Donatello

"I wanted to see you.”

For a moment, Donatello said nothing. His gaze shifted to Roman, whose flushed cheek rested against my shoulder, then to Matteo, who clung silently to my side.

“Is the boy ill?”

The question caught me off guard. I nodded quickly.

“They've both had a fever. Roman has been particularly fretful, and I couldn't get you to answer my calls.”

Donatello's jaw tightened.

“Then why didn't you call the house physician? Or speak to Carmen?” His voice sharpened. “Maria, I have people to handle these things. You cannot expect me to abandon my business every time one of the children gets sick.”

I stared at him, stung by the rebuke.

“I wasn't asking you to abandon anything. I just—”

“Then what are you doing here?”

The question silenced me.

Behind him, Belinda lowered her eyes, but not before I caught the faintest flicker of amusement. Bruce shifted in his chair, suddenly fascinated by his whiskey glass.

I tightened my hold on Roman.

“I wanted to see my husband,” I whispered.

Donatello's expression hardened.

“I'm busy, Maria. You should have known better than to come here without an appointment.”

For a moment, I could only stare at him. I had carried our sick children across the city because I had missed him, because twenty-seven unanswered calls had left me frightened and alone.

He reprimanded me as though I were an inconvenient employee who had wandered into his office uninvited.

Bruce rose, his voice dripping with false sympathy.

“Ah, the poor little Madre. Come to see her Master?”

His gaze travelled over my dowdy clothes, his smirk making the mockery unmistakable.

I turned to my husband.

Donatello remained seated, scowling.

“I have a business to run,” he snapped, barely sparing our sons a glance.

I flinched. Matteo pressed himself against my side, while Roman buried his face in my neck.

For one terrible moment, rage surged through me.

Twenty-seven calls. I had tried to reach my husband twenty-seven times, desperate and alone. He hadn't answered once.

At the sprawling estate outside the city, I had panicked when the boys fell ill. The servants, taking their cue from Carmen, treated me with barely concealed disdain. Apparently, no one thought the nineteen-year-old mistress of the Rossi household worth obeying.

I crossed to the couch and sank onto it, exhausted.

Belinda stood beside my husband, watching me with narrowed eyes.

“When will you come home, Donatello?” I asked quietly, clinging to what little dignity I had left.

“The Don has a gala tonight,” Belinda answered before he could.

Anger flared in me.

I remembered the only gala I had attended with Donatello, shortly after our wedding. Surrounded by sophisticated Mafia wives and mistresses, I had felt like an intruder in my own marriage. Though I was the young heir's wife, they treated me like a nobody.

Their whispers had followed me all evening.

“Such a waif.”

“Sophia was the right choice for Donatello. They made a stunning couple.”

“Poor Sophia. I heard she was heartbroken. They had a terrible showdown, and she married someone else on the rebound.”

Pitying glances accompanied every cruel whisper.

Donatello had noticed my discomfort. He simply hadn't cared enough to help.

When we finally left after midnight, he reprimanded me in the car.

“You barely spoke to anyone. The Lindens and the Morettis are important family associates. As my wife, I expect you to behave accordingly.”

I had looked at him hopefully in the darkness and reached for his hand.

“I'll try, Donatello.”

He pulled away to check his phone. Its light illuminated his hard features as a photograph of a striking blonde appeared on the screen. Before I could see it clearly, he angled the phone away.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his expression darkening.

I knew who the woman was.

Sophia. His beloved Sophia, who had married another man in a fit of spite after losing Donatello.

He shut me out for the rest of the drive.

That night, he took me with a roughness that frightened me, ignoring my whispered pleas to be gentle and the tears I couldn't hold back. It felt as though he were punishing me for being the wrong woman.

Afterwards, he rose from the bed, his tattooed back damp with sweat, his fists clenched at his sides.

I lay curled on the Egyptian cotton sheets, aching and sobbing into my hand.

He glanced at me without a trace of compassion.

“You're my wife now, Maria. You'll please me the way I want.”

Then he strode towards his study for a drink and his customary after-sex cigar.

“That is all you'll ever be,” I heard him mutter. “A body to satisfy my lust.”

Within a month, I was pregnant with Matteo.

After that, Donatello never took me to another dinner or gala. He always had an excuse. When I finally dared to ask why, he pushed past me as I straightened his jacket.

“Matteo will need you. You're his mother. Do your duty.”

I had done far more than my duty. I cared for our sons, kept Donatello's clothes pressed, prepared his coffee, and straightened his tie before he left for work. I seized every small opportunity to make myself useful, hoping he might finally notice me.

I might as well have been a talking coat rack.

Soon, I became the hidden wife.

Belinda Barnes, his personal assistant, took my place at his side during dinners at our city residence, entertaining guests while I remained at the estate. Carmen's sisters and the other women who came to tea made a point of mentioning it.

Each little revelation drove the knife deeper.

Belinda was becoming the woman everyone associated with Donatello Rossi.

I was the ghost he sought out at night, when he bothered to come home.

In bed, he was still fiercely possessive, his lovemaking leaving me aching long after he rolled away. I submitted because I loved him desperately, foolishly believing that if I gave him enough of myself, some part of him might eventually belong to me.

Once, in the heat of the moment, I had whispered the truth.

“I love you.”

He had stopped abruptly and pushed me away.

“Don't talk about love. There is no place for it in our marriage, wife.”

The following morning, I had studied myself in the mirror, searching for some explanation.

I wasn't ugly. One of the nuns at my school had once described me as voluptuous, with more disapproval than admiration. I had my Italian mother's wide brown eyes, thick lashes, and soft, full mouth.

Why wasn't I enough for my own husband?

After marrying Donatello, I had gradually disappeared beneath the dowdy clothes his aunt selected for me, the duties imposed on me, and the children I loved with all my heart.

I was a wife in name, a mother by necessity, and a stranger in my husband's world.

And I had begun to fear that this was all I would ever be.