He Let His Mistress Run Me Down and Kill Our Baby, So I Never Looked Back

Seven years of marriage, and Nico Valente had slept with every last friend and connection I had.

I pretended I saw nothing. Kept going to my prenatal checkups, nine months along, belly heavy in front of me. The Family's driver took me. The Family's doctor examined me. Everything I did passed through the Valente name like light through stained glass, colored by it, owned by it.

Until the day I was on my way to one of those appointments, and his latest woman ran me down with her car.

I was bleeding, wouldn't stop bleeding, and I begged him to take me to the hospital.

Nico looked at me like I was something stuck to his shoe.

"Sera Calloway, when did you learn to fake an accident for sympathy?"

"Don't think putting on a little show is going to make me care about you. You could die right here in front of me, and I wouldn't spare you a second glance."

Then he left with his new toy and didn't look back. His soldier opened the car door for him, and the black sedan pulled away from the curb like nothing had happened. Like I was nothing that had happened.

By the time I was brought to the hospital, the baby had already suffocated inside me.

And my grandmother. The shock triggered her heart condition. She was gone too.

When I woke, I stared at Don Aldo Valente with nothing left on my face.

"Let me go. Whatever I owed the Valente family, I've paid back with my life."

——

While I was speaking, my phone kept buzzing with incoming messages.

Screen after screen, all of them photos of Nico and his new favorite, Gianna Marchetti.

While I was hemorrhaging and losing my child.

The two of them had been at the Family's private club on the waterfront, going at it until dawn.

Gianna was draped against Nico's chest, kiss marks all over her, smiling straight into the camera with pure provocation.

Aldo Valente, still not knowing the full truth, tried one last effort. He placed a property-transfer document on the bed in front of me. Even now, his hands were steady. The hands of a man who had run an empire for fifty years. But his face looked older than I had ever seen it.

"Sera, Nico isn't bad at heart. You've loved him all these years. Why not give him one more chance? As long as I'm alive, no one can touch your position in this family."

I said nothing. I tapped open a video Gianna had sent.

The sounds of the two of them together filled the hospital room instantly.

Gianna, breathless, asked:

"Nico, you just left Sera lying in the road. You really don't feel anything at all?"

Nico was kissing Gianna's neck, eyes half-closed, hazy.

"Why would I? You're the one I like most. Even if Sera had the baby, she still wouldn't deserve to be compared to you."

Those sounds, those unbearable sounds, sent the veins in Aldo's temples throbbing with rage. His ring finger tapped the bed rail twice. Two taps. He had heard enough.

After a long sigh, he gave in.

"The Valente family has wronged you. I'll handle the divorce myself. Seven days, and you'll have your freedom."

"As for your grandmother and the baby's arrangements..."

Before he could finish, a nurse had already carried the baby in.

Maybe even heaven couldn't stand to watch me waste away in this marriage any longer.

So it let this child come into the world without ever drawing a breath.

I turned my head away.

Forced myself to keep steady.

"Bury the baby with the Valente family. I'll take my grandmother's ashes with me."

Aldo nodded, his face carved with pain.

"This is my fault. I should never have kept you here. Go. Go. You deserve a bigger life than this."

He hunched forward, gathered the still, silent baby into his arms, and left the room. The door closed behind him with a soft click, and two of his soldiers fell into step outside. Even grief, in this family, had an escort.

The tears I'd been holding back for so long finally slipped free.

All that bitterness, every last drop of it, rising at once.

My marriage to Nico had been Aldo's arrangement from the start.

He needed someone to keep Nico in check. A woman of clean reputation, quiet and steady, to anchor the heir the whole organization whispered was too reckless to lead.

I needed someone to cover Nonna Rosa's medical bills. The debts had been crushing us for years, and the Valente family's money was the only door left open. The price was me.

So we struck our deal.

I left my life behind and married Nico Valente. A blood-bound union. There was no prenup, no exit clause. Under the code, there was no divorce. There was only the Don's word.

After the wedding, I learned what had happened to him as a boy. Both parents killed in a rival family's hit before he was grown. Aldo had raised him inside the compound walls, surrounded by soldiers and silence.

I saw it with my own eyes, the way he cried out for his mother in the middle of the night, sobbing in his sleep. A man the city feared, curled into himself in the dark like a child, calling for someone who would never come.

Two broken people. In that moment, something in me answered something in him.

I wanted to heal that heart of his.

I wanted to build a real family with him.

To be the wife he deserved.

I spent hours teaching myself to cook, trying again and again to recreate the taste he said his mother used to make. Sunday gravy, slow-simmered for hours the way the old country women did it. I burned batch after batch and started over every time, because I believed that if I could get it right, if I could give him back that one small thing, maybe the rest would follow.