Nine Months Pregnant, I Left the Mafia Heir Who Chose His Mistress

Nine months pregnant, I crossed paths with my husband and his mistress at the private clinic the Family kept on retainer.

The moment I collected my prenatal report from the nurse's station, I saw the two of them through the frosted glass partition, celebrating the impending arrival of their own child.

Serafina arranged her face into something resembling concern. "Dominic, you really shouldn't be here with me. If Adriana finds out, she'll be upset. She's carrying your child too. Aren't you worried about what that might do to her?"

Dominic let out a low, cold laugh. The kind of laugh that could freeze the blood in a dead man's veins. "If she causes a scene, I'll have the annulment papers drawn up by morning."

Since Dominic had decided he no longer wanted us, I would rather raise this child fatherless than spend another day trapped inside the gilded cage of this blood-bound union.

I stepped into the corridor, pressed my back against the cold marble wall, and called my father in Palermo.

"Papa, I've made up my mind. I'm dissolving this marriage. I'm taking the baby and coming home to you."

After I hung up, I booked the earliest charter flight I could find. Two weeks. That was all I needed. Two weeks and I would vanish from Dominic Moretti's life like smoke through an open window.

But then why, months later, did that man appear at my wedding with bloodshot eyes, begging me to take him back?

Nine months pregnant, and the moment I received my prenatal report from the attending physician at the Moretti Family's private medical facility, I saw my husband walking down the opposite corridor, his hand resting on the small of another woman's back. He was attending a prenatal appointment with his first love, Serafina Greco.

"Dominic, you coming with me to this appointment... if Adriana finds out, she'll be really upset. She's due soon too. Aren't you worried?" Serafina's voice carried that practiced tremor of concern, soft as poisoned honey. But I caught the smugness in her eyes. The quiet, predatory satisfaction of a woman who knew she had already won.

Dominic leaned down and pressed his lips against the curve of her belly with a tenderness I had not seen from him in months. When he straightened, his voice carried the same chilling indifference he reserved for soldiers who had outlived their usefulness.

"She doesn't know about this, and I'm not planning on telling her. Maybe it's the hormones, but her mood's been impossible lately. I don't need her making things difficult for you."

"But we can't keep sneaking around like this." Serafina placed a delicate hand on his chest. "Adriana's heavily pregnant too. If she finds out, I'm afraid she'll..."

"There's nothing to be afraid of." Dominic's jaw tightened. The overhead fluorescent light caught the edge of his profile, all sharp angles and barely restrained authority. He was the Don of the Moretti Crime Family, one of the most feared syndicates on the Eastern Seaboard, and he spoke about me the way he might speak about a liability on a balance sheet. "It's my duty to be here with you for this appointment. The child is mine too. If Adriana wants to cause trouble over it, I'll have the annulment drawn up before the ink dries."

The coldness in his voice when he spoke about me, about the woman carrying his legitimate heir, made something inside my chest crack open and go still.

If Dominic had already decided to cast us aside, then I would beat him to it. I would leave before he could discard me. I would raise this child alone, far from the shadow of the Moretti name.

A bitter smile twisted across my lips as my heart, at last, surrendered. I pulled out my phone and dialed the private line to Palermo. The line that connected directly to the study of Don Salvatore Valente, my father.

"Papa, I've made up my mind. I'm dissolving this marriage. I'll bring the baby and come home to live with you."

A long pause. Then my father's voice came through, low and steady as stone. "I'm glad you finally came to your senses, figlia mia." The words were measured, but I could hear the iron beneath them. The barely contained fury of a man whose daughter had been humiliated. "The Morettis may run the Eastern Seaboard, but the Valente name carries weight that stretches back centuries. If staying in that house brings you nothing but pain, then leave him. Come home. Raise the child as a Valente."

"You're right, Papa."

After hanging up, I booked the next available charter out of the private airstrip. My hands were steady. My eyes were dry.

I thought back to that morning, when I had asked Dominic to accompany me to my appointment. He told me he had Family business to attend to. A sit-down with one of the capos, he said. Something that couldn't wait.

It turned out the only appointment he was keeping was with Serafina Greco.

Nine months I had carried his child. Nine months of swollen ankles and sleepless nights and the dull, persistent ache in my lower back that never fully subsided. And not once, in all those months, had Dominic Moretti set foot inside a doctor's office for me.

Serafina had returned to the country three months ago, after her so-called betrothal fell apart overseas. From the moment she stepped back onto American soil, Dominic had been meeting with her constantly. Dinners. Phone calls at midnight. Drives to the waterfront that lasted hours. From the day she reappeared, Dominic and I had barely shared a meal alone, let alone a conversation that lasted longer than his patience.

Whenever Serafina called, even if it was nothing more than a single text message glowing on his phone screen, Dominic would drop everything and go to her. He would leave the compound. Leave the dinner table. Leave our bed.

He even held her in his arms right in front of me once, in the main hall of the Moretti estate, with the portraits of his ancestors watching from the walls.

It wasn't as though I hadn't confronted him. I had. More than once. But every time I raised my voice, he shut me down with the same excuse, delivered with the same impatient wave of his hand. Serafina was going through a difficult time. Her engagement had collapsed. She had no family left, no one to turn to. She needed support.

According to Dominic, everything he did was simply repaying a debt. Serafina had saved his life once, he said. Pulled him from the wreckage of the arson hit that nearly killed him years ago. He owed her everything. She was pregnant now, vulnerable, and he had a moral obligation to stand beside her.

But Dominic seemed to forget one crucial fact. Serafina was not the only pregnant woman in his life. I was too. And I was further along than she was. If anyone in that house needed care, needed protection, needed the presence of the man who had sworn a blood oath before God and the Family, it was me.

For the longest time, I believed the child Serafina carried belonged to someone else. The failed betrothed, perhaps. Some nameless man from her time overseas.

I tried to ask indirectly. I circled the question the way a consigliere circles a negotiation, careful, measured, never showing my hand too early. I even told Dominic plainly that if he no longer loved me, he needed to say so to my face.

But every single time, he shut me down. Impatient. Dismissive. Evasive. And the one time I dared question outright whose child Serafina was really carrying, his expression turned to ice. The kind of cold, absolute fury that made soldiers twice my size lower their eyes and step back.

He kept reassuring me. Over and over again, with words that meant nothing and eyes that looked through me. And eventually, because I was tired, because I was pregnant, because I wanted so desperately to believe that the man I had married was still the man I had loved, I chose to trust him.

I told myself he was simply being honorable. That he was repaying a debt, nothing more. That he had not fallen out of love with me.

But now, standing in this sterile corridor with the prenatal report crumpling in my fist, everything was painfully, brutally clear. Serafina's baby had always been his.

They had been carrying on behind my back for God knew how long, and I was nothing more than their cover story. The legitimate wife. The convenient shield. The woman whose presence in the Moretti compound kept the other families from asking questions.

When Dominic mentioned the annulment, I caught the way Serafina's eyes narrowed. Just slightly. A flicker of satisfaction slipping through her carefully composed mask, quick as a blade drawn and sheathed.

"I never meant to take you from Adriana," she whispered, her voice trembling with practiced fragility. "It's just... if my betrothed hadn't broken things off, none of this would have happened. I needed to protect what little dignity I had left. And thank God you were there, Dominic." She pressed closer to him, her fingers curling into the lapel of his charcoal suit. "I honestly don't know what I would have done. Where I would have gone. Coming back to this country with nothing, with no one, if you hadn't been there for me..."

Her eyes filled with tears. Perfectly timed. Perfectly placed. And Dominic, full of tenderness and concern that should have been mine, gathered her gently into his arms the way one might cradle something precious and breakable.

"I told you." His voice dropped low, rough with emotion. "I'll take care of you, Serafina. If it weren't for you back then, I would've..." He trailed off. His jaw worked. The old wound, the debt he believed he owed, tightened its grip on him like a noose.

"Anyway, it's only right that I look after you," he continued, his thumb tracing slow circles on her shoulder. "Adriana is my wife. She should understand why I'm doing this. And so what if she finds out? I'll still be here for you. No matter what."

He patted Serafina's back gently, soothing her the way he had never once soothed me through nine months of carrying his heir.

The examination room door opened and the attending physician stepped out, clipboard in hand. She glanced at the two of them, at the way Dominic's arm encircled Serafina's waist, at the protective angle of his body, and a warm smile crossed her face.

"You're one lucky woman, Donna Moretti. Your husband hasn't missed a single checkup, and he treats you with such care and devotion."

Serafina blushed, a demure smile playing at the corners of her lips. Dominic nodded as though the title, the assumption, the theft of everything that belonged to me, was the most natural thing in the world.

I stood in the corridor's shadow, watching the scene unfold like a woman watching her own house burn from across the street. My nails dug into my palms until I felt the sharp sting of broken skin, until the pain in my hands almost matched the one tearing through my chest.

Two more weeks.

Two more weeks and I would be gone from Dominic Moretti's life forever.