Chapter 2 - The Severed Cord
The crisp white bond paper inside the manila envelope did not tremble, but Lucian’s fingers did.
Across the sterile silence of Room 412, the only sound was the rhythmic, shallow breathing of seven-pound Nico, swaddled in pale flannel against my chest. Outside the double-paned glass, the relentless Manhattan rain beat against the city like a muffled drum.
Lucian’s eyes scanned the bold black print at the top of the first page:
STATE OF NEW YORK — SUPREME COURT: COUNTY OF NEW YORK
IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF SERENA ROSSI MORETTI AND LUCIAN SALVATORE MORETTI
PETITION FOR ABSOLUTE DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE, EMERGENCY SOLE CUSTODY, AND PREEMPTIVE FREEZE OF MARITAL ASSETS
Beneath the header was the embossed red seal of Arthur Sterling—the only attorney in the state of New York who had ever successfully put three crime bosses behind bars and survived to bill his clients for the privilege.
"What is this, Serena?" Lucian asked.
His voice was terrifyingly low, the quiet rasp that usually preceded a man being carried out of a restaurant basement in a tablecloth. He had not taken off his overcoat. It smelled of cold ozone, expensive Italian wool, and the bitter almond tang of aviation fuel from a chartered transatlantic flight.
"You can read, Lucian," I replied. My voice did not shake. The epidural had worn off four hours ago, leaving an ache in my lower spine that felt like ground glass, but the numbness inside my chest was far colder than any anesthetic. "It’s a petition for divorce. It grants you zero visitation until you submit to a judicial drug and psychiatric screening, and it freezes every domestic bank account bearing our joint signature."
Lucian let out a short, incredulous breath. A ghost of a smile—sharp, arrogant, completely blind to the reality of the room—cut across his carved jawline.
"Arthur Sterling," Lucian murmured, tossing the thick sheaf of papers onto the bedside table where an untouched plastic pitcher of ice water sat. "You called Arthur Sterling while you were in labor?"
"I called Arthur Sterling three days ago," I said. "Ten minutes after the photograph from Taormina was uploaded to Instagram."
The arrogant smirk vanished from Lucian’s face.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Elena stepped away from the window, her arms crossed over her chest, her dark eyes glittering with the unvarnished hatred of a younger sister who had watched me spend seven years turning into a ghost.
"Serena," Lucian said, his voice dropping into that smooth, persuasive cadence he used when pacifying hot-headed capos in Queens. "You don't understand what happened in Sicily. The Romano family was threatening our shipping lanes in Palermo. Salvatore Romano demanded a face-to-face sit-down. If I didn't go, thirty million dollars of cargo—"
"I don't care about the cargo, Lucian," I interrupted.
He blinked. For seven years, the business had been the third person in our marriage. The business dictated when we ate, when we slept, where we spent our summers, and whose funerals we attended in dark sunglasses. I had been trained by his silence never to question the cargo.
"You don't care?" he repeated, bewildered.
"No," I whispered, looking down at the dark swirl of hair on my son’s head. "I don't care if the entire Mediterranean fleet sinks to the bottom of the ocean. I don't care if Salvatore Romano burns your warehouses to the waterline. I spent fourteen hours ripping my body apart to bring your son into this world. And while I was screaming into a rolled-up towel so the nurses wouldn't hear me break, you were sipping white wine on a terrace with Bianca Romano."
"Nothing happened with Bianca!" Lucian took an aggressive step toward the bed, his hand reaching out instinctively toward the bundle in my arms. "She is Salvatore’s daughter! She was sitting at the table because her father uses her to take notes during negotiations! She orchestrated that picture to bait you, Serena! She wanted you to react exactly like this!"
"Then you should have thought of that before you sat at her table while your wife was thirty-eight weeks pregnant," Elena snapped from the foot of the bed.
Lucian’s head snapped toward my sister. The dark, lethal Don of the Moretti family flared behind his eyes. "Elena, shut your mouth and leave this room before I have my men carry you to the elevator."
"Touch her," I said, my voice so quiet it barely rose above the hum of the cardiac monitor, "and I will press the emergency call button, tell the police officer stationed outside the door that you are violating the emergency restraining order in that envelope, and have you arrested on live television before your driver can pull the car around."
Lucian froze.
His eyes darted from my face to the door. Outside in the hallway, two plainclothes private security guards hired by Arthur Sterling were standing within earshot of the NYPD liaison assigned to the hospital’s VIP wing.
"A restraining order?" Lucian asked, his chest rising and falling beneath his tailored suit. "Against me? In this city?"
"The judge who signed that emergency protective order is Evelyn Vance," I said evenly. "Her father was my father’s commanding officer in the Navy. You don't own her, Lucian. You don't have compromising photos of her. And you don't have enough cash in your offshore vaults to buy her off before Monday morning."
Lucian stared at me as if the woman in the hospital bed were a complete stranger wearing his wife's skin.
He was used to tears. He was used to doors slamming in our penthouse on Fifth Avenue, followed by twenty-four hours of cold silence that ended whenever he bought a sapphire necklace or brought home rare orchids from a shop in Chelsea. He understood anger because anger was an emotional transaction.
He did not understand the absolute absence of feeling.
"Serena," he said, and for the first time in seven years, I heard something terrifyingly fragile in his voice. "He is my son. He has my blood. You cannot keep me from my son."
"You kept yourself from him," I replied. "You made your choice over the Atlantic. You chose your pride, your meetings, and Bianca’s perfume over the birth of your firstborn child. Now take your coat, take your excuses, and get out of this room."
He stood there for five long seconds, his jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped beneath the skin. His hands, capable of breaking a man’s trachea with a single twist, hung uselessly at his sides.
"This isn't over," Lucian whispered, his eyes lingering on Nico’s tiny, sleeping face with an agony that almost looked genuine. "You belong to me, Serena. Both of you."
"I belonged to you yesterday, Lucian," I whispered back. "Today, I belong only to him."
He turned on his heel and strode through the door, his heavy coat swirling like a shroud behind him.
The heavy wooden door clicked shut.
The room fell into silence once more.
May you like
Elena let out a long, shuddering breath and sank into the vinyl armchair beside the bed, burying her face in her hands. "God, Serena... I thought he was going to tear the door off its hinges."
"He wanted to," I said, shifting Nico gently against my shoulder, feeling the warm, sweet scent of his skin fill my lungs. "He wanted to because for the first time in his life, someone told him no, and he couldn't shoot his way out of the answer."
