The Don's 99 Betrayals

When I woke up, I was in a VIP suite at St. Mary’s Hospital.

The doctor told me I had been in a coma for four days.

The baby didn't make it.

My right arm had multiple fractures from smashing the glass and needed to be in a cast for three months. I had over thirty stitched wounds on my body.

I didn't care about the other injuries.

The only thing that turned my heart into dead ash was the loss of the child—the one that had reignited hope for this dark marriage.

Originally, I had fantasized about telling Lorenzo I was pregnant on our seventh anniversary. I wondered what kind of surprised expression the arrogant, untouchable Don would make.

Now, none of that was necessary.

Good.

He already had an heir with someone else; why would he care about the unformed life between us?

Ignoring the objections of the doctors and bodyguards, I demanded my discharge papers.

I hadn’t even walked out of the hospital gates when I received a call from Lorenzo.

I thought that after seeing the wreckage of the room, the scorched floor, and the blood, he had finally remembered to care about me.

But when the call connected, his voice was cold as ice, carrying the judgment of a superior:

"Elena, I only locked you in for three days to let you cool off. I even specifically left Leo there to help you order takeout."

"I can't believe you set fire to my safe house! And you hit Leo!"

"Elena, out of jealousy, you were actually capable of hurting a child and almost burning him to death! This violates the family's iron law regarding the protection of women and children!"

"Lorenzo, you called me just to say this?"

My voice was choked with emotion, yet it carried an unprecedented calmness.

In the past, Lorenzo would have sensed something was wrong immediately. No matter what happened, he would have scrambled a helicopter to appear in front of me and make me happy.

But this time, there was only dead silence on the other end of the line.

After a dozen seconds, his voice—once so gentle, now incredibly cruel—spoke again:

"I’ll give you one day. Tonight, I’m bringing Leo back to the estate. You must apologize to him in front of every family member!"

"Otherwise, don't bother threatening me with divorce. You need to understand that arson and attempted murder of a child in New York will land you in prison! If you actually go to jail, it'll be hard not to get divorced then. At that point, the Moretti family will clean you out like trash."

My fingers gripped the phone so hard they turned white.

In that moment, a part of my heart truly died.

"Lorenzo," I said softly, my voice as light as a sigh. "You are pathetic."

I didn't listen to his roaring response. I hung up directly and tossed the phone into a trash can at the hospital entrance.

I flagged down an unlicensed black cab and gave the address of an abandoned auto repair shop under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the inheritance my grandfather left me before he died—a safe house that not even Moretti’s spies could infiltrate.

Pushing open the dusty door, I took a heavy iron box from a hidden compartment.

Inside was the final gift I was mailing to the Moretti office.

The divorce agreement was crumpled, and not only did it have my signature, but it was also soaked with a large patch of dried, dark red blood—the only trace our child left in this world.

I placed it into the iron box. Then, I added all the "redemption codes" he had given me over the last seven years—those diamonds.

I mailed them all together.

These top-tier jewels weren't love; they were nails of shame Lorenzo had hammered into my self-respect.

Before leaving, I opened the encrypted laptop in the safe house. My fingertips danced across the keyboard as I sent an anonymous email to the Don of the Savino family—the Morettis' mortal enemies.

Inside was a record of every secret route Lorenzo was using to smuggle arms through Sicily next month, as well as the money laundering codes for several of his docks in Manhattan.

After doing all this, I turned and left, boarding the plane.

Lorenzo, goodbye.

No, or rather—never see you again.