Five Years After Breaking Up, the Don Begged Me Back

I got dressed and dragged my aching body out of the wedding venue.

Passing through the colonnade, I caught a glimpse through the window of the reception hall, the whole spectacle still in full swing.

The floor was marble. The estate had stood since the seventeenth century.

The alliance between two of Sicily's great families had dominated the Palermo headlines since yesterday morning.

The beautiful bride on the arm of the handsome groom, raising glasses to the gathered bosses. They looked like they belonged together.

The Luca who'd once proposed to me with a copper button he'd found at the docks, and that same man had just picked up the ancestral Morello signet ring and slid it onto his real bride's finger.

I'd seen that ring once. When he was nineteen, he'd dug it out of his father's belongings box, held it in his palm, stared at it for a long time, then put it back. He said when he got married, he'd put it on my hand himself.

I touched my ring finger. I could still feel the cold of that old copper button.

I'd let myself dream about marrying Luca once.

No white dress, no family crest ring, no armed men lining the aisle. Just the two of us and a few people who actually mattered.

I tightened my grip on the check in my pocket.

Doesn't matter. I got what I came for.

The cash exchange ran out of a warehouse at the far end of the docks, behind two iron gates, each manned and watching.

I got there just before the broker closed up, practically running.

"Miss Costello, we can't process this check. You'll need to verify it with whoever issued it."

"What? That's impossible."

I stared at the check in my hands. Luca's signature was right there, plain as day.

I pressed both palms flat on the grimy desk and looked the broker dead in the eye.

"Can you try again? Please. I need that money. Just try one more time."

"Miss Costello, we've run it twice. I'm sorry."

"That can't be right. That cannot be right."

His men showed me out. I stumbled and hit the dock's stone pavement hard.

Luca had played me. He never intended to pay a cent.

What he wanted to give me was a lesson in humiliation.

No money. What's going to happen to Rosa...

"Miss Costello..."

I answered the phone on autopilot. The hospital again, calling about the bill.

"I know. I'm working on it. Please, just hold her bed one more day. One day."

I rode my beat-up motorcycle through three checkpoints and back to the estate, needing to look Luca in the face.

Marco, Luca's right-hand man, spotted me at the gate and walked me back to that same dressing room.

The bride swept through on her way out, in a fresh gown, and didn't spare me a glance. I felt it like a slap.

"The check is worthless."

Luca was already there, like he'd known I'd be back. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Anna. You actually thought one night was worth half a million euros? You really think that's what you're worth?"

I balled my fists.

"Your bride is right outside. If I walk out there and tell her what just happened, if I blow up this whole alliance, the Morello family loses a lot more than half a million."

"Threaten me, and you disappear. Anna, who the hell is worth this much trouble? What man has you running around selling yourself like this?"

I didn't answer. He had the wrong idea, and I couldn't correct it, because even if I told him about the child, I couldn't be sure it wouldn't make things worse. He was about to be a married man. I couldn't guarantee his wife, or Luca himself, would tolerate a child's existence. Better to let him keep believing what he believed.

The silence made the vein in Luca's forehead twitch.

"I've got evidence." He picked up the camera and turned it on.

The footage was clear as day. A man and a woman. Both our faces in perfect focus.

He stepped close, his voice low, like a judge reading out a sentence.

"Anna. There are a lot of guests out there. You put that footage on the projector in the main hall, and I'll give you the money. Deal?"