I should’ve walked away years ago. Eleven years — Eleven goddamn years — I spent raising Clyde and Tyler, the twin sons of Joachim Mancini, the cold-hearted mafia don who once promised me the world.
I was supposed to be his wife. I was supposed to be the Queen of the Mancini. But dreams don’t mean shit in our world. Not after the car crash that ruined my life. Not after Serafina, Joachim’s ‘perfect’ mistress, made sure I wouldn’t stand at that altar.
While I lay broken, comatose and stitched up in a hospital bed, Joachim married her instead. Serafina — my sister-in-law. Yes. My own brother’s widow.
They said Serafina was barren. After years of miscarriages, years of prayers that rotted on cold lips, she could never carry life inside her.
But miracles happen, they whispered. Seven months after my accident, right on cue, Serafina bloomed. A growing belly. Glowing cheeks. Elaborate baby showers.
And when she finally ‘gave birth’ to two healthy twin boys, the world rejoiced. Joachim stood by her side, proud and powerful, cradling the ‘miracles’ the Mancini bloodline had so desperately needed.
Only it wasn’t a miracle.
It was theft.
I was seven months pregnant the night of the accident that was orchestrated by Serafina. I was the one carrying those boys.
While I lay in a coma, they cut my sons from my body with scalpels and lies. Hid them away in private clinics. Faked hospital records. Bought silence with blood money.
Serafina never carried those babies.
She just wore the lie like a crown. And then, just as suddenly as she appeared in my life, she vanished. Serafina died after two years. A car crash. Quick. Clean. Convenient.
No body to bury. Closed casket. Joachim didn’t grieve. Not really. He just shifted the narrative again — a grieving widower with two sons to raise.
When I woke up, scarred, barren, empty, Joachim stood over me with blood on his hands and a debt in his eyes.
"Raise them," he said. "Raise them like they’re yours."
Because they were mine.
I wiped their tears. I taught them to shoot, to pray, to lie with clean faces and bloody hands. I raised Clyde and Tyler under the very roof of the men who stole my life.
And how did they repay me? By carving out my heart with the same hands I taught them to use.
The pain didn't start tonight.
It started six years ago, when they were just three — small, feverish, and burning up in the hospital.I wasn’t even allowed inside. Only Joachim, they said.
So I sat in the hallway like a ghost, staring through the glass at two little boys who looked too much like the pieces of me I thought I had buried.
A nurse passing by whispered under her breath, "It's strange. They don't look much like Serafina but look like her."
Something inside me snapped. Without thinking, I pulled a favor. Paid a price I didn’t have. And when the DNA results came in, the paper nearly slipped from my trembling hands.
99.99% probability.
Clyde and Tyler were mine.
My sons.
I confronted Joachim that same night, bursting into his office like a storm barely caged.
"They're mine," I gasped, holding out the papers like a weapon. "Clyde and Tyler — they’re my children."
Joachim didn’t even lift his eyes from his glass. He swirled his whiskey lazily, as if I were a particularly boring insect buzzing in his ear.
"Yeah," he said, finally glancing up, a smirk curling at his lips. "Yours. But who cares?"
My hands curled into fists. "I care! They're mine — not Serafina’s! You stole them from me and let the world—”
He chuckled, a low, dead sound.
"Let the world believe what it wants. Serafina gave the Mancini twins a story people like better. A perfect tragedy."
He leaned back in his leather chair, sipping slow.
"Quit digging into the past, cara mia. You're their mother now. You lived with me, with them. I took you again. Isn't that what you wanted?" His eyes gleamed. "Aren't you... happy?"
Happy.
The word slapped harder than any fist. I stood there, trembling with rage and heartbreak, knowing that even the truth wouldn’t set me free.
And so I stayed. For them. For my boys. Even when they looked at me with growing cruelty.
Even when they whispered that I was the reason their ‘real mother’ was dead.
At first, it was small things. Glares. Mocking laughter. Clyde hiding my shoes. Tyler tearing up my favorite books. But year after year, their hatred grew sharper, darker.
Until tonight.
***
Their thirteenth birthday.
I held a small velvet box to my chest as I walked into the grand Mancini dining room, where wolves disguised as men laughed and drank under the golden chandeliers. At the head of the table sat Joachim, swirling his whiskey like always.
The twins sat together, dressed in silk shirts and dark slacks, already more vicious than half the soldiers in the room.
I cleared my throat.
No one stopped talking.
No one looked. Still, I forced a smile and walked forward, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"Clyde. Tyler," I said softly, stopping in front of them. "I made something for you. For your birthday."
They turned slowly. Two pairs of black, bottomless eyes fixed on me. I knelt down, offering the small box with trembling hands.
"I know..." My voice caught. "I know I'm not your real mother in the way you want. But I love you. I always have."
Clyde sneered.
Tyler's lip curled.
"Yeah?" Clyde said loudly, his voice thick with mockery. "You love us? Even after you killed her?"
My heart dropped into my stomach.
"I didn't—" I started, but Tyler cut me off.
"You think some shiny junk makes up for being a rat?"
He snatched the box from my hands, ripped it open, and pulled out the gold pocket watch inside.
For a heartbeat, he actually paused — the engraving catching his eye — but then he laughed, cruel and cold.
"This?" Clyde barked, holding the watch up high. "This is trash."
Before I could move, he hurled it across the room. The watch smashed into the roaring fireplace, gold melting instantly with a sick hiss.
The men roared with laughter.
