My Mafia Husband Chose His Mistress’s Son While I Lost Our Baby—So I Took Off My Ring...

The Romano estate in Geneva, Illinois, was not like the limestone palace Enzo had built in Lake Forest.

It was an old stone fortress built in 1922 by my great-grandfather, surrounded by forty acres of dense oak woods and bordered by the frozen currents of the Fox River. It was a place designed for sieges, not cocktail parties. It had narrow windows, reinforced steel lintels, and an underground armory that had remained untouched since my father died three years ago.

When Marcus pulled the Lincoln through the iron gates at two in the morning, the house was already awake.

Uncle Silvio was standing on the wide stone porch, wearing an ancient wool cardigan over a white button-down, a silver-topped walking cane planted firmly between his polished Oxford shoes. Behind him stood six men—men with graying temples, broken noses, and submachine guns resting casually against their forearms. Romano men. Men who remembered what the city was before Enzo Moretti decided that business could be run like a corporate hedge fund.

"Carmela," Silvio said, his gravelly voice cutting through the hiss of the snow falling through the bare oak branches.

I walked up the stone steps, my body trembling from exhaustion, the adrenaline finally washing out of my bloodstream to leave only a hollow, throbbing ache.

Silvio didn't ask questions. He held out his arms, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I let myself fall forward against someone’s chest. His coat smelled of bay rum and gun oil—the smell of my childhood, the smell of safety before I fell in love with a man who traded loyalty for flattery.

"He signed the papers?" Silvio asked against my hair.

"He will," I said, pulling back, wiping the snow from my eyelashes. "He has until noon."

"Come inside, child. The doctor is waiting in the library."

The library was warm, lit by a roaring fire of split ash. A basin of warm water and clean linen towels had been laid out on the mahogany desk beside my father’s old leather armchair.

For the next two hours, a quiet, discreet physician who owed his medical license to my family cleaned the cuts on my scalp, wrapped my ribs in tight elastic bandages, and checked the bleeding. He gave me an injection of an anti-inflammatory that made the edges of the room blur into a soft, painless gray.

"You need to sleep for twelve hours, Miss Romano," he said, packing his leather bag. "If you don't, your body will collapse on its own."

"I have work to do at seven," I replied.

"Carmela," Silvio said from the doorway, leaning on his cane. "The girl is right. Let the lawyers handle the paper. Enzo is already losing his mind. Dante called three of my capos tonight trying to find out where you were. He’s tearing Chicago apart."

"Let him tear it," I said, settling into my father’s high-backed chair. "The more noise he makes, the less he’ll notice what I'm taking."

"What are you taking?"

I pulled Aaron Feld’s second file from my leather tote bag and laid it on the blotter.

"Enzo thinks his power comes from his crews," I explained, looking into the fire. "He thinks because he has fifty men with glocks and ten judges on retainer, he owns the Midwest. But Enzo never understood supply chains. My father didn't run muscle; my father ran infrastructure."

Silvio’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. "The cold storage facilities at O’Hare. The rail terminals in Cicero."

"And the shipping licenses for the Port of Indiana," I added. "Every ounce of high-grade construction steel that enters Cook County passes through the Romano Maritime Trust. Enzo used those trusts as collateral for his loans with the New York families to finance his new casino developments in Gary. The collateral was contingent on one clause in our prenuptial addendum."

Silvio leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with sharp, predatory intelligence. "The survivorship clause."

"In the event of a divorce initiated on grounds of marital infidelity or gross negligence resulting in domestic harm," I recited, the words burned into my memory from the night Aaron drafted them five years ago, "all maritime assets, freight lines, and commercial real estate held under the Romano trust revert instantly to the sole ownership of Carmela Romano. Without the trusts, Enzo’s credit line with the Gambinos vanishes by Friday."

"He will be insolvent before the month ends," Silvio noted quietly.

"He won't just be insolvent," I said. "He’ll be food for the Tatalias. Unless he comes to me."

"And when he comes?"

"I want him to look at Bianca Rossi and realize she cost him every brick, every dollar, and every drop of blood his father spent fifty years building."

Silvio looked at me for a long moment. Then he bowed his head slightly. "You are your father’s daughter, Carmela. Rest now. At eight in the morning, we turn the key."

I didn't sleep twelve hours. I slept four.

And in those four hours, I dreamed of a small white room with a crib that had never been slept in, rocking gently under a ceiling of falling snow.

***

At ten o’clock that morning, the telephone on the desk rang.

Aaron Feld was on the other end. His voice was clipped, professional, but beneath it lay the tremor of a man who had just watched a dynamite fuse burn down to the last half-inch.

"He signed it, Carmela."

I held the receiver to my ear, watching the snow fall outside the library window. "Did he read it?"

"He didn't read anything," Aaron said. "He walked into my downtown office at eight-thirty without an appointment. He looked like he hadn't slept in three days. He was covered in snow, his shirt was unbuttoned, and he smelled like a distillery. He threw the papers onto my desk, signed every single page without looking at the clauses, and then he grabbed me by the lapels."

My hand tightened on the receiver. "What did he say?"

"He said, *'Tell my wife I signed it because she wanted it. Tell her I gave her everything. And then tell her to come home.'*" Aaron took a sharp breath. "He honestly thinks this is a separation, Carmela. He thinks by signing whatever you put in front of him, he’s showing you how much he loves you. He thinks you’re going to cool off and come back."

"Did you file the transfer of the Port of Indiana deeds?"

"Filed at nine-fifteen with the Secretary of State’s office. By noon, the accounts freeze. Dante called the trust bank twenty minutes ago trying to clear an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar transfer for the casino contractors. The bank told him the account was closed."

"Good," I said. "Now call Leo Tatalia."

There was a dead silence on the line.

"Carmela... you don't mean that," Aaron whispered. "Leo Tatalia is the one who ordered the hit on your car yesterday. His men put you in the hospital."

"No," I replied, my voice steady and cold as frozen granite. "Leo Tatalia’s men hit my car because Enzo missed three warning calls regarding the Cicero distribution corridor. Leo didn't know I was in that car; he thought it was Dante running money to the mistress. I know how the Tatalias work. They aren't barbarians; they’re bookkeepers with shotguns."

"What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell Leo Tatalia that Salvatore Romano’s daughter would like to invite him to lunch at the Drake Hotel tomorrow at one o’clock. Tell him to bring his ledger. And tell him that if he brings a weapon, I will give his shipping lanes to the Luccheses before his soup gets cold."

I hung up the phone.

I stood up, walked over to the full-length mirror behind the desk, and looked at myself.

The woman staring back had purple shadows beneath her eyes, cracked lips, and a bandaged torso that made breathing a conscious effort. But the soft, yielding curve of her mouth was gone. The woman who spent five years crying over negative pregnancy tests had died on the shoulder of West Archer Avenue.

The woman who remained was the head of the Romano family.