Chapter 1

After the Emergency C-Section

The anesthesia hadn't even fully worn off before Bella was already snapping at the nurse to hand over her phone.

"Lorenzo, it hurts so much. Why aren't you here with me yet?" she whimpered into the receiver, her voice dripping with practiced fragility. "I know I’m just a convenient distraction to you. Maybe I should just take the baby and end it all."

She struggled to push herself up, making a dramatic show of straining toward the third-floor window as if she might jump.

Lorenzo’s voice came through the line, thick with raw desperation. "Be good, Bella. Listen to me. All I want right now is to be by your side."

"I’ve already acquired that estate you liked," he continued. "I’m dispatching a private medical team to retrieve you and the baby right now."

Hearing that all-too-familiar voice, my mind reeled back six years.

Back then, Lorenzo had just ascended as the head of the Corleone family, and he had a target painted on his back everywhere he turned. On our first anniversary, assassins ambushed us in a dimly lit garage, trapping us inside. To protect Lorenzo, I took a blade to the gut. My blood had soaked the cold concrete.

That day, he had held me like a madman as he sprinted through the hospital corridors, falling to his knees and begging the doctors to save my life.

I survived, but that wound robbed me of my fertility forever.

I remembered how Lorenzo had held me then, his eyes bloodshot and face ravaged by tears. "I'm so sorry... I failed to protect you. From now on, I will never let another soul hurt you again."

When he showed me the paperwork for his vasectomy, I believed him. I thought he was my everlasting.

Now, it all felt like a vile, pathetic joke.

Bella hung up the video call, a triumphant smirk gleaming in her eyes.

"The toxins in your system will haunt that child for the rest of his life," I said, a hollow, self-deprecating laugh escaping my throat. "Do you really think a man like him will accept a son destined to be frail?"

Bella’s face stiffened for a moment, but she quickly recovered, sneering as she scrolled through her messages. She pointed to a photo of a legal document.

"Lorenzo signed this will and testament himself. Half of the family fortune goes to my son."

"That woman he’s supposed to marry is nothing but a barren wasteland," she spat. "Lorenzo’s been aching to kick her to the curb for ages. There’s no way he wouldn’t claim his own bloodline."

I clenched my fists so hard my knuckles turned white, burying my agony beneath a mask of professional indifference.

Bella leaned closer to my face, her gaze dripping with malice and disdain.

"Old lady, don't look at me with those jealous eyes. You'll never meet a man as generous as Lorenzo in your entire miserable life."

"Since you saved my life, I guess I could teach you a thing or two," she mocked. "I can show you how to handle a man of his caliber in bed so he never strays."

I instinctively took a step back, my disgust written plainly across my face.

"A man who cheats while he's engaged? A man like that is just... filth."

Bella carelessly admired her fresh manicure, letting out a sharp, contemptuous snort.

"Men crave vivid, pulsing flesh, not a marble statue—especially a woman as stale and moldy as that one."

"Lorenzo used to complain to me all the time. He said his fiancée was like a medieval nun, devoid of any spark. All I had to do was offer a little warmth, and he was utterly enslaved."

"Once, that woman was burning up with a fever, practically on her deathbed. The hospital called him a dozen times. All I did was tug on his necktie, and he turned off his phone to stay with me all night."

"A man I can bend to my will like that... well, even that so-called fiancée is just feasting on my scraps."

I gripped the hem of my lab coat, my nails nearly piercing my palms. I remembered that night. I had been delirious, and he had claimed he was handling a bloody turf war in Sicily. It turned out he was just wallowing in another woman's bed.

Bella lifted her eyelids, her predatory eyes scanning me from head to toe.

"Doctor, looking at your drab outfit, I bet you’ve never even tasted what a real man is like, have you?"

"Is your man satisfying his hunger elsewhere so that he has no interest in your withered body when he gets home?"

"If you get down on your knees and beg me, I might feel merciful enough to teach a peasant woman like you how to properly please a man."