The Don's Hidden Heirs

I'd been married to Matteo, a Mafia Don, for eight years and had never been able to get pregnant. All because eight years ago, when his enemies ambushed us, I took the blade meant for his heart. The doctors told me my chances of conceiving were almost zero. Matteo said it didn't matter. He had me, and that was enough. Until the day I finally got my pregnancy report, and saw him walk into another house. Inside, a woman took his coat. A pair of twins ran out and grabbed his legs, calling him Daddy. I stood outside the door, the report still crumpled in my hand. That was the moment I learned he'd had another family all along. I didn't ask him why. I tucked the test results away and decided to fake my own death to vanish from Matteo's world completely. I had loved him once. But now, all I wanted was to take the child in my belly and leave forever. By the time news of that "accident" reached his ears, I would have already left this city. From then on, his family, his promises, his regrets. None of it would have anything to do with us. Chapter 1 As the car window rolled up, I slid the ultrasound into the deepest layer of my coat lining. My fingers didn't even tremble. Eight years ago, Matteo's enemies had ambushed us. To save him, I took the blade meant for his heart. I spent four months in the ICU. They removed one of my fallopian tubes. The day I woke up, Matteo held my hand and knelt in front of a floor covered in bloodstained bandages, his eyes bloodshot. He said, "Elena, we don't need children. The Moretti bloodline is dirty enough. Let it end with me. I just need you." The entire Palermo underworld believed he was a Don driven mad by love. They said he'd put the three most valuable smuggling routes at the port in my name. That on the fifteenth of every month, he'd cancel every family meeting without fail to have dinner with me. Now that I thought about it, those nights he cancelled meetings, he must have been teaching those twins how to disassemble and reassemble a revolver. "Ma'am, the boss's bodyguard has been watching us from the corner for twenty minutes." The man driving was Alexei. Once a veteran of the Russian smuggling routes. Three years ago, when Matteo ordered him thrown into the sea, I was the one who quietly used my personal accounts to let him live. "Let him watch." I pulled the wedding ring off my finger and tossed it into the glove compartment. "Take me back to the estate." "Are we doing it tonight?" "No." I watched the black Audi trailing us in the rearview mirror. "Tonight is the fifteenth. The Don needs to go home and have dinner with his wife." When I got back to the Moretti estate, the long table was already set with decanted red wine. Matteo had taken off his suit jacket and was standing by the fireplace in a dark gray cashmere sweater, frowning over a ledger. When he heard my heels on the stone floor, he looked up. His expression was so gentle there wasn't a single flaw in it. "Where did you go? It's cold out. Your hands are freezing." He walked over and took my hand the way he always did, pressing a kiss to my forehead. There was no cheap perfume on the cashmere. But there was a faint plastic smell. The kind that only comes from freshly unboxed children's building blocks. "I went to the church in the old quarter." I pulled my hand back and used the motion to straighten his collar. "I lit a candle for you." Matteo smiled, his gaze deep and doting. "God doesn't have jurisdiction over the Moretti family. Elena, as long as you're by my side, no one can touch me." I looked at that face, so familiar after eight years of waking up to it. The heart that once raced for him now beat steady and calm. "Is that so?" I pulled out a chair and sat down, picking up the water glass in front of me. "What if one day I disappeared?" Matteo's silver steak knife scraped against the porcelain plate with a sharp ring. He looked up at me. A flicker of the cold ruthlessness typical of the Moretti family's Don passed through his eyes. Then the warmth covered it again. "Don't talk nonsense. You're a living person. How could you just disappear?" "And even if you did, no matter where you went, I would find you." Chapter 2 If I stayed alive, Matteo would never stop looking for me. But what Matteo didn't know was that I had chosen to become a "dead woman." From then on, he would never find me again. Halfway through dinner, his encrypted phone rang. He glanced at the screen. Something shifted almost imperceptibly in his expression. Then he declined the call and turned the phone face-down on the table. "Family business?" I asked, cutting my carrots without interest. "Small friction at the docks. Luca's handling it." He said it without a single crack in his story. But the phone buzzed twice more in quick succession. In the Moretti family, no one dared blow up Matteo's private line repeatedly. Except on the night the old Don was dying. Unless it was the woman he kept on the side, or the twins running a fever. "Go handle it." I set down my fork and knife and wiped my mouth with the napkin. "The steak's getting cold anyway." Matteo stood. A flicker of guilt crossed his eyes. He came around the long table and leaned down to wrap his arms around my shoulders. "Sorry, Elena. Our eighth anniversary is in three days. That night, I won't go anywhere. I'll be with you the whole time. Okay?" "Okay." I looked up at him and even curved my eyes into a smile. "Whatever you say." He left in a hurry. He didn't even put on his coat. His bodyguard handed it to him in the foyer. The black armored convoy roared out of the iron gates. The estate fell back into dead silence. I stood and went up to the study on the second floor. The safe on the wall was hidden behind a Renaissance oil painting. The code was my birthday. Matteo had always used that to declare to the entire family that he had no secrets from me. I opened the safe. On the top shelf lay a thick stack of property transfer documents, all signed with my name. But beneath those papers were two birth certificates and an inheritance agreement drafted by a Swiss private trust. The beneficiary column listed two names clearly: Leo Moretti. Lorenzo Moretti. The guardian column: Sofia Castiglia. Notarized six years ago. Six years ago, I had just undergone my third failed round of artificial insemination. I was hemorrhaging in bed. Matteo had smashed an entire glass wall outside my hospital room, swearing he would never put me through that again. And in that same week, Sofia gave birth to healthy twins in a private Swiss hospital. He really didn't want me to suffer. But he had also betrayed me. Betrayed the vows we'd made together in that church. I put the agreement back exactly as I'd found it, closed the safe, and straightened the painting. Then I pulled out another disposable satellite phone and dialed that number. "Alexei." "Ma'am, everything's ready." The man's voice on the other end was low and steady. "The identical car with the fake plates will be in position tonight. Once it breaks through the guardrail and goes off the cliff, the timed fuse in the fuel tank will make sure the entire vehicle burns to nothing." Alexei paused. "Once it catches fire, you'll be 'dead'. Officially, legally, to the whole world." "Good." I looked out at the pitch-black night, my palm pressed against my flat stomach. "Three days from now, on our anniversary, detonate it as planned." "And you?" "I'll leave Sicily by cargo ship from the private port." My voice was cold. "I will never set foot on this filthy land again." Chapter 3 I attended a spring charity gala hosted by the Palermo Chamber of Commerce. Matteo had originally said he needed to review the dock's spring accounts at the family council that night, so I planned to handle the event alone. But the moment my car pulled up to the opera house entrance, another armored Bentley flying the Moretti family's black eagle flag pulled up silently beside it. The door opened. Matteo stepped out in a sharply tailored black tuxedo. He reached over and wrapped an arm around my waist with perfect ease, adjusting the cashmere wrap on my shoulders under a storm of camera flashes. "I thought you couldn't get away tonight," I said, glancing at him. "Accounts are nothing compared to you." He smiled softly, his tone so doting there wasn't a single crack in it. "If all of Palermo saw you attending alone, they'd think I mistreated my wife." That night, he practically turned me into the most envied woman in all of Sicily. The city's political and business elite and the heads of every family were there. Matteo held my hand the entire evening. When the mayor of Palermo raised a toast, he even took the strong drink for me publicly. "Elena has a cold constitution. She can't handle the chill. I'll drink for her." The mayor's wife covered a smile. "Mr. Moretti really is the same as ever. Everyone in the city says you nearly tore apart half the family to marry her. Clearly not a word of it was exaggerated." Matteo turned his head to look at me. His dark gray eyes were full of tenderness. "The only weakness in my life is Elena." A chorus of knowing murmurs and compliments rose around us. It wasn't until the intermission that a woman in a pale champagne gown glided up to the head table with a glass in her hand. It was Sofia. She was the widow of a cadet branch of the Castiglia family. On paper, she held a trustee title at an art foundation under the Moretti family name. "Mrs. Moretti, I'm so envious of you." Sofia smiled brightly, her eyes landing on the priceless sapphire necklace at my throat. "When my husband was alive, he always piled nice things on me too. He said the most important thing for a woman wasn't showing her face in public. It was staying home and raising his bloodline well." "Unfortunately, I wasn't blessed like you. Eight years, and your belly still hasn't moved, yet your husband treats you the same as ever. Anyone else would have quietly kept other arrangements by now." The air around us froze instantly. Everyone knew the accident eight years ago had removed one of my fallopian tubes. "Barren" was the one forbidden word in the Moretti family. Before I could even open my mouth, Matteo's eyes went cold beside me. A sharp crack. Matteo's whiskey glass slammed hard onto the stone counter. Liquor splattered everywhere. "Sofia." His voice wasn't loud, but it was soaked with bloodthirsty menace. "You think just because you're a Castiglia, I won't cut out your tongue tonight?" Sofia's face went white. She trembled slightly. "Get out." Matteo didn't even lift his eyelids. His voice was cold as he ordered the bodyguards behind him. "Cancel all of the Castiglia family's dividends at the east docks. If I ever see this face at any Moretti-hosted event again, you can throw yourselves into the sea and feed the fish." Two bodyguards in black stepped forward immediately and half-forced Sofia out of the banquet hall. The room fell silent. Then a wave of hushed admiration for the Don's fierce protection of his wife followed. Matteo turned back, covering the back of my hand with his cool palm. His voice was gentle again, as if he'd become a different person. "Ignore that madwoman. Elena, with me here, no one can make you suffer." I looked at him, a compliant smile in my eyes. "I know." Ten minutes later, Matteo excused himself to the restroom. Almost the exact moment he left through the side door, my private phone buzzed with an anonymous email. I opened it. A silent high-definition surveillance video. In a garden corridor less than two hundred meters from the main banquet hall, Sofia, who had just been "severely dealt with," leaned against the wall, wiping her tears. And the man who was supposed to be in the restroom, Matteo, was standing with his back to the camera, pulling Sofia into his arms and gently patting her back. When Sofia tilted her head up, tears falling, he bent down and kissed the tears from the corners of her eyes with practiced ease. The video was only a dozen seconds long. It was the dignity he gave me in public, and the tenderness he gave another woman in private. When Matteo returned, his suit was immaculate, his eyes still a bottomless well of warmth. "Tired? If you're tired, let's go home." "Okay." I put my phone away and looked up at him. From my clutch, I took out a dark gray velvet box sealed with wax. It was heavy, about the size of my palm. "What's this?" He looked surprised. "Our anniversary is the day after tomorrow. I prepared this in advance." I placed the box in his palm, my fingertip tracing the hard wax seal. "Promise me, Matteo. After our anniversary dinner the night after tomorrow, you'll open it yourself." Matteo held the box, looked down, and laughed. "So mysterious. Alright, I promise. That night, I won't go anywhere. I'll stay at the estate with you and open it in front of you." He didn't know that on that night, the box would contain the evidence of my leaving him forever. Chapter 4 Two days later. The night of our eighth wedding anniversary. The long table at the Moretti estate was covered in white roses flown in from abroad. Warm flames danced in the silver candelabras. The chef had prepared the seafood risotto we'd eaten at the little Naples restaurant where we first met. A slow vinyl record played on the gramophone. Matteo had cleared all family accounts for the day. By four in the afternoon, he'd already changed into formal wear and was personally selecting the wine in the living room. "Tonight, I'm not answering anyone's calls." He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder. His voice carried a lightness I hadn't heard in eight years. "Eight years, Elena. Every year from now on, let's spend it like this." I looked at the two of us in the mirror and reached up to touch his cheek. "Okay." The clock struck seven. The maid had just set the steaming risotto on the table when the private encrypted phone on the mantel began vibrating wildly. Matteo frowned, about to decline it. But when he saw the scrambled code on the screen, his expression changed instantly. It was the emergency channel used exclusively by the bodyguards at Sofia's private estate. He walked to the window and answered. After three seconds, his face went completely dark. "Sir, the young master from the Castiglia family had an acute asthma attack at the stables. He's in shock!" "Madam Sofia is hysterical. The private doctor hit a chain collision on the way. He can't get through!" In the background, I could faintly hear a woman's sharp, anguished screams and a child's weak whimpering. Matteo's knuckles went white around the phone. Veins bulged on his hand. He turned sharply. His eyes churned with fierce conflict. "Elena..." He walked quickly back to the table, his voice tight and hoarse. "There's a shootout at the east dock warehouse. Luca's been shot. Some of the old clan elders are making a move. I have to go put it down myself." "Give me half an hour. No, forty minutes. I promise I'll be back in forty minutes." He didn't even look at my face. He grabbed the coat off the back of the chair and rushed toward the door, his steps unsteady. "Matteo." I sat at the end of the long table and called his name calmly. He stopped. Turned his head. "What is it, Elena?" "You promised you'd spend tonight with me." Deep guilt and anxiety flashed through Matteo's eyes. He came back, cupped my face, and pressed a hard kiss to my lips. "I swear, I'll come back as soon as I can. Wait for me, Elena." He turned and rushed into the night, his footsteps hurried. I sat in the candlelight, watching his silhouette disappear around the corner of the foyer. Very softly, I said: "Goodbye, Matteo." The black armored convoy screamed out of the carved iron gates, heading for the private estate where his twin sons were hidden. The candles on the long table flickered. I picked up my fork and slowly finished the last bite of risotto on my plate. Then I stood, blew out every candle. Three hours later. The private estate on the east side of the city. Pine logs crackled in the fireplace. Expensive building blocks and toy trains were scattered across the carpet. The so-called "acute asthma attack" had just been a child choking slightly on a gummy candy. But Matteo hadn't left. After confirming the child was fine, he'd taken off his formal Don suit. In just his white shirt, he sat on the thick Persian rug, letting two toddlers who looked strikingly like him climb all over his lap, laughing and playing. Until his phone rang. A subordinate's voice came through, stammering: "Mr. Moretti, something's happened..." "The coastal highway... a major accident at the third curve!" "The missus's car lost control and went off the cliff into the sea... It exploded... By the time rescue got there, no one in the car had survived..."