The Don and His Arranged Wife Had Three Kids Together, So I Ran

I spent eight years raising Dante's children. Three of them, and every single one belonged to him and his arranged wife Bianca. Not one was mine.

I fought against it. I really did.

But the Costello family needed heirs, and my background was too ordinary. The family would never accept me.

Dante always had something to say about it.

"Nora, once Bianca has the baby, I'll take you to the States. You can go to art school, open your own gallery. It's what your mother always wanted, isn't it?"

Then Bianca had a son, and suddenly the family needed a daughter too, someone they could marry off to another faction. When the daughter came, the elders stepped in and said the mob was a bloody business and you needed enough children to guarantee the line would continue.

Eight years. I went from Dante's lover to something worse than a servant.

Then I got pregnant. I was so happy I could barely breathe when I told him. I thought this baby would finally be our way out.

But there was no smile on his face. Just a look that was pained and apologetic, like he already knew what he was going to say.

"Nora, you don't have a place in this family. Neither does your child. He'd disrupt the line of succession. We can't let him be born."

I pressed my hand to my stomach, just barely starting to show. Hot tears hit the floor.

Fine. If we couldn't leave together, I would leave alone.

I was in the nanny's room packing my bag, crying and talking to the baby at the same time.

"It's okay, sweetheart."

"Even if your daddy doesn't want you, Mama will raise you on her own."

Dante pushed the door open. He was holding a necklace, the Heart of the Ocean.

He wiped my tears gently, then stepped behind me and clasped it around my neck.

"Nora, don't cry."

"Just wait a little longer. Once I take over the family business, things will go back to how they should be."

"Then I can go with you to the States..."

Same line. Always the same line. I couldn't stand it anymore. I shot to my feet and shoved him back.

The breakup speech was already on my lips when a wave of dizziness crashed over me.

Dante's face went soft and blurry. My fingers found the necklace at my chest without thinking.

Slipping unscrupulous drugs into a piece of jewelry was nothing new for Dante.

I laughed bitterly. I'd thought it was an apology gift. Instead, it became the ticket that ended my baby’s life.

I went down fast. Dante caught me before I hit the floor.

"Nora, we'll have our own children. I promise."

No, Dante. We won't.

When I came to, I was in the Costello family's private clinic. Pain tore through my body in waves, so sharp I couldn't tell if I was alive or in hell.

A nursing intern was asking the surgeon something.

"Doctor, she's already awake. Why didn't the sedative hold?"

The surgeon didn't stop what he was doing.

"Don't talk nonsense. No supplier would dare cut corners on the Costellos. It's not the sedative. She woke up fast because we didn't use anesthetic for the curettage. The pain brought her around."

"Nothing we could do about it. Orders came straight from the Don himself. He told me it'd be better if she never had children again. Keeps the Costello bloodline clean."

The surgeon's instruments moved through my body with clinical efficiency. In my daze, I could even hear metal scraping against bone.

But the pain was going numb, and not in the physical sense. What hurt more than my body was everything else.

I didn't know how long I cried before the surgeon finally finished.

I asked the nurses when I could recover. They laughed.

"It's just one lost baby. Are you planning on staying here forever?"

"That's just how she is. That's why she's been clinging to the Costellos for eight years."

"Exactly. Bianca and young Dante are a proper match, approved by the family elders. And her? A nobody who used to do odd jobs at some gallery, crawling after the Costellos like she belonged there."

"Bad enough she stuck around. Then she went and got pregnant by him. Poor Bianca."

I closed my eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

They had it wrong. I wasn't trying to stay. I'd been trying to leave. I just wanted to escape this cruel estate that devours people alive.