All Chapters of After Postpartum Depression, The Mafia Princess Comes Home: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

Ten days after giving birth, I told my husband, Ethan Reed, that something was wrong with me.He sat on the living room couch, head down, typing on his phone. He didn't even look up."Sophia, every woman goes through mood swings after having a baby." He turned his phone face-down on the coffee table, shutting me down with one sentence. "You'll be fine once you get enough sleep."He got up and went back to the bedroom. I didn't stop him.I'd lost count of how many times Ethan had turned his back on me and walked away.He was one of the best surgeons in Manhattan, so I always trusted him blindly. This time was no exception.I went to bed early. At two in the morning, my son Luca started crying, and I forced myself upright.My incision hadn't healed. Every step felt like a knife driving into my belly. I braced myself against the wall and shuffled to the nursery, poured formula into a bottle, and set it in the warmer. The bottle slipped out of my hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.I

Chapter 2

After Milo was given away, I got worse by the day.I began going entire nights without sleep, and every so often I would fall apart out of nowhere and sob.One afternoon, I frightened Luca into crying in the middle of his feeding.Ethan came home just then and roughly snatched Luca out of my arms. He looked at me coldly. "Sophia, in your current mental state, I don't think you're fit to keep caring for a child."After that day, I was stripped of the right to care for Luca. Ethan ordered me not to go near him at all.Then came Luca's baptism. Ethan booked a restaurant for the luncheon.The baptism was at eleven, the luncheon at twelve thirty. He left early that morning, saying he was picking up someone who'd be helping out.I got dressed and sat waiting in the living room. At ten twenty, the door opened, and I saw Serena, the nurse from Ethan's practice.I had met her three times, each one in passing.Today she wore a cream cashmere sweater, her hair pinned back without a strand out of

Chapter 3

After the baptism, Ethan started taking his phone into the bathroom.He used to leave it on the nightstand when he showered. Now he brought it in and set it face-down on the sink, and when he came out, the screen was always dark.I said nothing, because I didn't have proof yet.I couldn't afford to panic and give Ethan an opening to take Luca from me.The next morning, while washing Luca's little clothes, I took down the dark gray coat Ethan kept hanging in the entryway.There was something stiff in the right pocket. I thought it was the rubber connector of his stethoscope. What I pulled out was a collar. Real leather, dark brown, with a round metal tag hanging from it.I turned it over toward the light from the window and made out a single engraved letter: S.I checked the style and the length. It wasn't my size.I said nothing. I tucked the collar back exactly as I'd found it, hung the coat back on the rack, and straightened the buttons.I almost had enough.At eleven that night, wit

Chapter 4

At seven sharp, Gabriel's car pulled up outside the building.Black, no badging, every window tinted.I held Luca in my left arm and a duffel bag in my right hand, and the second the elevator doors opened, I saw Gabriel.He wore a black overcoat, not a hair out of place. "Sophia."He said my name, just that, and my eyes went hot.Gabriel came to my side, steadied my shoulder with one hand, and leaned in, his voice low. "Come on. Your brother's taking you home."Luca stirred against my shoulder, lips working at nothing, then sank back into sleep.We drove for forty minutes, across the Hudson and into an estate in New Jersey.I remembered this place. I'd eaten my seventh birthday cake here. At fourteen, I'd broken the vase in the front hall. At eighteen, I'd made a bet with Gabriel under the backyard oak about which of us could climb higher.The car stopped. Gabriel took my bag, and I carried Luca out.The estate's front doors stood open. My father waited at the top of the steps in a dar

Chapter 5

Ethan's practice occupied the entire fourteenth floor of a medical building on the Upper East Side.I'd gotten a keycard to it in his first year working there. Gabriel insisted on coming with me, and I didn't refuse.We parked in the underground garage, and I swiped us through the staff entrance.In the elevator, Gabriel stood beside me. "Our people are covering the perimeter. The cameras are already handled.""The ones inside the practice?""There are none in the office itself. There's one in the records room." He paused. "It's being handled."The elevator opened onto a silent hallway. I swiped the office door open.The layout was exactly as I remembered from my first visit. Filing cabinets lined the right wall, each one locked.I went to the desk and pulled open the bottom drawer.The spare key was at the very back, tucked under a 1997 Mayo Clinic surgical manual.I opened all six cabinets one by one. Gabriel took a portable hard drive and a handheld scanner out of his bag and starte

Chapter 6

We got back to the estate at two in the afternoon.Luca was sleeping soundly. My father sat beside him, quietly watching him.I walked in and sat down across from him. "He was watching the nursery, which means he must know about that phone.""No wonder he was in such a hurry to get to Boston. He needs to report it to the Castiglia family as fast as he can." My father turned the ring on his finger, the one that marked him as Don. "He thinks he's still the one running this."I nodded. "Gabriel's people are inside his surveillance system now, so we still have time before he catches on.""What do you want to do?" my father asked."I don't want a drawn-out fight," I said. "I want everything finished before his plane touches back down."My father looked at me and said nothing."The Castiglias don't know he blew his cover today," I said. "The moment they sense something's gone wrong on this end, they'll cut him loose. The Castiglia family doesn't let a pawn who knows too much survive once he'

Chapter 7

At four in the afternoon, in the lobby of her building, the front desk told me Serena wasn't expecting visitors.I didn't push my way in. I sat in the cafe downstairs and sent her a message."I know about you and Ethan. Don't worry, I'm not here to argue. I'm only here to tell you some things you don't know. You have twenty minutes to decide whether to come down."Seventeen minutes later, she pushed open the cafe door.She wore no makeup today, just a baggy hoodie, her hair in a loose tie. She looked nothing like she had at the baptism.She sat down across from me and put her hands on the table. There was a faint red line across her knuckles from clenching them too long. "Talk.""Did he ever tell you why he's away from home so much?""He said your postpartum condition wasn't improving, and being around you had become too much for him.""He wasn't lying about that part," I said. "But he didn't tell you why I wasn't getting better."I brought out the photos and slid them across to her. S

Chapter 8

I got back to the estate at six thirty in the evening.Luca was awake, kicking away on the carpet, while my father sat in the armchair beside him, teasing him with one finger. Luca grabbed the finger, strained with everything he had, couldn't hold on, and went back to kicking.I stood in the doorway watching for a while.My father glanced up at me, then looked back down at Luca. "What did Serena say?""She's willing to give a statement.""You trust her?"I walked over, crouched down, and held out a finger. Luca immediately turned his head and grabbed it, a little tighter than before, and once he had it, he broke into a grin."I don't need to trust her," I said. "I need her statement to land alongside the other evidence, so each piece corroborates the others.""And is the rest of the evidence in place?"I nodded. "All that's missing now is Serena's written statement and the right person to receive the package."Gabriel came out of the dining room carrying two plates of pasta. "I've foun

Chapter 9

Half an hour earlier, Gabriel had found out that Ethan never landed in Boston. He'd quietly chartered a plane back instead.As soon as we got the news, I went to Ethan's apartment building under cover of dark.Gabriel stayed in the car and didn't follow me up. It was the only thing I asked of him.The elevator rose to the twenty-second floor. The hallway was silent, my footsteps soundless on the carpet.I rang the bell and waited about forty seconds. The door opened.Ethan stood in the doorway, a phone in his hand. He must have just ended a call.He stepped aside. "Come in."I walked in.The lights were off. Only the study door stood ajar, leaking a strip of light.On the table sat a glass of whiskey he hadn't finished, the ice mostly melted, a ring of condensation on the glass."How did you know I was here?" he said."I guessed," I said. "You wouldn't go to a hotel. This apartment is where you feel safest."He walked to the couch and sat down, placing his phone on the coffee table, sc

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP