The Baby That Wasn't Mine

That was their child.

But my son was now a cold and lifeless corpse!

"Adriana, does your leg still hurt? Here, take something for the pain." Salvatore looked at me, his thumb rolling that heavy signet ring in slow circles the way it always did when he was calm, in control, sure of every card on the table. His eyes were filled with the same tenderness as always, but I knew now. It was all just an illusion meant to deceive me.

I looked at the pills in his hand and recalled what I had just overheard through the door of this quiet estate room, where even the walls kept the Family's secrets.

Taking a deep breath, I said, "Salvatore, the medicine is too bitter. Can I take it later?"

'You've already killed my child. Can't you at least leave me the right to be a mother?'

Salvatore hesitated for just a second before smiling and patting my head. "You're a mother now, yet you're still acting like a child? Giving birth was already hard on you, and now your legs are hurting. I couldn't sleep all night worrying about you, Adriana. Just take pity on your husband, will you? I still have a son to raise like a proper father."

"Don't worry. I put honey in the water. It's sweet. Come now, let me feed you."

'No. That is not my baby. It's yours and Vittoria's!' I screamed inside.

He brought the pill to my lips, leaving me no room to refuse, the way a Don leaves no room in a sit-down once he has already decided.

A chill spread through my body. I closed my eyes and swallowed the pill dry, refusing the honeyed water.

I didn't want that kind of fake sweetness.

The drug hit quickly. A searing pain burned through my lower abdomen, as though flames were consuming me from the inside, or as if someone were slicing me open with a knife. Blood gushed from between my legs.

"Adriana, what's wrong?!"

Salvatore shouted for the doctor, the Family's own man, the one who kept his mouth shut for a price. The pain was unbearable, and I passed out.

In my daze, I heard the doctor's voice.

"Don Marchetti, the drug has completely corroded her uterus. She will never carry a child again."

Salvatore let out a long, slow breath of relief.

When I woke again, his eyes were red, his face filled with grief as he gazed at me. "Adriana, the doctor said you lost too much blood after the birth... He said you won't be able to have children anymore."

"Don't be sad. Thank God we already have Matteo. He'll grow up to be a good son to you."

Matteo?

He had already given Vittoria's child a Marchetti name, this fast?

Salvatore wouldn't let the nurse clean me. Ignoring the fastidious cleanliness the whole Family knew him for, he fetched the hot water himself and carefully wiped away the blood.

He told me the matriarch, his mother, wished to see her firstborn grandson, the heir to the bloodline, and had already taken the baby to the main house.

By the time the estate went quiet, it was deep in the night.

I looked at his faintly tired face and forced a weak smile. "I'm fine. You've been on your feet all day. You should rest now."

Salvatore kissed my forehead. "All right. If you need anything, wake me. Tomorrow I'll take you to see Matteo. From now on, the three of us will live happily, as one famiglia."

After he fell asleep, I quietly picked up his phone.

To prove his devotion to me, Salvatore had never set a lock on it. That, too, had been part of the performance.

But I had never known he kept a second life inside it, a hidden system, and the code to open it was Vittoria's birthday.

The moment the screen changed, the wallpaper became a photo of the two of them from their university days, back before the vows, back before the alliance he'd sworn to me before the Family.

His messenger held a single contact. Vittoria.

I opened their thread. The first thing to load was a photo of her cradling a newborn.

[Salvatore, look at our beautiful boy. He's going to be as handsome as you when he grows.]

That baby looked exactly like the one Salvatore had carried to my bedside earlier that night.

The further I scrolled, the colder my heart became.

Through all eight months I carried his child, Salvatore had been forever away on "the Don's business." The days he had actually spent at my side I could count on my fingers.

I hadn't wanted to pull him from the work of the Family, so I bore the sickness and the exhaustion alone, going to every checkup by myself.

And now I knew. Those errands, those long shadow nights away, had only ever been the road to Vittoria, to her side, to her and the child growing in her.

Among the thousands of photos buried in that phone, every single one recorded Vittoria's journey from the first swell of pregnancy to the birth.