Is Donna Tartt Writing A New Novel?

On the day of my prenatal checkup, I found out my husband Don had booked me a termination surgery instead of a postpartum care package. I thought he had placed the wrong order and was about to tease him, but Vincenzo spoke flatly. "I didn't book it wrong. I need to come clean with you about something." "I've been keeping another woman. She's a good girl. She doesn't want a title or to take your place as Donna." "But she got pregnant recently. I've already made her suffer enough. I can't let her child suffer too. I have to give the child the Moretti family name." I froze on the exam table, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "Then why did you abort my child?" He wiped the ultrasound gel off my belly and smiled. "I just want you to adopt Giuliana's child. I'm having yours terminated because I'm afraid you'll play favorites and treat her kid differently." He handed me the consent form, calm and composed. "I promise you will always be Donna. No one will ever take your place." I gave him a long, hard look, then was wheeled into the operating room. "Never mind." "Vincenzo Moretti, you're going to regret this every single day for the rest of your life." He didn't know it, but I was the only woman in the world who could ever give him a child.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. You just walked out of Boston City Hall looking absolutely radiant. Any special occasion to celebrate?" "I'm getting divorced." "I'm sorry to hear that. Would you mind telling me what happened?" "He's been bedding his late right-hand man's sister. In my art studio, on my yacht, across my private study desk, and even on the grand piano in our living room. He thought I didn't know." "I can't imagine how much this hurts. I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Where are you heading now?" "The hospital. Prenatal checkup." ... The interview went viral within hours for her calm, unflinching recounting of the betrayal and the shocking contrast between her glamorous mafia wife identity and her devastating situation. It didn't take long for netizens to dig out my identity, and the entire world now knows the woman in that video is me. Elena, Donna of the Moretti family. Three years ago, Vincenzo Moretti, the undisputed Don who ruled Boston's underworld with an iron fist, threw me a wedding that made headlines across the nation. Back then, everyone envied me, calling me the luckiest woman alive. But now? That interview had been online for nearly two days, and Vincenzo was still lost in his little love nest. By the time Vincenzo finally bothered to watch the video his men had forwarded to him, I was already in New Zealand. The whole world knew I was leaving Vincenzo Moretti. He was the last person on earth to find out.

The Mad Donna He Never Really Married For three years, I was Donna of the rising Valenti family. One day, Enzo was holding a meeting at a private cigar club. I worried about his stomach issues, so I went to bring him his usual antacids. Standing outside the private room, I heard his men laughing. “Don Enzo, are you really going to keep Clara hidden away at the Silver Lake villa forever?” “That mad Moretti heiress in the main house is still parading around as Donna of the Valenti family.” Enzo rubbed the bridge of his nose and scoffed. “If she hadn’t taken a bullet to the head for me and gone insane, and if I hadn’t desperately needed her family’s capital, I never would have married a woman with no blood ties to the life.” “But Clara is my legal wife. The family trust, the marriage certificate at City Hall, it’s all in her name.” “Stella’s just a plaything I keep at the main house. Once Clara gives birth to an heir, I’ll bring her home for good.” My knuckles turned white as I squeezed the small box of medicine, the cardboard crumpling in my hand. He had exchanged blood oaths and rings with me in the church, yet it was Clara who had signed the papers at City Hall. He played me for a fool, all to keep Clara’s reputation clean. Clutching the box, I turned and melted back into the shadows. He had no idea my sanity had returned three days ago. He would never guess I had already sent an encrypted message to my brother, who runs a business empire from our home in Solaria, far across the sea. I was done with this goddamn Valenti title.

To be with Luca, I left New York and moved to Montreal. Three years of slaving over the stove, teaching myself the books, studying every detail of how to dress—all to fit into his world. To become his Donna. I actually believed I was on my way. But tonight, at the family banquet, the woman beside him wasn't me. It was Liliana—his childhood friend. His understudy leaned in and muttered in Italian. "Don, if you're settling things with Liliana, what happens to Catherine?" Luca took a slow drag of his cigar. "I love Catherine. But for the family, my Donna can't be some nobody." "And if she finds out?" "She loves me too much to walk away. I'll give her everything but the title." My chest tightened. A tremor ran through me that I couldn't stop. What they didn't know—I'd learned Italian in secret. I caught every single word. Liliana swept in wearing a long red dress. She shot me a look from above and gestured for me to move. Luca patted my hand. "Liliana's here to hold the room tonight. Go watch the kitchen. Don't let the staff screw up." I looked into his eyes. Three years of this—and it was all a joke I'd played on myself. I turned and walked out, pulling off his necklace and letting it drop to the carpet. My phone buzzed. My father asked how much longer I'd stay away. I stopped and typed. "Three days. I'm coming back to New York." Luca, when you find out your family doesn't even hold a candle to mine... what then?

"I agree to the divorce," I said as I dialed my mother-in-law's number. "Matteo Bellandi will never agree to divorce me, so you need to arrange a new identity for me. I need to disappear completely. He must never find me." Despite six years of marriage, I never conceived a child. In the Mafia world, how many men remarried for the sake of an heir? Yet Matteo always stood firmly at my side. To have a child, we tried everything—ninety-nine rounds of IVF that resulted in ninety-eight failures. The final pregnancy ended in fetal demise. Matteo held me and said, "Whether we have a child or not, I will always love you." Everyone said he was deeply devoted and that I was fortunate. Even I believed it. I believed it was my body that was defective. I believed I was the one holding him back. Until that day, when I went to the hospital for a follow-up exam. I saw him with my own eyes, pushing a mobile hospital bed into a VIP suite. On the bed lay a young woman named Sienna Vale, who had just given birth, holding a pair of twins—a boy and a girl. The congratulations inside the room were sharp and piercing. They praised his good fortune and Sienna's superior genes. They said the children were born to inherit the Bellandi empire. They mocked my education and my background and said I could not produce a "high-quality" heir. "Who do you think you are, daring to speak about her? My wife is not someone you get to judge. If I hear one more word of disrespect toward my Donna, you'd better weigh the consequences yourself," Matteo rebuked them coldly, preserving my dignity as Donna. In that moment, I finally understood that the marriage I had been so proud of was nothing more than a joke in everyone else's eyes. If that was the case, I would end this love story everyone envied with my own hands.

My baby brother was barely a month old when my father's mistress threw him off the upstairs balcony to his death. Then she turned around and said my mother had done it. And my father, the Don, took the mistress at her word and had my mother killed. That woman framed me too, and I was cast out of the house. For the next fifteen years, I clawed my way up through begging and reckless grit, until I became the Donna of the Vanetti family. Then one day, my adopted son Daniel Vanetti brought his new girlfriend to meet me. "Mother, this is Via, the Principessa of the Vitale family. I want to marry her." I looked at Via. Her face was the spitting image of my father's mistress. What a small world. The daughter of the woman who killed my mother had walked right up to my door. So I refused without a second's hesitation. "I don't approve."