The Don’s 999 Roses Couldn’t Buy My Freedom

A month ago.

The night he got Vittoria's call and walked out the door to drink in her place,

the pain in my stomach got so bad I drove myself to the emergency room, past the guards at the compound gate who didn't think to ask where the Don's wife was going alone at that hour.

And there they told me I'd been pregnant for just over two months, that the baby had no heartbeat, that it was already gone.

The most absurd part: when I learned the baby was gone, I felt relieved.

I came down off the operating table alone and thought, it's time to end this.

In the sitting room, Lorenzo stood with his back to me, gripping a glass of whiskey, his knuckles white. The clock on the mantel ticked into a silence so complete it seemed to belong to a house where someone had already died.

He didn't demand to know why I hadn't reached out to him.

He knew exactly how many times I'd called him that night.

The phone simply rang and rang, and no one ever answered.

"Better off gone. You've proven you'd make a terrible mother."

He walked into the study and shut the door with the ease of long habit. The lock turned. A made man can order a body buried before sunrise and never lose a minute of sleep, and I understood then that closing a door on me cost him exactly nothing.

Eight years of a blood-bound union, countless fights and arguments.

I was always the one who gave in first.

But this time, Lorenzo never heard the meek little knock at the door.

Half an hour later he opened it, searched every corner of that enormous estate, and never saw me again.

……

I was Lorenzo Falcone's first love.

No one could have imagined that the cold, handsome heir to the Falcone bloodline, groomed from the cradle to one day sit at the head of the table,

would fall for a non-conformist street girl who spent her days smoking and burning her nights in the clubs that paid tribute to families like his.

Our first meeting wasn't pretty. A reeking, smoke-filled alley, the young heir being shaken down for cash by some neighborhood thugs who didn't yet know whose son they had cornered.

I happened to be passing by, and one of them leered at me and whistled.

So I rode my bike straight into the crowd, and while I was teaching the punks a lesson, I accidentally got the shy young heir out of a life-or-death jam.

After that, Lorenzo stuck to me like glue.

He waited for me after school, trailed behind me, and no matter what I did I couldn't shake him.

He gave me roses. I'd toss them into the toilet with a cold face, let them soak, then drop them back on his desk.

He'd have a lunch made for me by hand that cost a frightening amount of laundered cash, and I'd hand it off to the beggar by the road.

The girls teased me for keeping a rich, lovesick puppy.

Anyone could see we came from different worlds. His blood was old and feared. Mine ran in the gutters his Family owned.

But this was the same person who, when my drunk of a father beat me so badly I couldn't go to school, broke into our home, scooped up my barely breathing body, and ran with me into the hospital.

While the doctor stitched me up, he stood with his back to me, his shoulders shaking beyond his control, the back of his hand wiping again and again at his face.

The doctor, helpless and half-laughing, asked him why he was crying when he wasn't the one who was hurt.

He said he didn't know why, his chest just ached so badly he couldn't stand it.

And he asked, dead serious, whether they should run an EKG and check his heart.

In the hospital room, Lorenzo clumsily peeled an apple.

"I never want to feel this awful again. Adriana, please, just stop getting hurt. I'm begging you."

I ate the popsicle he'd bought me, mumbled okay, then shot him a fierce glare.

"So do you want to be my boyfriend or not?"

That whole day, the two of us went red in the face and couldn't get a single word out.

I once told Lorenzo a secret no one else knew.

Every time my father drank himself into a rage and beat my mother half to death, the next day a single battered apology rose would show up in the house.

So if he ever wanted to break it off with me, he didn't have to say it.

One rose would be enough.

"Silly. We'll be together forever."

The eighteen-year-old boy held me tight and wouldn't let me say another foolish word.