His Unwanted Fiancée Was His True Savior
I was standing in five thousand dollars of hand-stitched lace when I received the medical report.
My fiancé, Dante de Rossi, the future Don of Chicago, had gotten another woman pregnant.
He didn't apologize. He didn't beg. He looked me in the eye and called it a "strategic necessity."
"Isobel saved my life five years ago," he said coldly. "I owe her this child. You will raise it as your own. It is the price of the Peace Treaty."
He forced me to cancel our engagement photos so he could take them with her.
He took her on the vacation meant for our honeymoon.
At dinner, he ordered me the seafood risotto, completely forgetting my deadly shellfish allergy, while fussing over Isobel’s water temperature.
When I tried to leave, he cornered me.
"You are a mob wife, Nina. Act like one. She is the hero who saved me."
I wanted to laugh.
Because five years ago, in that alley, Isobel wasn't even there.
I was the one in the mask. I was the one who stitched his femoral artery and saved his life, risking my own medical license.
He was destroying our twenty-year relationship to pay a debt to a liar.
I didn't scream. I didn't fight.
I simply picked up a red marker and walked to the calendar.
On the day of our wedding, while Dante stood at the altar waiting for his obedient Queen, I was already boarding a one-way flight to the other side of the world.
I left him nothing but four words scrawled across the date:
"Let's break up, Dante."
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Chapter 4
The next morning, the apartment was silent.
Dante stood in the kitchen, nursing an espresso while scrolling through a file on his tablet.
"Cancel the photoshoot," he said, not bothering to look up.
I paused with my hand on the refrigerator door.
The engagement photoshoot. It was scheduled for tomorrow at the Botanical Gardens.
"Okay," I said simply.
He looked up then, blinking. He had been expecting tears. He had been expecting me to beg for the one public display of affection he had actually promised me.
"Just like that?" he asked.
"You want to cancel it. So we cancel it."
He shifted in his seat, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable.
"Isobel wants to do a shoot," he said.
I stared at him.
"She wants... a wedding shoot?"
"She's dying, Nina. She'll never get married. She wants the experience. She wants photos of her and... the father. To leave for the child."
He wanted to take my photographer, my date, and my fiancé, and gift wrap them for her.
"It's just pretend," he added quickly. "For the kid."
"Sure," I said. "It makes sense."
Dante frowned. "You're taking this well."
"I'm just being a good mob wife, Dante. Putting the Family first."
He studied me for a second, searching for a crack in the armor. But I was hollow inside. There was nothing left to break.
"Good," he said. "I'm taking her to North Shore Island after the shoot. For a few days. The sea air is good for the baby."
North Shore. That was where we were supposed to go for our honeymoon.
"You handle the wedding logistics while I'm gone," he said. "The flowers, the seating charts. I trust your judgment."
He stood, grabbed his keys, and walked to the door.
"I'll see you in a week."
He didn't say goodbye.
The door clicked shut.
I waited exactly one minute. Then, I walked to the closet.
I pulled out a heavy-duty trash bag.
I started in the bedroom. I swept every photo of us off the nightstand. I took the clothes he had bought me. I took the books he had never read.
I moved to the bathroom. I threw away his spare toothbrush. His razor. The cologne I had bought him for Christmas.
I went to the living room and took down the art we had picked out together.
I stripped the apartment bare.
By noon, the walls were naked. The shelves were empty.
It looked like a hotel room. Sterile. Cold. Impersonal.
It looked exactly like our relationship.
I sat on the floor in the center of the void I had created. I looked at the calendar.
12 days.
I wasn't planning a wedding anymore. I was planning a funeral for the girl I used to be.