Zora
For seven years of my marriage to Damian Moretti, my daughter and I were so poor that every night we collected empty bottles from the alley behind a bar.
Every time Ella traded the bottles in for change, she would ask me, "Mommy, do we have enough saved to go to the aquarium with Daddy yet?"
Damian always said we had no money.
Then, on the day I finally saved enough for three tickets, I arrived at the aquarium only to find him at the entrance holding his ex-girlfriend's hand, with her son in his arms.
A staff member stopped us. "Sorry, Mr. Moretti has reserved the entire aquarium for a private event tonight."
A bodyguard in black stepped up beside Damian and bowed his head. "Don, the car is ready."
The truth was that my supposedly penniless husband, the man who claimed he could not afford his own daughter's ticket, had reclaimed the Moretti Family long ago and become New York's new Don.
It was not that he had no money.
He simply refused to spend any of it on us.
Later I took my daughter and left New York, and the Vitale Family found me.
I inherited the family's ports, took control of the Atlantic Shipping Alliance, and became a Donna before whom countless mafia families bowed.
Damian, eyes red, begged me to come home.
I only pushed the divorce papers across to him. "Damian, I am already home. And you were never my family."