All Chapters of Surprise! You're Not the Don's Wife: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

My phone rang the moment I'd sent the message. It was an unfamiliar number."Is this Signora Corleone? I'm calling from the amusement park in Illinois. The boy you listed under emergency contacts, Antonio, just went missing near the carousel. We're doing everything we can to find him. Could you come down right away?"I froze. "A child? I don't have a child."The person on the other end hesitated too. "But this boy is registered as Signor Corleone's adopted son..."My knuckles went white around the phone.So Michele had already been quietly pushing the adoption through, and I, his so-called wife, was the very last to know.I drove to the park.From a distance, I could already see a crowd gathered near the carousel. A woman ran out and threw herself into Michele's arms, sobbing so hard her whole body shook. "Michele, Antonio's gone! I'm so scared. Please, you have to find him..."I stared at the woman he was holding so gently.It was Rita.Michele bent his head to murmur some

I'd only said one sentence about my allergy, and somehow that had become me making a scene.Rita's voice caught. "I'm sorry, Mae, let me make you a fresh egg instead. It won't take long..."She stood, moving toward the kitchen.Antonio suddenly burst into tears, grabbing at Rita's sleeve. "Mommy, don't go! I want Mommy!"Michele shot up from his chair, the legs scraping sharply across the floor.He scooped Antonio up and turned to me, his voice gone cold. "Mae, have you had enough of this yet?"I'm taking Antonio upstairs. You sit here and think about what you've done. Don't embarrass yourself any further."He got up and walked past me without slowing down, like I was a stranger he happened to be passing on the street.His footsteps faded away on the second floor.Rita's tears stopped instantly. She turned to me, a triumphant smirk curling at the corner of her mouth."How does it feel, playing pretend wife for four years? Oh, you still don't know, do you?"She stood and lean

"And the business with the marriage certificate. How had she lost it? Had she found something out? How exactly had she... how had she lost our child..." Michele's voice trailed off.On the other end of the line, Mattoe hesitated. "Don, Rita keeps trying to reach you. She says Antonio has a fever that won't break...""If he's sick, call a doctor!" Michele slammed his hand on the desk. "Finding Mae comes before anything else!"But a full week passed with nothing: no record of her leaving the country, no hotel check-ins, no contact with any friends.His informants in other states all came back empty. Not a single trace of Mae.That night, Michele sat alone in his study, holding the marriage certificate Mae had torn apart. He'd pieced it back together.The memories came flooding back like a tide.Four years ago, when Mae had left with him, the Don of the Bagarella famiglia, her father, had pointed a finger at Michele's face. "You don't deserve my daughter."Mae had stepped between

Mae's POVI woke in the villa on the shore of Lake Colmo, sunlight falling across my pillow through white gauze curtains.It was nothing like the Corleone famiglia's dark, oppressive mansion. Everything here was bright and warm, and every breath of air carried the taste of freedom.My fiance, my childhood sweetheart, Alex DeLuca, was in the next room over.He'd stayed up until dawn the night before, working on nothing but our wedding.I'd come back to my family in such a rush that we only had a week to plan the wedding, and for that whole week, Alex hadn't gone to bed before sunrise a single time.I rolled over, and my phone lit up.A photo filled the screen: Michele, standing outside the gates of my family's estate, soaked to the bone.Underneath it, Alex had written: [He's here, but don't worry, I won't let him in. All you need to do is be the most beautiful bride there's ever been, and walk toward me.]I smiled and set the phone face-down.Four years ago, when I'd taken of

At the reception, Alex and I were cutting the cake together.His aide hurried over and murmured something into Alex's ear.Alex's brow creased slightly, then he turned to me with a smile. "A small matter. I'll take care of it."He was gone for a few minutes, and when he came back, he was holding a rolled parchment letter, the kind used only for internal family correspondence, sealed with the crest of the DeLuca famiglia."The Corleone famiglia has just been taken over by a rival family," he said, handing me the sealed letter. "Michele's people have been neutralized too."While Michele's been spending every resource he has looking for you, he let the family's affairs slide. A rival family took advantage of it. Three of the Corleone docks and two of their casinos are already in enemy hands."I unfolded the letter. It laid out everything happening to the Corleone famiglia now.Alex's fingers traced lightly along the edge of the letter. "The rival family found out about your history