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.

The day I was discharged, the sky suddenly opened up in a heavy downpour. By the time I returned to our home, the Villa Bertelli, I was completely soaked.

The moment Nico saw me, he dramatically pinched his nose and exclaimed, "You stink! You're getting the carpet all dirty!"

The smell of rain and mud was not even that strong. He only did that to amuse Martina, who was sitting in the main seat of the living room, wearing my finest silk nightgown.

Sure enough, his little performance made Martina cover her mouth and giggle. She sat there with her arms crossed, completely at ease, like she was the lady of the house.

I ignored her and turned to the stairs.

The next second, Roberto stepped out of his study with two men in black suits trailing behind him.

He frowned, his voice edged with irritation as he said, "Martina came all the way here today to teach Nico proper mafia family etiquette, yet instead of being grateful, you're giving her attitude?"

I stopped on the steps and answered coldly, "Fine. He's all yours. Let's get a divorce."

Roberto grabbed my arm and hissed, "Amelia Fiore, do you even hear yourself? You're the Donna of this family. Do you think marriage is some kind of joke? Stop throwing around the word 'divorce' every time you're upset!"

Martina stood up, her voice dripping with fake concern. "Amelia, Roberto loves you so much. How could you say something like that? It breaks his heart. If I'm the reason there's tension in this house, I'll leave right now and never come back."

She turned to leave, and Roberto shot me one look before going after her.

I did not look back as I walked upstairs.

In the bedroom, I packed everything I owned into one luggage. After that, I set the signed divorce papers and the document terminating my parental rights on the vanity. Then, I slipped the ring off my finger, the one that marked me as the Donna, and left it there with them.

Roberto never came upstairs. He assumed I was throwing a fit and that I would come crawling back within a day or two to apologize.

Meanwhile, Martina posted a photo on her social media. It was a shot of my living room, with her sitting next to Nico as they played video games and a caption below it.

[Kids always know who really cares about them.]

Less than a minute after it went up, Roberto's mother, Rosa Conti, and his sister, Gianna Bertelli, liked the post.

I casually tapped the 'like' button as well. However, when I refreshed the page, the post was gone. Roberto had probably had someone take it down, since he never liked it when photos of Nico circulated online.

I did not give it another thought and dragged my luggage downstairs.

Roberto saw the luggage, and his expression darkened completely. "Put that back upstairs. Even if you're just throwing a fit, there should be a limit."

Tears shimmered in Martina's eyes as she put on a concerned act and said, "Amelia, pretending to run away from home is one thing, but what if Nico picks up the habit? What kind of example are you setting?"

Suddenly, she moved in close under the pretense of grabbing my hand and whispered, "Roberto doesn't love you, and neither does Nico. Do you really have the nerve to stay here and live in my shadow?"

Before I could even react, she stumbled and hit the corner of the side table. Blood ran down her forehead almost immediately.

"Amelia," she gasped, pressing her hand to her head.

"I was only trying to help you, and you..."

Roberto's eyes burned dark with fury. "Did you actually lay your hands on her? I've let you get away with too much for too long. Get out! Don't bother coming back."

I looked at him calmly and replied in a flat voice, "Believe me or not, I never touched her. I won't be coming back."

I walked out the front door, got in the car, and told the driver, "Take me to the airport."

The car pulled away slowly, and the iron gates of the Villa Bertelli closed behind me. It was as if they had never really opened for me at all.

I came from an ordinary background, but the Bertelli family never held that against me, at least not openly.

The family, which controlled a vast underground empire, had its own rules and its own way of surviving.

I worked part-time to put myself through college, and one of those jobs was with the Bertelli family. I was mainly looking after Roberto's ailing grandfather, Enzo Bertelli, the former Don.

On the surface, Enzo was a respected antiques collector and archaeologist. However, beneath that, he had used the antique trade to build the family's first intelligence network, which included smuggling, underground auctions, and all manner of operations running beneath it.

Since he had studied antiquities and my major was in the same field, we always had endless conversations. He appreciated my sharp eye and patience when it came to historical relics.

Back then, Roberto had just taken over part of the family's operations and was under enormous pressure. He had a habit of letting off steam in dangerous ways, and he reported to Enzo at a set time each week.

One night, after handling a particularly brutal internal dispute, he came home drunk in the early hours. That night, something happened that neither of us planned, and I ended up pregnant with Nico.

No matter how hard Rosa pushed back, because she had wanted Roberto to marry someone more 'useful' to the family through an alliance, we ended up together anyway.

There was no grand confession between us, no conventional courtship, but Roberto showed me that he valued me through his actions.

He would quietly have someone bring me hot tea when I stayed up late studying artifacts. At family gatherings, he always made sure I stood by his side.

Whenever anyone questioned my background, he would reply coldly, "She is my wife."

He grew more composed over time, putting Nico and I under his tight protection. Being shielded by that kind of power once made me feel safe.

With my dual role as both a legitimate art restorer and a skilled forger, the Bertelli family's operation expanded significantly.

Nonetheless, the use of artifacts as an intelligence network was a closely guarded family secret, so very few people outside the inner circle understood how much I actually contributed.

Life moved forward in a certain balance, until Martina returned.

Martina was the daughter of another mob family, and she and Roberto had grown up together. The day she came home after her divorce overseas, Roberto went to the airport to pick her up.

From that day on, everything changed.

Martina began showing up at the Villa Bertelli regularly under the title of 'business partner'. She knew every family code, recognized every key player, and understood every unspoken rule.

She even taught Nico how to recognize the family crest and told him, "The weak don't deserve to stand beside your father."

Slowly, a crack began to form between my son and I.

I waited at the airport for three hours, but Roberto's people never showed up. According to family rules, if I wanted to leave the city, I needed his "permission."

So, I stopped caring about the rules. I boarded the plane, pulled on my eye mask, and fell into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, violent turbulence jolted me awake, and the passengers around me were in a panic. Before I could react, the plane dropped sharply, and my head slammed hard into the overhead compartment.

After that, everything went black.

...

Back at the Villa Bertelli, in the underground meeting room, Roberto had just wrapped up negotiations with representatives from the Pelosi family.

Martina sat beside him, her smile perfectly composed.

At that moment, his right-hand man stepped forward quietly and handed him his phone.

The screen showed over a dozen missed calls, every single one from me.

Martina glanced at the screen and whispered, "Amelia still can't go five minutes without you. We have serious business to deal with right now, so she'll have to wait."

Roberto frowned, switched the phone back to silent, and said flatly, "She's been out of line lately. Let her wait. She needs to learn what actually matters."

With that, the meeting continued.

Two hours later, the meeting finally ended. Roberto pressed his fingers to his temple and was about to have someone reach out to me when an unknown number came through.

"Is this Mr. Roberto Bertelli? At eleven a.m. today,, a commercial flight departing from the city crashed due to a mechanical failure. According to the passenger list, your wife, Ms. Amelia Fiore, was on board. We regret to inform you that..."