They Sacrificed Me for Her

Sicily had an old custom. When a daughter of one of the families turned 18, she designed a piece of jewelry herself, and on Christmas Day it was sent to New York to be auctioned.

Whoever outbid the whole room for it would be the man she married.

For years, Sicily had held on to the last of its old glory through that ritual.

I designed a pair of diamond cufflinks set with the letter L for Luca Moretti, my childhood friend, who had just moved to New York. But Vincent DeLuca, the Don, won them.

Vincent said he hadn't known who they were meant for. He'd simply fallen for me at first sight.

Everyone said marrying Vincent had saved me. The Bellini family was barely hanging on, while the DeLuca family ran the busiest ports and casinos on the East Coast and never had to do its own dirty work.

After the wedding, Vincent was wonderful to me.

When I first got to New York, people made fun of my Sicilian accent. So Vincent taught himself Italian, and after that, nobody dared laugh.

No matter how late he got home, he always came to the bedroom first to kiss my forehead before he dealt with anything else.

When my father had a sudden heart attack, Vincent put negotiations on hold and flew to Sicily with a Manhattan doctor that same night.

In our second year of marriage, I went with my parents to a family memorial service in Pennsylvania, and on the way back to New York, I was kidnapped.

Vincent all but tore the East Coast apart looking for me.

He put up a five-million-dollar reward, shut down three casinos that had dealings with the kidnappers, and personally shot a man for saying I was as good as dead.

Everyone said Vincent loved his wife more than his own life, and that anyone who laid a finger on me was declaring war on the entire DeLuca family.

Three months later, I finally escaped from the Appalachian Mountains.

When I saw Vincent again, I was visibly pregnant, and the man beside me was Luca.

The moment Vincent arrived, his eyes went first to the swell of my belly, then to the coat Luca had draped over my shoulders.

My mother-in-law, Caterina DeLuca, rushed at me and slapped me so hard I hit the ground. "Gone for three months, and she comes back pregnant, wearing the coat of the man everyone's been whispering about! Take her to the private hospital. That baby could be anyone's, and it is not staying!"

Vincent caught her wrist. "Enough!"

I thought he was going to protect me.

But the next second, he turned to the bodyguards behind him. "Didn't you hear my mother? Do it!"

His words hit me, and I froze.

Two bodyguards clamped onto my shoulders and dragged me into a car.

I fought with everything I had and grabbed Vincent's sleeve. "No! This is your baby! I was pregnant before I disappeared!"

Vincent didn't answer. He just peeled my fingers off his sleeve, one by one.

At the DeLuca family's private hospital, the doctor finished the exam and warned him quietly, "She's 16 weeks pregnant. The Donna is very weak. If we force a termination now, there's a real risk of hemorrhage, and it could affect her ability to have children later."

I stared at Vincent, waiting for him to change his mind.

He didn't even blink. He just watched, without a flicker of emotion, as the nurse slid the needle into my arm and pushed the anesthetic into my vein. Right before everything went black, I heard him say flatly, "Make it clean. No loose ends."

I didn't wake up until the next day.

The baby was gone.

My stomach felt like it had been sliced open, and my wrists and shoulders were covered in bruises. Even the slightest movement left me shaking with pain.

He was my first child.

For three months, locked up in those mountains, I'd shielded him whenever they beat me. Even when hunger made my stomach ache, I'd forced myself to swallow moldy bread. On the coldest nights, curled up on a dirt floor, I'd told him over and over that his daddy would find us soon.

He'd fought so hard to live. He'd made it all the way back to his father.

The tears came, and I couldn't stop them.

I hurried to the sitting room to confront Vincent, but before I got there, I heard Luca's voice inside.