All Chapters of My Best Friend Showed Up With My Don Husband’s Heir: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

When our housekeeper Martha called, I was in Midtown Manhattan, chairing a board meeting at one of the Moretti Family’s legitimate publicly-traded hotel groups.“Mrs. Moretti, we have a problem at the house.” Martha’s voice was barely above a whisper. “A Miss Sinclair showed up with a little boy. She’s insisting she’s the real Mrs. Moretti.”“She says the boy is Mr. Moretti’s son. Five years old. The only male heir to the Moretti Family.”I set my Montblanc down on the conference table.“Martha. What does she have?”“Mrs. Moretti, she has a DNA test.”I told my assistant to clear the rest of my afternoon. On my way out, I looked at Vincent across the table. “You have full authority on this end.”Vincent Moretti is Adrian’s Consigliere and his right hand. He’s been with us for thirty years, and nobody knows better than him what the words “male heir” mean in our world.He gave me a single nod.“Clara,” he said. “Don’t lose your crown.”Vivian Sinclair.My college roommate, twenty years o

Chapter 2

She suddenly snatched the black crocodile Birkin off my shoulder.“This is mine now. Going back to its rightful owner. Clara, this bag is three hundred grand. You don’t deserve it anymore.”Martha lunged forward and grabbed it back.“Miss Sinclair. That’s robbery. Inside the Moretti house.”Vivian lost it. “You little bitch. I’m the real Mrs. Moretti. Everything in this house belongs to me. Watch — I’ll have you out on the street before breakfast tomorrow.”Martha came with me the second year of my marriage. The Family didn’t plant her; I picked her myself. In a Mafia household, the housekeeper isn’t an employee. She’s loyalty. And in our world, loyalty runs deeper than blood.“Miss Sinclair.” Martha’s voice was steady. “Mrs. Moretti bought this Birkin with her own year-end bonus. Not one cent of Moretti Family money touched it. What title do you actually hold in this Family? On whose authority are you standing here giving orders?”Vivian sneered. “I have a DNA test. This child is the

Chapter 3

Eleanor set the cigar back on the cherrywood ashtray.Her eyes returned to Vivian.The temperature in the room dropped.“Miss Sinclair.”“The Moretti Family put roots in this country in 1891. A hundred and thirty-five years, four generations of Dons.”“In all that time, women showing up at this door claiming to carry a Moretti child? I’d put the count somewhere north of eighty. Every one of them swore it was love. Every one of them came with a child. Every one of them had a DNA test in hand. Real or fake.”“Not one of them ever walked back out.”She reached into a hidden compartment along the armrest of the couch, one I never knew existed, and took out a small brass bell.She set it on the coffee table.“Miss Sinclair. I’ll lay it out plainly.”“Either you give me the truth.”“Or I ring this.”“Our Consigliere, Vincent Moretti, is on his way from Manhattan to Long Island right now. Do you know what a Consigliere actually does? He handles the things in this Family that need to be handle

Chapter 4

Vivian felt the shift.The light came back into her eyes.She slid off the couch and dropped to her knees at Eleanor’s side. Her whole voice changed.“Mother. I know what I did wasn’t fair to Adrian. Cruel to Clara.”“But I had no other way.”“Adrian can’t let Clara go. And she won’t give the Family a child. I watched our line running out. At Commission meetings, every one of the five families has a male heir except us. You know what that means. A hundred and thirty-five years of work, gone, the second Adrian’s generation ends. I couldn’t stand to watch it happen.”“Liam is right here.”“He’s five years old. He looks more like Adrian as a boy than Adrian’s own baby pictures. He has a little mole under his left eye. Identical to Adrian’s.”“He just called you Grandma.”“How could you let the heir to this Family walk out that door?”Liam, after a nudge from Vivian’s eyes, stepped timidly toward Eleanor.“Grandma...”Eleanor lowered her head and looked at him.The hand that wore the Donna

Chapter 5

Adrian stood up.He took the page back from her, turned, and held it out to Vivian.“Read it.”Vivian’s hand shook so badly she could barely hold the paper.The letterhead: Weill Cornell Medical Center, Department of Urology.The contents: a Vasectomy Post-Operative Medical Certificate.Patient name: Adrian Francesco Moretti.Date of procedure: March 14, four years ago.Attending physician: Dr. Harold Weinstein, M.D., Adrian’s personal doctor, on the Moretti Family payroll for the last twenty years.“Vasectomy?” Vivian’s voice climbed into a shriek. “You — four years ago you got snipped?”“You’re the Don of the Moretti Family. How can you cut off a hundred and thirty-five years of bloodline yourself? This is forged. You...”Adrian cut her off.“Miss Sinclair. I’m giving you three minutes.”“Because my wife was your friend for twenty years.”“For her sake, I’ll tell you exactly why you die tonight.”Adrian’s voice was as even as if he were running a quarterly review.“Four years ago, at

Chapter 6

I wasn’t expecting what came out of that phone.A male voice came on with a slight Italian accent.“Childless? You think the Morettis are childless? Did you lose every brain cell you ever had over there?”“Adrian Moretti has a son. Eighteen years old. Hidden in a town called Bagheria outside Palermo, Sicily. Learning the old Cosa Nostra ways under one of the local Capos, finishing his undergrad in International Business at the University of Palermo. He runs the Moretti Family’s entire European operation: illegal real-estate laundering on one side, legitimate vineyards on the other. He’s the real heir to the Moretti Family.”“You took this job without doing that basic a piece of homework?”Vivian went rigid. “A son? Adrian has a son? Why didn’t you tell me before? What about my Liam —”“You made the mess, Vivian. You clean it up.” The voice was ice. “I just pay.”“Call me again, you’ll be the next one who ‘commits suicide.’”The line went dead.Something about the silence felt off.Adri

Chapter 7

“Lincoln?”Adrian’s expression was something I’d never seen.“What are you doing here? What is your relationship to Vivian? You were a Moretti Family associate.”Lincoln saw the cover was completely blown. He dropped the act and put on the I’m-going-down-anyway face.“Vivian told me she took a used condom out of your house and there was Mr. Moretti’s sample in it. She asked me to get her a DNA test. I have a second cousin who’s a lab tech at GenoTrace. I leaned on him.”“As for whether the sample was real, or fresh,” Lincoln shrugged, “how would I know? She said it was real, I believed her.”“What?” Vivian froze. “Lincoln. What did you just say?”“Don’t act, Vivian.” Lincoln smirked, cold. “That condom — you brought it back from the Morettis and stuck it in the freezer of our one-bedroom in Queens. For three years.”“How long does frozen sperm last in a home freezer? Six months.”“By the time you finally pulled the trigger on the IVF, what you had was a pile of dead cells.”“So I had m

Chapter 8

We went back to the Moretti compound on Long Island.Lincoln got pushed down onto the living room couch by Vincent’s men. Martha set an espresso in front of him. He took two sips, his hands still shaking.Then he gave us the whole thing.It was the Ricci Family.The Ricci Family, one of the five families of New York.In 1953, the old Don Enzo Ricci was gunned down outside a restaurant in Little Italy, in front of the whole street. Six rounds from a Colt 1911, fired by my father-in-law Francesco’s father. Two generations and half a century of blood between the Morettis and the Riccis.The current Don of the Ricci Family, Salvatore Ricci, is the youngest son of that Enzo Ricci who took the six bullets.He was also the old bastard who, four years ago at the Commission, sat in front of every Don of the five families and said the line that drove Adrian to a vasectomy.The Ricci Family has a second son, Kenneth “Kenny” Ricci. Harvard. Came home wanting the seat. But the Ricci Consigliere and

Chapter 9

The Plaza Hotel.The Grand Ballroom.The room Adrian and I had been married in, twenty years ago, and the most important piece of legitimate property the Moretti Family owns in Manhattan.That night, every friendly Family on the East Coast sent a representative.The Gambino Underboss. The Genovese Consigliere. The old Don of the Lucchese Family in person. From Chicago, the Outfit sent Salvatore “Toto” Amato, my father-in-law’s old friend.The Commission sent their most senior Consigliere, old Arturo Genovese, to chair.Kenny Ricci showed up on time, with the fiancée he’d publicly committed to a year and a half ago, Emily Sokolov, the eldest daughter of the Sokolov Family.The Sokolovs are a newer Russian organization with roots in Brighton Beach, running arms and crypto laundering. They’d been trying to break into Cosa Nostra circles by way of marriage into the Ricci Family.Kenny walked up to me with that fake-pleasant Harvard-boy smile he thought was so charming.“Mrs. Moretti. You’r

Chapter 10

The room started buzzing again.“That woman just now, wasn’t she the one who tried to crash the Moretti house this afternoon claiming to be the mother of the heir?”“What in God’s name is going on tonight?”Calmly, unhurried, I invited my son, Ethan Francesco Moretti, up from where he was standing at the Grand Ballroom entrance.Ethan had just turned eighteen.He stood six-foot-two. He’d inherited his father’s gray-blue Moretti eyes and my Irish blonde.He was in a deep charcoal Brioni, same cut, same color as Adrian’s that night.There was a scar on the inside of his left ring finger, same place as Adrian’s. Both of them from falling off a horse as kids.On his left wrist was the Patek Philippe 5711 Francesco had passed to Adrian, and Adrian had passed to him.The moment he walked in, every Don, every Consigliere, every Underboss on the East Coast stood up.Eighteen years.The fifth-generation heir of the Moretti Family, in his first public appearance in front of the Commission.Ethan

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