Five days before my wedding, a group of MadeMen drag me to an underground casino.

"I'm the fiancé of Lorenzo Gambino, Don of the Gambino family and Gambino Corporation! Think of the consequences you'll face if you dare touch a hair on my head!"

My stern warning is met by mocking laughter.

I curl up in agony under the brutal blows of their baseball bats; they pierce my ankles with sharp blades, severing my tendons. I gather the remnants of my consciousness to shield my abdomen, where my and Lorenzo's child grows.

Lorenzo finally arrives with hired mercenaries. He razes the underground casino to the ground and saves me.

I lie on the hospital bed and force myself to hang on. I don't want to end up in a coma. Unexpectedly, I overhear Lorenzo's conversation with a doctor.

"It's not too late to operate, Boss. If we delay this any longer, Ms. Jones won't be able to stand anymore! There are many other ways for you to marry Ms. Valente—why did you have to do this to Ms. Jones?"

"Being crippled is the only way Renee will obediently accept my and Kelly's child. I can keep a cripple by my side but not a troublemaker. Kelly values ceremony more than anything—I promised her I would give her a perfect wedding," Lorenzo says coldly.

"But… Ms. Jones is pregnant. She's four months along…"

"Make her miscarry, then."

Tears stream down my face without anyone noticing. It turns out no one wants to bless the wedding I've been looking forward to.

If so, any woman who wants to be Lorenzo's wife can have him. He's just a small mafia boss, anyway.

I'm going back to being the heiress of the East Coast mafia's Don. I'll be the queen of my own life.

"Make sure the procedure is clean. Losing a child will only make her motherly instincts stronger. That way, she'll accept Mia much faster," Lorenzo said.

The doctor hesitated, and his voice carried a trace of reluctance. "Sir, this is still your child. Ms. Jones can't even walk anymore.

"If she loses the baby too, she may never have a place in the Gambino family again."

"Dr. Larson, you're talking too much today. All of this is the Quintarelli family's fault, isn't it?

"A small-time mafia group actually dared to kidnap my fiancée. They broke her legs and made her lose the baby. So, I wiped every last one of them to avenge Renee.

"She won't blame me. She loves me. As for the child… He was never meant to exist. I promised Mia that I would only ever be her father."

The doctor caught the flicker of displeasure in Lorenzo's eyes and knew better than to push further.

Without saying another word, he turned and strode out of the room to prepare for surgery.

Lorenzo pulled out his phone and made a call. "The informant inside the Quintarelli family did a good job. Wire a million dollars to his wife, then kill him.

"Make sure he takes the truth to his grave. Renee must never find out how the Quintarelli family got hold of her whereabouts."

I felt him sit beside me, and his hand closed over mine. A chill shot down my spine.

Fear clawed at my throat, and my body trembled before I could stop it.

It wasn't just a random abduction.

The memories flooded back. There were gleaming golden family crests pinned on the men's outfits. It was the Quintarelli family who abducted me.

The Quintarelli family was an independent mafia group. Lorenzo and the other two regional bosses had tried to bring them under their control, but they refused.

In the mafia world, if they can't own something, they tend to destroy it.

Abducting the fiancée of Gambino Group's boss—the most powerful mafia boss in the West District—was the perfect excuse for Lorenzo to move in.

He didn't just use me to wipe out the Quintarelli family and seize control of the central district.

He used this as a chance to get rid of me—the inconvenient woman standing in the way of the one he truly loved, Kelly.

What a heartless yet brilliant man. No wonder he became the youngest mafia boss in history.

I used to believe that love was the only thing between Lorenzo and me. Now, I finally see the truth—lies and betrayal were all we ever had.

I fought to sit up and said to myself, "I can't go into surgery! I have to protect my child! I'm going home!"

But before I could move, a needle slid into my vein. My vision started to blur.

As I was wheeled toward the operating room, Lorenzo leaned down to leave a kiss on the corner of my mouth.

"Renee, it'll all be over soon. I'll be waiting when you wake up."

I felt no pain. Just the sterile bite of metal slicing through me.

A four-month-old baby… How big would he be? Could he feel anything? Would he feel pain?

The icy pit in my heart slowly gave way to burning rage. The love I once had for Lorenzo now fueled the fire of my hatred.

Lorenzo, the most powerful mafia boss in the West District? I, Renee, swore that it wouldn't be for much longer.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the hospital room. I tried to move, but I couldn't feel my legs.

The hollow emptiness in my abdomen told me everything I needed to know. My baby was gone.

As soon as he saw me wake up, Lorenzo rushed over, looking heartbroken. "Renee, how are you feeling? I'm sorry I was late.

"But I've already taken care of the perpetrators. They paid the price for hurting my fiancée!"

As he spoke, he placed a gift box in my hands.

Inside lay hundreds of bloodstained crests from the Quintarelli family. They were trophies ripped from the bodies of the men he had killed.

I shut the box without saying a single word. Not because I was scared but because I was sick to my stomach.

I felt sick, not from the sight of blood but from the man standing in front of me.

I reached for his phone when Lorenzo stepped out to call the doctor. Hanging from it was a heart-shaped ruby charm. It was my gift to him.

I had assumed that he'd toss it in a drawer somewhere, but he actually carried it with him.

The infamous mafia boss of the West District was parading around with a heart-shaped charm on his phone like a lovesick fool for the whole world to see.

Back then, the thought had made my heart swell. Now, it only made it ache.

I unlocked his phone. The pinned chat at the top wasn't mine but Kelly's.

I tapped on the latest voice message, and a sweet child's voice floated through the speaker. "Daddy, when are you coming to see Mommy and me? I miss you so much."

It was Mia—his daughter with Kelly.

The word "Daddy" made my hands tremble as I touched my stomach, remembering the child I had lost.

Lorenzo once told me that he didn't like children. Growing up, he had to fight dozens of other kids on the black market just for a piece of bread.

However, when it came to Mia's voice messages, he responded to every single one with patience.

So it wasn't that he didn't like children. He just didn't like me.

Even as I was being wheeled into the operating room, even as the Quintarelli family ambushed me, even as he gave the order to have my Achilles tendons severed—he was still flirting with Kelly.

Just as I was about to put the phone down, a message popped on the screen. "Mr. Gambino, your honeymoon itinerary with Ms. Valente is ready. Please confirm."

I stared at Kelly's name.

My fists clenched as I thought of the already booked chapel, the wedding gown that didn't fit, and the ring with the wrong initials.

From the very beginning, Lorenzo had never been planning our wedding. He had been planning his and Kelly's.

I scrolled through the itinerary and saw the plans involving the beach, sunset, and hot air balloons. Those were every place I once dreamed of visiting with him.

Slowly, I typed a reply from his phone.

"Perfect. Proceed as planned."

They had fought this hard to be together. Thus, I would grant their wish.

I slipped the heart-shaped charm off Lorenzo's phone and set it aside before placing the device back where it was.

Then, I simply stared out the window, letting the silence settle around me.

It wasn't long before Lorenzo strode toward me, his expression grim, carrying the unmistakable presence of the mafia.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were pregnant?" He looked straight into my eyes as he questioned me.

Those beautiful blue eyes—I had once loved them deeply. When Lorenzo looked at me in the past, I felt like I was the only one in his world.

But how long had it been since he last looked at me like this? And now, he was only doing it again to confront me with a lie.

I turned my head away, refusing to meet his gaze. My voice was flat and void of emotion. "Our child is gone."

Lorenzo pulled me into his arms, and his body trembled as if on the verge of breaking.

He was the one who took our child from me with his own hands. So why did he look like he had lost everything?

He might have been a pretty good actor if he weren't a mafia boss.

"Renee, don't be too upset. We can still—"

I didn't have the patience to sit through his act any longer, so I cut him off. "Let's adopt."

"Huh?" For a second, Lorenzo just stood there, caught off guard.

Maybe it was because I had dropped the pretense by saying outright what he had been dancing around.

"Alright. Also, the wedding invitations have already been sent out. Mr. Salerno—the underboss to the biggest mafia group on the East Coast—is flying in just for the occasion. But with your health like this, maybe…"

I knew exactly what he would say and had already thought of a way to respond.

"Find someone to take my place. We're not giving anyone the chance to mock the Gambino family."

My drastic shift in attitude took Lorenzo aback.

But since he had already gotten what he wanted, he didn't press the matter any further.

"My body feels fine right now. I want to be discharged. The weather's nice. Let's go to the orphanage to check it out. We are adopting, aren't we?"

I observed Lorenzo closely as I spoke, silently speeding up his arrangements to bring Kelly and Mia into Gambino Group.

Lorenzo didn't hesitate. He smiled, nodded, and then walked out to make a call. Not once did he realize that the charm was missing from his phone.

This hospital belonged to Gambino Group, so the discharge process was quick.

Lorenzo lifted me into a wheelchair and placed a bouquet of lilies on my lap.

"A little something to celebrate your discharge," he said.

I hated lilies the most. But at that moment, I didn't even have the strength to shove them off my lap.

Instead, I clenched my fists and stared down at my useless legs.

The drive to the orphanage didn't take long. When the guards at the entrance saw Lorenzo's car, they immediately let us through. They even nodded in recognition at the driver.

It was apparent that Lorenzo came here often and had already grown familiar with them. After all, ordinary people wouldn't have dared to greet the mafia so casually.

When Lorenzo stepped out of the car, a young girl ran into his arms.

"Daddy! Are those lilies for Mommy? Mommy loves lilies!" She kept chattering excitedly.

Lorenzo easily picked her up, and a gentle smile formed on his lips.