My Don Husband Fathered Her Baby, I Took Everything Back

As I walked out of the ballroom, the toasts continued onstage.

I went back to the estate alone and began packing my things.

My phone buzzed.

It was an Instagram notification about a post from Elena.

I didn’t follow her. She’d sent it to me herself.

It was a photo of a bell pepper and vegetable salad. The caption read, “Had my fill of meat tonight, so Luca made me something light himself. He always knows what I want.”

Someone had left a comment underneath:

“Only a childhood friend could get the Don himself into the kitchen. Elena, you’re so lucky.”

I stared at the photo for a few seconds, then replied, “Stop dressing up an affair as friendship. It’s disgusting.”

Luca called almost right away.

His voice was low, as calm and patient as ever. “Sophia, what’s there to be jealous of? I only donated sperm because Don Rossi asked me to. It was an arrangement between our families. It doesn’t mean there’s anything going on between Elena and me.”

“An arrangement? Was going to her prenatal checkups part of the arrangement? Cooking for her? Are you going to deliver the baby too?”

The line went quiet for a few seconds.

“I know four failed rounds of IVF have been hard on you.” He softened his voice, as if he were trying to soothe an unreasonable patient. “But Elena and I are just friends. You can’t accuse us of crossing a line just because you’re upset. She’s Don Rossi’s daughter. Without an heir, she’d be in real danger. She needs me right now.”

“All she needs is sperm. You’re not the only man on earth. You’ve never respected me, Luca.”

His tone turned serious. “No, I do respect you. But you can’t ask me to give up what’s best for both our families just because you feel insecure.”

Just then, a sharp pain shot through my lower belly.

I stopped arguing and hung up.

Luca was always like this. When it came to Elena, he had an excuse for everything.

The month before, when an enemy had Elena followed, Luca had assigned four gunmen to guard her personally. He said he didn’t want the trouble spilling over onto the Moretti family.

When her gallery ran out of money, he pulled three million dollars from the Moretti family’s accounts. He said it was simply the price of keeping the two families allied.

I was so tired.

Luca sent one more text. “Stop being unreasonable, Sophia. I’ll bring you a present when I get home.”

My hands were shaking as I called Hans Brenner.

He was one of my father’s most trusted men, left in New York to look out for me. “Tell my father to come take me home,” I said.

I took a passport out of the safe. The name inside read Serafina Bellini.

That was my real name.

Sophia Bellini, the name I’d been living under, belonged to an ordinary associate on the fringes of the family.

For six years, I’d had the privilege of being the Moretti family’s Donna under that name.

Now it had served its purpose.

If I could no longer be the Moretti Donna or the mother of the Moretti heir, I could go back to being the Bellini family’s Godmother.