Chapter 2

I don't remember how I left the estate, only that I walked for a long, long time, holding Luca's hand.

His face was streaked with tears, but he didn't make a sound, his small face red from the effort of holding back sobs.

"Mommy, that was Papa... right?"

"He lied to us, didn't he?"

"He just doesn't love us. That's why he let us starve and freeze, right?"

Seeing him sob, my heart broke.

I was the fool. For a love that wasn't real, I had made my son suffer with me for five years.

I thought of how, while Luca and I were begging our landlord for a rent extension, he was spending a fortune at an auction for the woman he loved.

Now, on Luca's birthday, my son was crawling through a humiliating dog door in a storm to help me fit clothes for servants, while he was planning the most lavish birthday party for his lover's child.

I stroked Luca's head and finally made a decision. "Mommy doesn't want that Papa anymore."

"I'll take you away, Mommy will. We'll go to a place without lies, okay?"

"Okay!" Luca cried, his small body trembling. "Let's go far, far away, and never see him again."

Back in that dark basement, the two of us shared a cold, cheap piece of cake.

Late that night, the lock turned. Santino was back.

He had shed the imposing persona of the Don and changed back into the cheap jacket I had bought him from a street stall.

The cloying scent of expensive perfume still clung to him.

"Still awake?" He loosened his tie, his expression weary, his acting flawless. "Something came up at the site today. I'm late."

Before, I would have rushed to heat up soup for him, my heart aching. But now, all I felt was disgust.

I sat in the darkness, without turning on a light, and pushed a document across the table.

"Sign this."

"What's this? An insurance policy?" He frowned, and just as he picked up a pen, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

It wasn't on speaker, but I could still make out Riley's sickeningly sweet voice. "Santino, Finn is making a fuss. He says he can't sleep unless you tell him a bedtime story."

Santino's expression instantly softened. That gentleness was a knife twisting in my gut. "Alright, I'll be right over." He hastily signed the document without a glance.

"I have to go. I won't be back tonight." He grabbed his jacket and turned to leave.

At the door, his hand tightened on the frame, as if he was holding something back.

I watched his back, my voice as soft as a sigh. "Santino."

He stopped, turning back, "What is it now?"

"Nothing." I looked at him, but in the end, I didn't say what I was thinking. "It's cold out. Stay warm."

In the end, he just walked out.

"Mommy, that's a divorce agreement, right?"

Luca looked up, his face pale, his small hands clutching the divorce papers stamped with the Connor Family crest.

I knelt down, stroking my son's soft, curly hair, my heart clenching as if squeezed by an icy hand.

"According to Connor Family rules, there's a one-month review period, Luca."

"But don't worry. We're protected by the Family's rules. No one can touch us. When the month is up, Mommy will take you away from New York, and we'll never come back."

Luca nodded forcefully, his eyes shining brightly, looking so much like Santino's.

For the next week, Santino vanished. He didn't return to the basement, and I heard nothing about anyone interfering with the divorce papers I had quietly submitted to the Family.

The elder who handled family divorces was an old friend of my father's. He would do everything he could to help me keep it secret until it was all settled.

I didn't even have to go out of my way to find news about the celebrated Don.

I only had to listen to the gossip from the low-level enforcers collecting protection money on the street corners to piece together his movements.

"Hey, you hear? Don Connor popped ten bottles of Louis XIII at the club last night just because that woman, Riley, said the champagne was too dry."

"And get this, I hear he bought her son a purebred racehorse for over half a million dollars!"

"I heard the Don has a wife, but she's never been seen in public. Poor thing."

I lowered my head, my fingernails digging so hard into my palms that they drew blood.

A half-million-dollar racehorse.

And my Luca, malnourished as he was, looked more like a three-year-old than a five-year-old.

In the leaked photos that circulated, Santino looked at that mother and son with a fiercely protective gaze.

It was a look I had never once received during my five years in the slums.

I stared at those blurry photos, and each one felt like a dull, rusty saw dragging across my heart.

I remembered that cold night five years ago, when I thought he had chosen to leave the life for me. There was no grand Sicilian wedding, no wedding dress. We hid in that moldy basement like rats.

For five years, to make ends meet, my fingers were pricked countless times by sewing needles.

And Luca, from the moment he could understand, learned to help me sort fabric and make deliveries, all to ease the burden on his supposedly "down-and-out" father.

How ridiculous.

Even after seamlessly taking his place as Don of the Connor Family, he continued to play the part of a pitiful failure for me.