Dead Women Don't Come Back

After I fell while pregnant, my six-year-old son, Nico Bertelli, did not come to help me. When I woke up, the baby in my belly was gone.

At my hospital bedside, Nico hid behind my husband, Roberto Bertelli, and mumbled, "Mommy, I thought you fainted on purpose to get my attention. You've pretended to pass out a few times before just to stop me from going out with Ms. Pelosi."

Roberto chimed in coldly, "You're always pulling tricks to get attention. Nico doesn't even trust you anymore. You need to take a hard look at yourself and figure out why he prefers being around Martina Pelosi over you."

I was completely heartbroken.

The day after I was discharged, I went home, packed up everything that belonged to me, and left behind only two documents: a divorce agreement and a letter terminating my parental rights.

On the third day of my hospital stay, I stared blankly at the gray-white ceiling.

My belly, once round and full, was flat again. The daughter I had waited six months for would never come.

It turned out that heartbreak, when it became far too heavy to bear, felt like suffocation.

As warm tears slid from the corners of my eyes and soaked into my hair, I turned my head and looked at the pregnant woman in the bed next to mine.

She looked so happy.

Her family had been by her side the entire time, from the moment she was admitted to the moment she gave birth.

However, in the three days I had been hospitalized, my husband and son had only visited once, and they left almost immediately after.

They had somewhere more important to be: Martina Pelosi's opening night performance.

My phone buzzed with a message from Martina along with a video. The video was filmed inside an upscale restaurant near the theater.

Martina still had her stage makeup on, sitting at the table looking radiant. Right beside her, leaning over to cut her steak for her, was my husband, Roberto Bertelli, the Don of the Bertelli family, the man who commanded an entire underground empire.

In six years of marriage, he had never once been that attentive toward me.

On my birthday, I had my nails done and asked him to peel my shrimp. Instead of doing it himself, he had a housemaid handle it.

My own husband would not do something that small for me, yet there he was, happily cutting Martina's steak for her.

Every excuse he had ever given me suddenly made sense: I simply was not the woman he thought was worth that kind of effort.

My heart had gone numb, but the video kept playing.

Martina smiled sweetly at the camera as she ate the pieces of steak Roberto fed her. Then, she speared a piece of broccoli with her fork and held it out to my son, Nico Bertelli.

She said, "Nico, you have to eat your vegetables if you want to grow up big and strong like your daddy."

Broccoli was the one thing Nico absolutely hated. Whenever I accidentally put even a small piece on his plate, he would cry and throw a fit. I had eventually promised him I would never make him eat it again just to get him to talk to me.

However, in the video, Nico ate the broccoli Martina offered him with a smile on his face. He finished the entire portion, piece by piece. His eyes were bright, full of trust and happiness.

He looked at the camera and said, "Ms. Pelosi is my favorite!"

Martina tilted her head and teased, "You used to say your Mommy was your favorite."

The moment those words left her mouth, Nico's face twisted with visible disgust. He snapped, "That was a year ago. I don't like her anymore."

He huffed and added, "I hate her. All she does is make me practice piano and do art lessons, and study. I'm Daddy's son, the future Don. It doesn't matter if I don't know how to do any of that stuff."

The son I had poured everything into was shamelessly and openly humiliating me in front of strangers.

Meanwhile, his father, my husband, sat there listening without a single reaction, his attention fixed entirely on Martina.

I finally understood that I was foolish enough to hope for love from people like them.

From that moment on, I wanted nothing more to do with that cold, ruthless family ever again.