Ten Years of Love, One Bullet of Betrayal

Back then, I was Don Vincent Caruso's cherished daughter. And Adrian was the bastard son the Moretti family refused to acknowledge. Until we met, and fell in love. And just as I was ready to abandon everything and run away with him, my family was set up by its enemies. My father was murdered. A bounty was put on my mother, Gianna, and she lost her mind under the hunters' pursuit. To save themselves, my relatives sold me to my ex-husband — Christian Valenti, the man who once ruled all of Sicily with an iron fist. The three years I was married to him were hell on earth. Christian hated that I'd fallen in love with another man. My love for Adrian consumed him with jealousy. He forced me to get pregnant, then let his lovers torment me until I miscarried. By the time he'd had his fill of breaking me, there was barely anything human left. For my sake, Adrian clawed his way up, nearly killing himself to do it. Until he controlled the Moretti family — and made the Morettis the most powerful family in Sicily. And at last, he pulled me out of that pit. The next day, he knelt before the Moretti elders with a gun to his own temple and forced the entire family to yield. In the end, he got what he wanted. He married me, and with a wedding of obscene extravagance, he gave me the title of Donna of the Moretti family. And now... "I'm tired of the two of us tearing each other apart." Adrian bent his head and wiped the tears from Bianca's face. "I owed you a life. That bullet settled the debt." "From now on, keep Bianca out of your games." I stood frozen, my throat closing. All these years, I had tried so hard to be a proper wife. But the damage from my last marriage meant I could never be the kind of woman Adrian wanted. He turned away, and there was exhaustion and wear in the line of his back. "If you really want a child to secure your position, I'll arrange IVF at a private clinic tomorrow." "I'll provide the sperm. But I will never touch you again." Something in my head that had been stretched too long finally snapped. I rushed forward and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. His head snapped sideways and blood welled at the corner of his mouth. "Satisfied?" His voice was flat. "You've got it out of your system. Go home." He put an arm around Bianca, took the yacht, and left without looking back. I stared blankly at that black water, like a gambler who'd lost everything. It was deep into the night by the time I got back to the house. I didn't turn on the lights. I climbed into the tub fully clothed and opened the cold tap. The freezing water rose over my chest. Only a cold that went into the bone could hold down the memories I refused to revisit. The PTSD Christian left me with. I'm afraid of the dark. And of water. Back then, Adrian would hold me all night and kiss my forehead over and over. "Don't be afraid, Natalie. It's over. I'm right here." Everyone said Adrian loved me to the point of madness. That he'd die for me. There was a time I believed it absolutely. Until I slowly noticed that the way he looked at me had changed. Complicated. Tired. As though he were being pulled endlessly between obligation and resentment. Maybe it was the years of the Moretti elders humiliating him, mocking him for marrying a soiled woman. Maybe it was that flicker of revulsion that crossed his face whenever he saw the ugly scars on my body. Or maybe all of it started the day the spotless, untouched Bianca first appeared in front of him. In her, he had finally found the Natalie he used to know. And I had become the burden he couldn't shake. Bang. The bathroom door flew open.

Adrian came in, bringing a rush of cold with him. When he saw me submerged in that freezing water, his pupils contracted hard. "Natalie, have you fucking lost your mind?" He crossed the room in long strides and hauled me out of the tub. "Let go..." I struggled weakly. "Shut up!" He roared it, and yet his hands were shaking violently. He grabbed a towel, wrapped me in it, and pressed me hard against his chest. "You're insane. You pull this every single time. I am so sick of you." With his warm body against mine, I nearly believed the Adrian who loved me had come back. My fingers closed around his sleeve without my meaning them to. Then his phone rang. Bianca's ringtone. "Adrian... help me..." Her voice came through the line thick with tears, noise in the background. "Everyone online is attacking me... They're saying I broke up your marriage with the Donna..." "They're trying to find my address... I'm so scared..." Adrian's face darkened in an instant. The panic in his eyes vanished, replaced by something glacial. He turned and fixed his stare on me. "I told you to leave her alone." "I didn't do it." My voice was hoarse. "Who else in this city would dare touch someone of mine?" Adrian shot to his feet, looking at me like he was looking at a monster. "I thought you were just jealous. I didn't realize you wouldn't even spare a pregnant woman." I went still. He had believed Bianca without a moment's hesitation. For the past few years, every mad thing I'd done had revolved around Bianca. At first, Bianca would call me in the middle of the night from Adrian's phone and let me listen to them having sex, then delete the call log afterward. Later, I found a used condom in the passenger seat and threw it in Adrian's face. And after that, our fights escalated into something closer to a death match. The worst was on the bay bridge, when I grabbed the steering wheel out of nowhere. The car took out a dozen meters of guardrail and ended up with half a wheel hanging over the water. Adrian slammed the brakes. Then he caught my hand and turned the knife I was holding toward his own throat. "If you want to die, stab me first. I'll clear the way for you." Neither of us would back down. Neither of us would concede. But this time, I genuinely hadn't done anything. And while I was still reeling, Adrian had already reached his verdict. "If you insist on denying it, don't blame me for what comes next." When he spoke into the phone, his tone turned gentle. "Don't be afraid. I'll handle everything." After he hung up, he dialed the family's consigliere. "Release the files PR has been sitting on. Push them everywhere. Now." My whole body locked up. "What files?" Adrian looked down at me, and his voice was cold and merciless. "The videos your ex-husband took of you being a whore. And your psychiatric records." "If I want the press off Bianca, I need a bigger scandal to feed them."

"Adrian!" I threw myself forward and clutched at his trouser leg. "You can't do this!" "You know my mother's heart is bad. If she sees that—" After my father died, she couldn't withstand any violent emotional shock at all. If she saw her own daughter degraded like that— "Stop using Gianna as a shield." Adrian kicked me away, his eyes full of exhaustion. "Natalie, you crossed the line first." He didn't stay another second. He turned and slammed the door behind him. Within half an hour my phone was buzzing nonstop. Push notifications flooded the screen. [LEAKED: Intimate photos of Mrs. Moretti! Suspected severe mental illness!] I hadn't even opened the article when the hospital called. "Mrs. Moretti, your mother has suffered an acute cardiac event. She's in the emergency room now. Please come immediately." I ran out of the house barefoot, hailed a cab, and went to the hospital. The red light above the ER doors stared down at me. A nurse came hurrying out with a file. "Donna Natalie, your mother's condition is critical. She needs immediate bypass surgery." "Please go to billing. We need to prepare blood products and specialized equipment right away." I nodded, white-faced, and fumbled out my black card. The nurse ran it. "I'm sorry, Donna Natalie. Your card has been frozen." "That's impossible!" I was shaking all over, and panic swallowed me whole. "Try this one. And this one!" Every card the same. Frozen. There was exactly one person in this city who could shut down all of my accounts at once. My hands shook as I called Adrian. The phone rang a long time before he picked up. "Adrian, I'm begging you, unfreeze my cards—" "My mother's in the ER. She needs surgery and I have to pay—" Adrian let out a tired, impatient sigh. "Natalie. Is this performance of yours still going?" "I didn't do anything! My mother is really—" "Bianca's reputation matters right now. I'm not leaving you money to hire PR against her." He cut me off without a trace of warmth. "Once this blows over, I'll restore your access." "I've looked after Gianna for years. I know her condition. Stop using her to threaten me." There was no give in him at all. My mother, Gianna, had been close friends with Adrian's mother. When the Morettis treated Adrian and his mother as a stain on the family, my mother was the one who reached out without hesitating. For years afterward, Adrian cared for my mother with enormous attention. Her mind had been unstable ever since the disaster that befell my family. He drove her to her appointments himself, sorted her medication by the week, even monitored her meals. Everyone said Adrian looked after her better than I did, and I was her daughter. But next to Bianca, all of it counted for nothing. Even my mother. "But this time is different!" I was screaming now, finally shattering. "I need Dr. DeLuca to do the surgery! Call Dr. DeLuca!" Dr. DeLuca was the best cardiac surgeon at the Moretti family hospital. He generally only took special cases at Adrian's request. "He's busy." Adrian's voice turned hard. "Because of what you did, Bianca had an acute stress reaction. Dr. DeLuca is examining her." I felt like I'd been hit by lightning. Bianca was frightened, and that was enough to summon the best cardiac surgeon in the city. Meanwhile my mother lay in an emergency room, and it didn't matter at all. "Adrian, do you have a heart left?" I screamed until my throat burned. "Your mother was insane and so are you!" Adrian finally lost his patience.

"You and your mother have been using her heart condition for years to force me into submission and make me come back to you." "I've put up with it over and over. That doesn't mean you get to keep doing it!" He paused, and his tone eased slightly. "Let the ER treat her with standard protocol for now." "Once I know Bianca's all right, I'll send Dr. DeLuca over." "Natalie, stop. I'm tired." He hung up. I stood there feeling like every organ inside me had been torn apart. I turned and went looking, desperately, for anyone who might lend me money. The instant I ran out of the hospital entrance, headlights swept across me. Crash. A van that couldn't stop in time hit me. My body flew into the air, and the rain mixed with the blood beneath my legs. A savage cramp ripped through my abdomen. It felt like something precious inside me was slipping away. The sharp smell of disinfectant pulled me out of the dream. "Donna, you're awake." A nurse came over, her expression complicated. "You have a mild concussion." She hesitated, then lowered her voice. "But you were six weeks pregnant. We couldn't save your baby. The procedure is already over." I stared at her. Six weeks. The timing lined up exactly. That was the night Adrian stayed out until morning for the first time. I smashed a wine bottle and held the broken glass to my throat until he came home. When he finally arrived, his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like an animal that had been cornered. He pinned me to the carpet and tore my clothes off. "Isn't this what you wanted? You wanted me to touch you." "Natalie, do you have any new tricks besides threatening to kill yourself?" We tore at each other and had sex in the wreckage. Neither of us knew that night would create a life. He'd sneered at the child I wanted — the one he said I'd have to get through IVF — and it had already existed. By the time he finally pushed me to the edge of the cliff, that small life had quietly vanished in a pool of blood. My chest felt empty, like my heart had been scooped out. And then the tears came. My phone buzzed. I answered numbly. "You're awake?" Adrian's voice was as cold as ever. "There's a press conference at three this afternoon. You'll attend in person and tell the media that Bianca is not my mistress." "The address is—" "Adrian." I cut him off. "Our baby is gone." Dead silence. Then I heard the violent screech of a chair dragging across the floor.