Chapter 1
Chapter 1: My Mafia Boss husband abandoned me while I was giving birth because his mistress was delivering his son one floor away. L009
The clinical smell of antiseptic and scorched wax hung heavy in the air of St. Catherine’s Hospital, but it could not mask the coppery tang of my own fear. Another contraction slammed into my spine like a sledgehammer, twisting my lower belly into a knot so fierce I couldn't expand my lungs. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek until I tasted iron, my fingers clutching the thin, scratchy cotton of the delivery room sheets.
For ten agonizing hours, I had been trapped in this white-walled purgatory. Ten hours of monitoring monitors beep-beeping in erratic rhythms, of nurses rushing past my open doorway with hurried footsteps, and of an agonizing, hollow silence where my husband should have been.
"Breathe, Mrs. Moretti, through your nose," the duty nurse murmured, her voice laced with a practiced, tired sympathy as she adjusted the IV drip in the back of my bruised hand. "You're eight centimeters. You're doing so well all by yourself."
*All by yourself.*
The words echoed in my ears, sharp as shattered glass. I was thirty years old, the wedded wife of Vincent Moretti—a man whose very name commanded absolute, terrifying authority across the entire Chicago underground. He controlled shipping docks, real estate empires, and men who killed without a second thought. He was a man who claimed to protect what was his with ruthless obsession. Yet here I lay, sweat-drenched and shivering beneath harsh fluorescent lights, completely abandoned.
The heavy oak doors of the delivery room suddenly burst open, swinging wide to reveal the towering figure of my husband.
Vincent looked immaculate, a stark, jarring contrast to the sterile misery of the room. He wore a custom charcoal suit, his dark hair combed back neatly, though his usual ice-cold composure showed a hairline fracture of tension. My heart leaped into my throat—a foolish, desperate surge of hope that made me forget the hours of agony.
I reached my trembling hand out toward him, my knuckles white, my voice trembling with raw relief. **“Vincent…”**
He took two long strides toward the side of the bed, but he didn't take my hand. He didn't smooth back the damp hair plastered to my forehead. He didn't lean down to kiss my cheek or tell me I was strong. His gray eyes—cool, stormy, and utterly unreadable—swept over my distorted frame with an emotion that felt horrifyingly detached.