The Don Killed My Baby, So I Buried His Empire

Eight months pregnant, I was pushed from the second-floor gallery of the Falcone estate. The blood wouldn't stop.

Dominic Falcone carried me to the Family's private clinic like a madman, dragging the best men in the city out of their beds to cut into me, and thank God, the baby was saved.

When I opened my eyes again, neither the baby nor Dominic was beside me.

I struggled up and hobbled around, searching everywhere.

And then, at the door of the cold room where the Family kept its dead, I overheard Dominic speaking low to the doctor.

"Don Falcone, that baby was still breathing. How could you smother him like that? He was your own blood. Your bloodline heir."

"Better he dies now and moves on. He was never meant to come into this world."

"Vittoria gave me a son yesterday. I gave her my word I'd make our child the sole heir to the Falcone name. I will never let another soul rise up to fight him for what's ours."

So a happy family had only ever been my own foolish fantasy.

The alliance I'd been so proud of was nothing but a cold abyss.

If that was how it was, then I would simply leave.

...

The doctor hesitated. Somewhere behind that door, a fluorescent light hummed against the silence.

"But you mean to pass Vittoria Sabatini's child off to your wife. What if she finds out?"

"All newborns look about the same. She won't notice. I'll bring him over shortly."

"Dispose of the body. And that drug your people at the clinic developed, the one that leaves a woman barren for good, get it for me. I'll give it to Adriana Volpe later."

The doctor was stunned, and pressed on, urgent now. "Don Falcone, you've already killed your wife's child to bring Vittoria Sabatini's baby into the house. Why sterilize her too? Isn't that too cruel?"

The chill of the dead room seeped past the door, but Dominic's words were colder still.

"I gave Vittoria my word that our son would never suffer the smallest slight in this life. That no brother, no sister, would ever rise to challenge his place. She's another man's wife now, bound to a cadet branch, but I want her to rest easy."

The doctor's face twisted with reluctance.

"Don Falcone, I have to warn you. That drug is new. It's never been tested on anyone. The side effects are severe. Can you truly bear to do this?"

Dominic paused, then let out a slow breath.

"There's no other way. Adriana's about to wake. If I put her under the knife for a hysterectomy now, it would only raise her suspicions."

"She'll endure it. I'll make it up to her in time. But Adriana can never carry a child again."

The words had barely left his mouth when his phone rang. He answered on speaker, and a man's voice spilled into the dead room, giddy, breathless.

"Don Falcone, I got the five hundred thousand. Don't worry, I'm leaving the territory tonight. Your wife will never know it was you who told me to push her down. Heh heh."

Footsteps shifted inside.

I bit back the pain shooting up my leg and stumbled back to my room in the clinic.

Thinking of that tiny body lying in the cold behind that door, I clamped both hands over my chest, tears crashing down onto the bandages wrapped around my leg.

So being pushed from that gallery had never been an accident.

It was my beloved husband, clearing the way for the woman he loved and their child.

My baby hadn't been saved at all. He'd been smothered to death by his own father.

In Dominic's eyes, my child and I were nothing but stumbling blocks in his path.

"Adriana, you're awake?"

Dominic came in carrying an infant and sat down at my bedside with a smile, the picture of a devoted husband.

"Come see our son. Look how much he takes after the both of us."

"Tesoro, thank you for giving me such a beautiful boy. I swear to you, I'll be a good father."

I looked at the infant sleeping so soundly in his arms, and my heart clenched.

Dominic was wrong. No mother mistakes her own child.

The baby's brow and eyes did resemble Dominic, but the nose and chin were copied almost straight off Vittoria Sabatini's face.