The Baby That Wasn't Mine

When I was eight months pregnant, carrying the Marchetti heir, someone pushed me from the second-floor landing of the estate. I crashed to the marble below, pain searing through me as blood pooled around my body.

In a frenzy, my husband, Salvatore, the Don himself, carried me out to the car and summoned the surgeons the Family kept on quiet retainer, men who asked no questions and signed no records. By some mercy, they saved the baby.

When I woke, however, neither the baby nor Salvatore was at my side.

I struggled to rise, limping through the sterile corridors, searching every room. It was not until I reached the cold storage at the end of the wing that I overheard my husband speaking low with the doctor.

"Don Marchetti, the child was still breathing. How could you smother him? He is your own blood."

"Better he goes early and finds another life. He never should have drawn breath in this one." Salvatore's voice came flat and cold. "Vittoria gave me a son yesterday. I gave her my word that our boy would be the only heir to the Marchetti name. I will not have anyone contest what is his."

Hearing it all, I felt my blood run cold. The happy family I had dreamed of was only my delusion. The union I had been so proud of, the pact sworn before the whole famiglia, was nothing but a cold hell.

If that was the truth of it, then it was better to leave.

……

The doctor hesitated, his face torn. "But Don Marchetti, if you mean to pass Vittoria's child off to your wife, what happens when she learns the truth?"

"Newborns all look the same. She won't see it. I'll bring the boy to her shortly." Salvatore answered as though discussing a shipment. "Dispose of the body the way we dispose of things. And give me the sterilization drug your people have been developing. I'll see that Adriana takes it."

The doctor went still, then spoke in an urgent rush. "Don Marchetti, you've already taken your wife's child to seat Vittoria's in the bloodline. Why sterilize her too? Isn't that too cruel?"

The chill of that cold room seemed to bleed out into the hall, yet Salvatore's words were colder still.

"I promised Vittoria our son would never want for anything in this life, and that no other child of mine would ever rise to compete for his place. She belongs to another man's house now. I want her to rest easy all the same."

The doctor's reluctance did not fade. "Don Marchetti, I must warn you. This drug is still in trials. It has never been given to a living patient. The side effects are severe. Can you truly carry that?"

Salvatore paused, and let out a slow breath. "I have no choice. Adriana will wake soon. If I have them take her womb now, she'll grow suspicious."

"She'll have to endure it. I'll make it up to her after. But I cannot allow Adriana to carry again."

Just then his phone rang. He pressed the speaker, and a man's pleased voice crawled out into that cold room.

"Don Marchetti, the five million came through. Don't trouble yourself, I'm leaving New York tonight. Your wife will never know it was your order that put her down those stairs. Heh."

Then footsteps came toward the door.

Ignoring the pain screaming through my leg, I staggered back to the ward.

Thinking of my dead child, I clutched my chest, trying to hold in the anguish as tears fell on my bandaged leg.

So it had been no accident, that fall down the stairs. It was my own husband clearing an obstacle from the path of the woman he loved and the child she'd given him.

My baby had been saved on that table, only to be smothered by the hands of his own father.

To Salvatore, we, mother and child both, were nothing but stones in his road.

"Adriana, you're awake?"

Salvatore came in cradling an infant and sat beside me with a smile. "Look at our son. Doesn't he look just like us?"

"Cara, thank you for giving me such a beautiful boy. I'll be a good father to him." He grinned.

I looked at the baby sleeping peacefully in his arms, and my heart ached.

Salvatore was wrong. No mother mistakes her own child. The boy had his brow and his eyes, but the nose, the chin, were Vittoria's, near enough to be traced.