. Please."

Matteo smirked, dangled the little vial in front of me, then flicked it away with two fingers, tossing it into the bathroom trash.

"Come get it yourself."

I stumbled forward in desperation, my throat closing tighter with every breath.

Suddenly, they clutched their faces and burst into loud sobs.

"Papa, Mama just hit us!"

When I turned my head, I saw clear handprints on their cheeks.

Adriana rushed over and slapped me hard, her rings catching my cheekbone. "Sister, how could you strike the children?"

"You'd fake a fit just to dodge blame, to buy Lorenzo's pity? How could you treat him this way, in his own house?"

I gritted my teeth through the pain and looked at Lorenzo.

"I... didn't... I really am allergic..."

My face was so swollen I could barely speak. A small smirk tugged at the corner of Adriana's lips.

She was the only one who knew I was allergic to roses.

"Enough."

He told his soldier to bring me the medicine. For a second, I felt a flicker of warmth.

"You believe me? I really didn't"

His cold voice cut me off.

"Giving you the medicine is only so you don't die and make a mess I have to clean up."

"Stop pretending, Serafina. Do you really think the boys would lie about this?" He smoothed the lapel of his jacket with a single flat stroke of his palm, the way he always did before he was cruel and called it reason.

He locked me in a room, saying it was for reflection.

After a full day and night without food, his soldier arrived with a dress.

"Madam, the Boss is holding a sit-down to welcome Miss Vitale back to the Family. Your presence is required."

Clutching my aching stomach, I weakly shook my head.

"I'm not going."

The soldier tossed the dress down carelessly onto the floor.

"The Boss said if you don't come, you'd best start worrying about your adoptive father..."

He didn't need to finish his sentence. I already understood.

Using Don Vitale, the man who raised me and now lay dying, had always been their leash on me.

When I arrived at the sit-down in that dress, I realized it was an old white gown, yellowed with age and stained with faint traces of blood.

"Who's that? Dressed so cheap."

"Oh, that's Serafina. The one who crawled into the young Falcone's bed and stole her sister's arranged union."

The murmurs moved through the room like smoke, and I understood right away that this was exactly what Lorenzo wanted.

He wanted every made man and their wife to see how far beneath Adriana I sat.

Just then, Adriana came down the staircase hand-in-hand with Lorenzo.

The butterflies stitched across her gown sparkled under the chandeliers, and Lorenzo smiled the warm smile he never once turned on me.

"Adriana deserves all the most beautiful things in this world."

The twins ran to her, eyes shining.

"Mama, you're so pretty."

Lorenzo looked at me on purpose, letting the room feel the shift.

"Well? Aren't you going to pour the drinks?"

Every head turned toward me. The girl serving beside me hesitated, glancing between us.

"Boss, we're the ones who pour for the"

Lorenzo sipped his wine and said it casually, the way he said everything that cut deepest.

"She enjoys serving people. Isn't that right?"

I stiffened. The threat sat under the calm of his voice, plain as a blade left on the table.

"Gutter-born girls love to serve, don't they?"

"Look at her. Pathetic. Not fit to carry Adriana's shoes across the floor."

The laughter rang in my ears, sharp and pleased.

Shame burning through me, I picked up the bottle and followed behind Lorenzo, pouring wine and setting plates before men who watched me like a stray let in from the cold.

Adriana couldn't hold back her laugh.

"I heard sister used to work tables in some restaurant. No wonder she's so skilled at this."

Lorenzo sneered. "That's all she's good for."

Adriana walked up to me, glass raised.

"Sister, I'd like to make a toast. Thank you for raising the children these past nine years."

Instinctively, I looked at Lorenzo. He was the first who ever learned how badly wine poisoned me.

But he just looked at me coldly.

"Are you deaf or blind? Drink it."

My hands trembled as I reached for the glass, but Adriana let go on purpose. Red wine spilled all over my head.

My hair clung to my scalp, soaked and sticky, carrying a sour, unpleasant smell.

"You!"

I glared at Adriana in fury.

The twins clapped and laughed.

"Drenched rat! So gross!"

Marco flicked his fingers, and something small skittered across the marble toward me, a little toy that gave off electric shocks.

"No!"

A jolt of electricity shot through me.

I crashed into a table and fell to the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Somewhere behind me a soldier shifted his weight, hand drifting toward his jacket, then going still. No one at the Vitale feast moved to help the girl on the floor.

"Help me, it hurts!"

I cried out in pain. The carpet burned black where I had fallen. Foam bubbled at my lips as my body twitched.

Lorenzo looked truly shocked and started to step forward to cut the power.

But Adriana suddenly covered her mouth, pretending to be horrified. Her fingers tapped once against her collarbone, too fast, before the tears came.

"Sister, did you just wet yourself?"

Gasps spread across the room. Guests in their pressed dinner jackets stepped back, covering their noses like something reeked, the way men in this world learn to look away from a thing that is already dead.

My mind went blank from the shame.

"You what are you saying?"

Adriana pouted. "Look at the floor yourself! What a mess!"

"You've never even given birth and you're already that loose? Did you cheat on Lorenzo with someone else?"

Just then two enforcers crossed the room and finally shut off the current.

But I had already lost control again. Lying there on the floor, soaked and shaking, all I wanted was to disappear.

Lorenzo's expression turned pitch black as if he wanted to tear me apart. He smoothed the lapel of his jacket with one flat downward stroke of his palm.

"Serafina, you're damn disgusting!"

"You're a grown woman and can't even control your bladder!"

Trembling, I tried to get up.

"I didn't. It was them"

I looked toward the twins, but Adriana had already taken them and disappeared into the crowd of made men and their painted wives.

Three days later, the whisper moved through every social club and back room the Family touched: [The Falcone Bride Fouls Herself at the Sit-Down]. In this world you do not print such things. You let them travel by mouth, and that is worse.

"This woman is disgusting."

"She probably slept around so much she can't hold it in anymore."

My name, my whereabouts, everything private about me was passed to the wrong hands, and the calls never stopped.

I broke down crying more than once and had no choice but to try reaching Lorenzo for help. But his consigliere blocked me at the door of the office above the front business.

"What did you just say?"

Blood pooled under my tongue as I bit down in shock, eyes wide.

The consigliere sneered.

"The Don said your kind reminded him of gutter women from nowhere, used up, worthless. He's gone to the doctor to see whether you left something on him."

My chest tightened sharply.

I couldn't even speak.

So in his eyes, I was already nothing but trash. A woman kept in the Family house without rank, without name, without blood that counted.

"Miss Vitale, you're here!"

The consigliere's tone instantly shifted, the way a man's voice bends toward the one who actually holds the power. That's when I saw Adriana strutting in on her high heels, the whole room straightening a little around her.

"Serafina, you still have the nerve to show up?"

"If I were you, I'd have already bashed my head in from the shame."

I knew then, this was all her doing.

"Why?" I asked, my voice shaking.

Back then, she was the one who wanted out of the union with Lorenzo. She had drugged me and staged it to look like I'd tried to steal the engagement and crawl into his bed.

Adriana acted like she'd just heard the funniest thing.

"Blame your own stupidity."

"This was the only way to make Lorenzo think about me forever."

She lifted my chin with a smirk.

"You didn't know, did you? For the past nine years, he's spent every feast day with me. Your anniversaries, the holy days, the New Year, he was in my bed."

"Do you know how good that felt?"

She looked me up and down.

"He told me that every time he touched you, it felt worse than handling a dirty rag."

My vision blurred with rage.

"Then why did you push my foster mother into debt?"

Adriana casually slid on her sunglasses, completely unbothered.

"Because she was stupid. The moment word reached her that something had happened to you, she went and borrowed against everything she had."

"Serafina, let me make this plain. As long as I draw breath, don't even dream of the Vitale name being yours again. And forget about ever standing beside Lorenzo."

"You!"

I stared at her, helpless.

Adriana dropped to the floor without warning, crying out in pain.

"Lorenzo, my stomach... it hurts so bad..."

Blood began to pool between her legs, dark against the marble.

Lorenzo came out of his study fast, and the moment he saw her on the ground he crossed the room and slapped me across the face.

"Serafina, how can you be so cruel!"

"Hear me. If anything happens to Adriana, I'll never forgive you."

At the private clinic the Family kept for men who couldn't be seen bleeding in public hospitals, panic filled Lorenzo's bloodshot eyes. I had never seen him like that.

"Doctor, save her. I can't live without her."

"Name your price. Whatever it costs, save her."

Watching him come apart, I finally asked the question I had buried for so long.

"Lorenzo, aren't I your wife?"

"You said I pushed her. Did you even look at the cameras your own men keep on every door?"

Tears streamed down my cheeks.

Lorenzo went still. Maybe because he had never seen me cry like that.

Then his hand closed around my throat.

"Don't play innocent with me now."

"If I hadn't wanted Adriana jealous, do you think I'd have ever taken you as a bride?"

The door swung open and a nurse stood there, white-faced.

"Family of Adriana? We couldn't save the baby, and the mother is losing too much blood. She's in critical condition."

The moment the words left her mouth, Lorenzo drove his foot hard into my stomach.

A sudden warmth spread between my legs.

I reached down. Blood.

"Lorenzo..."

I clutched my stomach, my face going pale.

"I think I'm pregnant. Please, get a doctor..."

He slapped me across the face.

"Even now you're still trying to work me?"

"Then hear the truth of it. Those pills I handed you? They were never to stop a child. They ended them. I switched them myself. I only ever wanted a woman to keep the house and raise his sons. Nothing more."

"The doctor already told me your body will never carry."

I looked up, stunned.

"You... How could you..."

So all those years I never conceived. It was because he made certain of it.

I laughed, and then I broke into tears.

"Who in Adriana's family is B blood type? Quickly, we're losing her!"

The nurse's voice shook. Lorenzo looked around the corridor, then his eyes locked onto mine.

"You're B type, aren't you."

"She's B type. Take her blood. Take all you need."

I grabbed his sleeve, shock cold in my chest.

"No. Lorenzo, I'm pregnant. If you take my blood, the baby won't survive!"

The nurse saw the blood beneath me too. "This won't do. She's pregnant. We can't"

Lorenzo raised a hand and cut her off, then smoothed the lapel of his jacket with one flat downward stroke of his palm. "She's faking. Draw the blood."

He pulled a folded paper from inside his coat.

"Her consent, signed. As her husband, my name is on it. Whatever happens in that room, no one holds this clinic to account."

"I am Lorenzo Falcone. I care about one life, and it's behind that door."

The nurse hesitated a long moment, the weight of a name that could close a place like this settling over her.

"Then bring her in. Now."

Several of Lorenzo's men pinned me to the bed with hands that did not shake.

"No. Let me go!"

Pain twisted through my lower belly. Sweat blurred my vision.

Until I saw the faces of my mother and father swim up before me.

My eyes lit through the haze.

"Mamma, you came. Please, save me."

What met me was a hard slap from Donna Vitale.

"You heartless thing. You put Adriana in a bed like this. I will never forgive you."

Don Vitale drew the reading glasses from his face and folded them, one stem and then the other, slow and deliberate, before he looked at me the way a man looks at something already decided.

"You were drugged. There is no child in you. And still you raised a hand to Adriana. This is what your blood has earned you."

I squinted through the pain, and my heart sank all the way down.

So they had known I was drugged. All along.

By the fifth vial, I was already at the edge of shock.

The twins stood in the doorway, their eyes cold as the corridor tile.

"A woman with no rank stays a woman with no rank," Marco said, chin tipped up, holding my stare, waiting. "Don't you ever think you can stand in Mamma's place."

Beyond the operating room, Lorenzo was shouting like a man losing his mind.

"Adriana, hold on. The moment you come out of there safe, I marry you. Before the whole Family."

"Everything I have goes to Marco and Matteo. Everything."

"Don't leave. I love you. You can't leave me."

I thought I saw the shape of the woman who raised me in the orphanage, standing in the white.

"Mamma, is that you? Have you come to take me home?"

Donna Vitale heard it and rolled her eyes.

"Stupid girl, calling on the dead again. Come. I won't have her ruin touch me." She set her wine glass down on the counter without a sound.

The nurse turned the draw higher.

My body began to shake and I couldn't stop it, and the warmth drained out of my fingers.

Then the doors to the operating room burst open with a bang.

A voice I knew rang through the room.

"Serafina, don't die. I've come to take you home."