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

Enzo sat in the leather swivel chair behind the massive desk in his Lake Forest study, staring at the empty glass in his hand.

The house was suffocatingly quiet.

Upstairs, Bianca was packing her bags—or pretending to. She had been crying softly for six hours, making sure each sob was loud enough to drift down the spiral staircase, waiting for him to run up the steps, sweep her into his arms, and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

He didn't move.

On the desk in front of him lay Carmela’s wedding ring.

He had picked it up out of the spilled scotch with his bare fingers, washing it himself in the bathroom sink, drying it with a hand towel until the platinum shone like new. He had tried to put it in his pocket, but every time he touched it, the cold metal burned through his trousers like white phosphorus.

The door clicked open. Dante stepped inside, his sheepskin coat still wet with sleet.

"Boss," Dante murmured, keeping his distance, his posture wary, like a man approaching an unexploded artillery shell. "We got a problem at the rail terminal."

Enzo didn't look up from the ring. "I don't give a damn about the terminal, Dante. Did you find where she went?"

"Boss, listen to me—"

"Did you find her?" Enzo’s voice was dangerously low, vibrating with an unnatural stillness.

"She’s at the old Romano compound in Geneva," Dante said quickly. "Uncle Silvio has the road blocked. Two trucks across the driveway, five men with heavy iron at the tree line. I tried to send two boys up to drop off the flowers and the letter you wrote, but Silvio’s second-in-command put a bullet through the radiator of their Tahoe. He said if any Moretti car comes within a mile of that gate, they’ll send the driver back in an ice chest."

Enzo closed his eyes. His jaw twitched. "She’ll come around. She’s grieving. When a woman loses a child, she strikes out at the person she loves most. She needs time."

"Enzo," Dante said, stepping closer, his voice urgent. "You don't understand. The trust accounts are gone."

Enzo frowned, turning his head slowly toward his lieutenant. "What are you talking about?"

"The bank in Chicago. The Romano Trust. I went to clear the payroll for the West Side boys and the concrete pour for the Gary casino. The teller refused the draft. The bank manager came out with two armed security guards and handed me a cease-and-desist order signed by Judge Miller at nine this morning."

Enzo let out an irritated breath and rubbed his temples. "Miller is on our payroll. Carmela just had Aaron file some standard emergency motion. Call Miller’s chambers and tell him to unfreeze the secondary operating account."

"Miller isn't taking calls, Enzo," Dante said, his voice cracking slightly. "He stepped down from the bench two hours ago. Federal marshals served him at his country club. Carmela’s lawyer didn't just file a civil separation; he handed the Southern District Attorney three years of unredacted ledgers showing Miller took payoffs from the Gary construction bids."

Enzo went rigid. The glass in his hand slipped an inch before he tightened his grip.

"Where would Carmela get Miller’s ledgers?" Enzo whispered. "Those were kept in my private safe at the downtown athletic club."

Dante didn't answer. He looked at the Persian carpet.

"Dante," Enzo said, rising from his chair with terrifying slowness. "Where were the keys to that safe kept?"

"Enzo... you know who had the duplicate keys," Dante muttered, his eyes darting toward the ceiling, where the faint sound of Bianca’s high heels could be heard pacing across the master bedroom floor.

Enzo’s face went dead white.

"No," he whispered. "Bianca doesn't even know what that safe is."

"She asked me for the combination two months ago, Boss," Dante said, his hands coming up defensively. "She said you told her to pull the deed for the cottage in Lake Geneva! She said you were giving her the deed so Luca would have an inheritance if anything happened to you! I thought... I swear to God, Enzo, I thought you authorized it!"

Enzo covered the distance between them in half a second.

His left hand caught Dante by the lapels of his sheepskin coat, slamming the two-hundred-pound enforcer back against the floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves with a force that sent first editions tumbling to the carpet. Enzo’s right hand whipped out the silver-plated Beretta from under his armpit and jammed the muzzle into the soft flesh under Dante’s chin.

"You gave my safe combination to Bianca?" Enzo hissed, his spit spraying across Dante’s cheeks.

"She... she told me you were leaving Carmela!" Dante choked out, his eyes bulging with fear. "She said the divorce was already decided! She gave me fifty grand from her personal account to make sure the gate guards looked the other way when her brother came to town last month!"

Enzo’s heart stopped.

"Her brother?" Enzo whispered, his finger tightening on the trigger until the hammer clicked back into half-cock. "Bianca’s brother died in Sicily twelve years ago."

"It wasn't her brother, Enzo!" Dante cried, tears of terror leaking down his scarred face. "It was Paulie Tatalia! Paulie is Luca’s real father! She never left Paulie! She came back to Chicago because Paulie owed two million to the Commission in New York, and they needed your shipping lines to move the heroin from Montreal to clear the debt!"

The world stopped spinning for Enzo Moretti.

The study, the house, the city of Chicago—everything dissolved into a blinding, deafening silence.

He didn't fire the gun. He lowered it slowly, stepping back, looking at Dante as if the man were a ghost speaking in an unknown language.

"Luca," Enzo breathed, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. "Luca isn't... he isn't mine?"

"Enzo, look at the kid!" Dante pleaded, dropping to his knees, clutching his bruised throat. "He has Paulie’s chin! He has the Tatalia ears! Bianca knew you still felt guilty about what happened to her family fifteen years ago. She used that guilt to walk right through your front door! She set Carmela up yesterday! She called the Tatalias and told them Carmela’s car was leaving the boutique without an escort! She wanted Carmela dead so you would marry her before the New York audit!"

Enzo turned his head toward the ceiling.

Above him, the floorboards creaked.

The woman who had wept on his shoulder. The woman who had told him he was the only father Luca had ever known. The woman for whom he had ignored sixty-six phone calls from his dying child.

Enzo didn't scream. He didn't roar.

He walked to the study door, pulled it open, and looked up the grand curved staircase.