Cecilia D
At the charity gala, I was about to tell Don Luca Moretti the happy news that I was pregnant.
But he cut me off to publicly congratulate his childhood sweetheart, Elena Rossi, on her pregnancy.
Elena was single, so I was still wondering who the father of her heir could be when Luca said, “As the baby’s biological father, I couldn’t be more honored...”
My ears rang. Then Luca turned to me. “My Donna, on the other hand, has had a much harder time. Four rounds of IVF, and she still hasn’t conceived. But I’m grateful to her for being so gracious about all this.”
Elena smiled brightly. “Luca, the results from last week’s checkup are in. It’s a boy. If your Donna can’t give you a child, our two families can share an heir. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
Mocking looks shot toward me from every corner of the room.
In that moment, the humiliation nearly swallowed me whole.
The month before, Luca had suddenly stopped sleeping with me. Now I knew why: he’d been saving his sperm for another woman.
The week before, he’d told me there was trouble at the docks. Then he’d stopped answering my calls and texts. So he hadn’t been negotiating at all. He’d been at the family hospital, accompanying Elena to her prenatal checkup.
I had loved Luca for eight years, and for six of them, I’d helped secure his position as Don.
Now that power had gone to his head, it was time to remind him exactly who had given him everything he had.
I ran a hand over the slight curve of my belly. From today on, the Moretti family would have no claim on me—or anything that was mine.