Carrying the Don's Child,My Ex-Fiancé Begs on His KneesChapter 1

I had lived two lives. In both, I followed Dominic Valenti into quiet exile after he stepped back from the family's operations, living in some forgotten corner of the territory, wanting nothing from the world. And in both, his adopted sister clawed her way into the Montecarlo estate and dragged us down with her. Our home was raided. Our family, executed to the last. It always started the same way. She would show up at our door, mascara streaking her cheeks, sobbing that the Don had cast her aside, that he'd chosen another woman as his wife. Dominic would set down whatever he was holding and exhale through his teeth. "You know I can't stand watching you cry." Then he'd pull his old pistol from the lockbox and follow her back to Aurelia. It took dying twice for me to understand. All that talk of sibling devotion. Every word of it was a lie.

——

Dominic Valenti was returning to Aurelia in triumph, and every eligible girl in the old borough had rushed to the gates of the social club to welcome him home.

I was the only one walking the other way.

My little sister Giulietta tugged at my sleeve. "Serafina, aren't we going to meet him?"

I should have been. In both my previous lives, that was exactly what I'd done.

The script never changed.

I congratulated him on his victory.

He proposed in front of the entire neighborhood.

We married, we grew old together, we never parted.

It took a third life to see the truth: I'd given my heart to the wrong man.

I tightened my grip on Giulietta's hand. "We're going home."

The crowd pressed in from every side, the air thick with exhaust and cigarette smoke and the stench of too many bodies. Each breath felt like swallowing stones.

Giulietta pointed at my hair. "But you got up before dawn to do your hair. Wasn't that for him?"

"Did he make you angry? Is that why you won't let him see your pretty hairdo?"

I had no answer for that.

I reached up and pulled the sprig of orange blossom from my hair.

Placed it in my palm and crushed it, slowly, between my fingers.

Once, a bright-eyed boy had tucked an orange blossom behind my ear on the steps of his family's church.

He made me promise to wear one when I came to welcome him home from whatever war the family sent him to fight.