The heir to the Vitale family gave me thirty thousand dollars a month to be his mistress—all to get back at my mother.

I needed the money. And secretly, I’d always loved him. So I let him humiliate me.

Later, during a heavy snowfall, he made me kneel at the funeral of my love rival’s mother.

That was when I finally let go.

Enzo asked, “You think leaving New York will solve all your problems?”

I answered, “It won’t solve them, but at least I won’t have to see you.”

For that, he trashed the immigration agency that was helping me leave the country.

Enzo Vitale hated my mother with a passion.

It started when he was sixteen.

He and the school’s golden girl, Valentina Ross, were accused of bullying and drug use. The scandal ripped through every private high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

My mother was the academic dean.

She ran the school with an iron fist, especially when it came to student conduct.

So she gave them a public reprimand. She even posted the written notice on the main bulletin board at the school entrance, where every parent, tourist, and Upper East Side socialite could see it.

She wrote: “Enzo Vitale and Valentina Ross have displayed extremely improper behavior—not only bullying classmates but also skipping school to do drugs in a hotel room.”

Except they hadn’t.

They never bullied anyone. They never did drugs.

Classmates could have testified: they’d just cut class to go watch Roman Holiday at the AMC theater.

But my mother stood by her decision.

She’d always treated problem students like dangerous pests—better to kill a hundred innocent than let one guilty go, better to overcorrect than give them any breathing room.

Poor Valentina was whispered about endlessly. Some called her a slut. Someone even wrote worse things on her locker with a marker.

She was a good student with a clean record. Her reputation was destroyed.

Valentina’s mother was furious. One day she stormed into the school and yanked Valentina by the hair, demanding she withdraw.

I remember that day clearly.

The sun was blinding. My mother stood at the front of the classroom, her face stern, teaching.

Enzo burst out of the classroom and ran downstairs to save Valentina.

As he passed the classroom door, he shot my mother a vicious glare.

And then he glared at me, too.

The boy’s once-beautiful blue eyes were dark as a stormy sea, like a blade slicing into my heart.

Years later, he still looked at me that way in bed.

“Lucia Moretti,” he’d murmur, like a curse. “If your mother knew her sweet daughter was lying under me, my mistress… do you think she’d drop dead?”

I’d curl up in pain, tears blurring my vision.

He’d lean close and answer his own question: “No. Because she’s the one who put you here—to save her precious son.”

After I became Enzo’s mistress, he paid me thirty thousand dollars a month.

That was enough to keep my brother Marco’s dialysis going—ten times a month.

Marco had been diagnosed with uremia right after his college entrance exams. The treatment cost a fortune.

For my family, it was a thunderbolt.

My mother had already been fired from her dean job for bullying students. My father worked a blue‑collar job. There was no way we could afford it.

I’d just graduated from Hunter College with a degree in English literature. No high‑paying job in sight.

One day, my father texted me: “Lucia, you’re pretty and young. You should be able to attract a rich man. Your brother only has one life. Please save him.”

When I read that, my heart broke.

Because I was the older sister, I had to sacrifice myself?

I couldn’t believe a father could be like that.

No way.

But when I got home, all I heard was crying.

My mother sobbing, my father wailing.

Their silence screamed: We raised you for over twenty years. What’s a little sacrifice?

Marco was my own blood.

Could I really let him die?

So when Enzo texted me, “Thirty thousand a month. Plaza Hotel, suite 6908,” I replied with one word:

“Okay.”

The truth is, I didn’t become Enzo’s mistress just because of Marco.

There was also a kind of atonement.

For my mother’s sins. And for my own.

My sin: one spring in high school, I made the mistake of falling for him.

It was April. The plane trees in Manhattan were just budding.

We all wore the same dark blue blazers and khakis.

But Enzo Vitale in a crowd? Always the best‑looking.

Dark curly hair. Blue eyes like the Mediterranean. When he smiled, the corners of his eyes tilted up like they were holding starlight.

He was the heir to the Vitale crime family. I was just a dean’s daughter. I should have kept my distance.

But every time I saw him, those green shoots I’d tried to suppress grew wilder.

One PE class, free period. Enzo was playing basketball in the gym. I sat in the bleachers pretending to read a book, but I was watching him from the corner of my eye.

My palms were sweaty. I felt like I was sitting on a cloud.

Suddenly a cheer erupted from the court.

His team had just hit a three‑pointer.

I sat up straighter and glanced down—and my eyes met his.

For those few seconds, time stopped for me.

Then—thwack—a basketball hit the back of his head.

He winced, clutching his head. His handsome face scrunched up like an angry cat.

And he had no idea. He looked around nervously, hoping no one had seen.

Then he looked up at me in the bleachers and fake‑threatened: “Hey. You didn’t see anything, right?”

“Huh?” I hugged my book, dazed.

He grinned. His blue eyes curved into crescents, as if they’d gathered all the spring light in the world.

He lowered his voice and mimicked Men in Black:

“Forget what you just saw. One, two, three—bingo!”

He pointed his fingers like a memory‑eraser and pretended to shoot me.

Right in the heart.

I started a diary. I wrote down everything about Enzo Vitale.

His eyes. His laugh. His long fingers when he shot a basket. The way his collar sat open when he wore dark blue.

But my mother found my diary.

She screamed at me. Slapped me. Made me kneel for half the night.

After that, she began watching Enzo like a hawk.

In her eyes, he was a dangerous boy who would ruin my future.

So when the rumor spread that Enzo and Valentina were bullies, my mother struck without hesitation.

She came down on them hard.

She wanted to make an example. For me.

I knew she was warning me: study hard, or you’ll end up like them.

Valentina was bullied by my mother herself and eventually transferred schools.

Enzo became dark and silent.

His grades were brilliant. He could have gone to an Ivy. Instead, he gave up studying in the U.S. and went straight to LSE in London.

I vaguely knew his family was rich.

But I never imagined how rich.

The Morettis were just ordinary people from Brooklyn.

The Vitales? One of the most powerful Mafia families in New York.

Enzo’s father, Domenico Vitale, controlled port businesses up and down the East Coast.

My first job after graduation was at a publishing group—one that the Vitale family had invested in.

Then one day, he came to check on a new acquisition.

He was wearing a dark gray Zegna suit. Platinum and diamond cufflinks.

The boss and all the senior execs trailed behind him like planets around a sun.

He passed my desk and stopped.

“Lucia Moretti?”

I was so happy to see him again.

I looked up and smiled.

His next sentence dropped me into an abyss.

“Is your mother dead yet?”

After I became his mistress, he brought up my mother constantly.

“Lucia,” he’d say, “you think I’d be with you if I didn’t have to get back at her?”

I’d stay silent and take the humiliation quietly.

At noon I’d make his favorite pasta. At night I’d be his gentle lover.

I’d pre‑order the jazz vinyl he wanted. Maintain every suit, every watch, every cufflink, every tie.

I was practically his full‑time housekeeper.

My days were filled with him. Every morning I opened my eyes, there he was.

He took me on business trips, too.

I’d silently and efficiently manage everything for him.

Sometimes, while reading documents, he’d suddenly pull me onto his lap.

He’d bury his face in my hair and sigh softly: “So nice.”

Outside the window, Manhattan rain.

I’d almost believe we were in love.

I thought he must have feelings for me.

Why else would he kiss me in my sleep?

So soft and light on the corner of my eye—like a mark on my heart.

Why else would he call me obsessively every night I wasn’t there and demand we video‑chat to sleep?

Why else would he take me to Paris?

He held my hand down the Champs‑Élysées. A passerby asked in French what we were to each other. He glanced at me, blushing faintly, and said:

“C’est ma copine.”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

When he wasn’t thinking about the past, we were happy.

We could hold hands, hug, kiss, like any normal couple in the world.

But when the past came back—everything shattered.

“Lucia! Do you know how dirty this is? If I didn’t give you thirty grand a month, would you even stay?”

“Your mother never deserved to be a teacher! She ruined a girl’s reputation! She destroyed someone’s life!”

“Your parents don’t love you, don’t you know that? Why don’t you fight back? What I hate most about you is your spinelessness!”

When he got worked up, he’d pull me toward the bed.

I’d take his rage in silence, tears streaming down my face.

Afterward, he’d always apologize. “If only you weren’t her daughter,” he’d whisper.

Yeah.

Being my mother’s daughter was my original sin.

I thought if I atoned slowly, one day we’d reconcile.

Then Valentina Ross came back.

Valentina was gorgeous, bold, confident.

The total opposite of me.

I was meek, soft, always tiptoeing.

She was bright, generous, fearless.

After the school scandal, she transferred and studied art. Now she was a moderately famous painter in New York.

Some said her fame was bought by her husband—a gallery owner twenty years older, whom she married after graduation.

Then he cheated, and she filed for divorce immediately.

The divorce was brutal.

He hired the most expensive law firm in Manhattan, trying to leave her with nothing.

So she came to Enzo.

That night I’d already made dinner.

Enzo took her call, dropped his fork, and walked out.

I waited until ten.

The pasta was cold, the cream sauce a stiff film.

At midnight, Enzo came back. Reeking of alcohol. Lipstick stain on his shirt collar.

“Were you with her all that time?” I tried to ask, but my voice shook.

He slumped drunk on the sofa, his blue eyes hazy. “She was crying in my arms the whole time. I couldn’t push her away.”

I looked at that beautiful, innocent face of his and felt a wave of tenderness.

I held his face and said, seriously: “From now on, your arms are only for me. Okay?”

I really did love him.

We’d lived together for five years.

I fell in love with Enzo Vitale.

I knew I didn’t deserve him, but I couldn’t stop.

Taking advantage of his drunkenness, I said those words with all the courage I had.

But Enzo sobered up.

His eyes sharpened, and he looked at me with a hint of disgust.

“Lucia,” he said coldly, “don’t forget that I give you thirty thousand a month. Do normal couples need that kind of money? We were never a normal couple.”

He paused, like a knife slowly cutting into my chest.

“Don’t try to have both the money and the feelings. You don’t deserve it.”