My Mafia Husband Chose His Pregnant Mistress

"I want to come tonight."

Dominic Moretti didn't turn around. He stood in front of the dressing room mirror, fixing a gold cufflink. Ten years ago he couldn't afford cufflinks. Now he was the Don of the Moretti family, and the whole of Atlantic City knew his name.

"Vivienne." He said it the way he said it to his men. Calm. Final.

"Ten years, Dom. Ten years since you took over." I stepped closer. "I want Lily to see us standing together. Just once."

"The celebration isn't a party."

"There's a cake. There's a band. I saw the invoice."

That made him glance at me in the mirror. Something flickered in his dark eyes and then went flat.

"Those men talk about business, loyalty, and blood debts," he said. "You don't need to hear any of that."

"I've heard worse."

I had. I was thirty-two years old, and I'd spent a third of my life as Dominic's wife. I'd kept his books when he had nothing but a dockside warehouse and a temper. I'd calmed his soldiers when they wanted to burn half the city. When the Russos came for him, I'd hidden in the wine cellar with baby Lily pressed against my chest, counting gunshots through the ceiling until dawn.

When he lay in a hospital bed with a bullet in his ribs, I ran this family. When the money ran dry, I sold my mother's pearls and her emerald ring. I never told him what they meant to me.

"Dom, I sold my mother's jewelry for this family."

His jaw tightened. "And I never asked you to."

"You never had to."

He finished the second cufflink and finally faced me. For a second, I thought I'd won. Then he smiled. It was the soft smile he saved for when he wanted something to end.

"Take care of Lily," he said. "When things calm down, I'll take you both to Florida. The beach house. Two weeks. Just us."

"You said that last year."

"This time I mean it."

He cupped my face and pressed his lips to my forehead. It was warm and gentle, and I hated how my chest loosened under it. Ten years, and one kiss could still quiet me.

"Don't wait up," he said.

His footsteps faded down the hall. Then came the front door and the purr of the black Escalade in the drive. Then nothing.

I stood in the empty dressing room and breathed in his cologne. *He carries too much,* I told myself. *He's protecting us. That's all this is.*

I'd been telling myself that for a decade.

"Mommy!"

Lily came running into the living room in her socks, her stuffed rabbit, Mr. Buttons, swinging from one fist. Her curls bounced. In her other hand, she held a phone.

"Daddy forgot his phone," she said proudly. "I found it on the couch."

It wasn't his main phone. It was the spare, the slim black one he always kept in his jacket. I'd seen it a hundred times. I'd never touched it.

"Good job, baby." I took it from her. "I'll have Marco drive it to the estate."

"Can Mr. Buttons go too?"

"Mr. Buttons stays with you."

She giggled and spun away, humming a song from her cartoons.

I was already reaching for the house line when the phone buzzed in my hand. The screen lit up. No lock. No hidden preview.

**Serena Blake:** *Darling, I've already picked my gown for the celebration. The rest, you can decide for me tonight. In person.*

Serena Blake. His personal secretary. The blonde with the iPad who called me "Mrs. Moretti" with a smile that never reached her eyes.

My thumb froze over the glass.

Before I could breathe, a reply appeared.

**Dominic:** *When have I ever said no to what you like?*

He must have sent it from his main phone, in the car, maybe two minutes after his lips left my forehead.

*Don't,* a voice in my head warned. *Put it down.*

I opened the thread.

It scrolled. And scrolled. The earliest message went back years—to the winter I was pregnant with Lily. I remembered that winter. Rival crews were circling the house. I hadn't slept. I'd called him at midnight, crying, and he'd said, *"I have to stay at the docks, Viv. Business."*

That same night, in this thread:

**Serena:** *The hotel suite is perfect. So is the necklace. You spoil me.*

**Dominic:** *Diamonds suit you.*

My stomach rolled. I kept scrolling.

Last Valentine's Day. The butler had brought me a dozen red roses with a card in Dominic's handwriting: *Men like me aren't good at romance. Forgive me.*

I'd kept that card in my nightstand.

Same date, in this thread:

**Serena:** *A limited edition?? Dominic, it's GORGEOUS. I'm naming her after you.*

A photo. Serena leaning against a red sports car, a bow on the hood.

I laughed. It came out of me sharp and strange, and Lily looked up from her rabbit.

"What's funny, Mommy?"

"Nothing, baby. Mommy saw a silly picture."

She went back to humming. I pressed my hand over my mouth.

Another message, a few months old.

**Serena:** *Does the old woman still wait up for you? All she does is sit with the kid and the kitchen.*

I waited for him to defend me. One word. Anything.

**Dominic:** *She'll never leave me.*

Not *she's my wife.* Not *watch your mouth.* Just that. Like I was a fixture. A wall in his house.

My fingers were shaking now. The last message sat at the bottom, sent this morning.

**Serena:** *Dominic, my period is two weeks late. If I'm really pregnant, don't you think I deserve a title?*

**Dominic:** *I'll take you to get checked tomorrow. If it's true, I'll give you a surprise at the celebration that no one will see coming.*

The room tilted.

A surprise. At the celebration I wasn't allowed to attend. In front of every capo, every soldier, every family that owed him blood.

He hadn't been too busy for me. Not once in ten years. He'd simply taken everything I was owed—his time, his respect, his promises—and handed it to her.

My eyes burned. I blinked hard. *Not in front of Lily. Not now.*

Then I heard it. An engine, rolling back up the drive.

Headlights swept across the living room curtains.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I pressed the side button and the screen went black. I wiped my face with the back of my wrist. One breath. Two.

The front door opened.

"Viv?" Dominic strode into the living room, his tie loose, his eyes scanning the couch. "Have you seen my—"

"This?" I held it out.

He stopped. For half a second, he studied me. My face. My hands. The phone.

I smiled at him. The same small, tired smile I'd given him a thousand times.

"Did you forget something important?" I asked.

He took the phone from me. His thumb brushed the dark screen, then he slid it into his jacket. His shoulders dropped an inch.

"Too much on my mind lately," he said. "I'd forget my own head."

"You should slow down."

"After tonight." He reached over and ruffled my hair, the way he did with Lily. "Don't overthink things, okay? You get that look."

"What look?"

"Like you're worrying." He was already turning away. "Nothing to worry about."

"Bye, Daddy!" Lily waved Mr. Buttons at him.

"Bye, princess."

The door shut behind him. The engine faded down the drive for the second time.

I stood there until my knees gave. My back met the wall, and I slid down it slowly until I was sitting on the cold marble floor of the foyer.

In the living room, Lily was singing to her rabbit, off-key and happy.

*She'll never leave me.*

He was so sure. Ten years of loyalty, and that was what it had bought me. Not love. Certainty. He was certain I'd stay quiet, stay home, stay grateful.

I stared at my bare hands. No pearls. No emerald. Nothing left of my mother except the girl singing in the next room.

Tomorrow, he would take Serena to a doctor. Tonight, at the celebration, he was planning a surprise.

And I had no idea what would be left for me and my daughter when it was over.

I pulled my own phone from my pocket and scrolled to a number I hadn't called in ten years.

My thumb hovered over it.

If I pressed this, there would be no going back.