30 Days Before Divorce: Mafia Don’s Regret Can’t Win Me Back Chapter 10

30 Days Before Divorce: Mafia Don’s Regret Can’t Win Me Back Chapter 10

“Chiara. Heard you started your own firm. We’ve worked together before. Want to talk?”

I leaned back in my chair, my daughter’s head resting in the crook of my arm.

“We can talk. But the terms need to be renegotiated.”

“Go ahead.”

“Full consulting and analysis package. Eight million. Goes to AURA. Not the Camorra family.”

Two seconds of silence on the other end.

“Deal.”

I hung up. Elena rolled her eyes at me from across the desk.

“You’re ruthless.”

“Of course. Don Giuliano came for my talent.”

“I wasn’t talking about him.”

She gave me a look, but didn’t say anything more.

Two in the afternoon. The front desk called on the internal line.

“Ms. Russo, someone sent you flowers. Should I bring them up?”

“Who sent them?”

“The card says… Andrea.”

I looked down at my daughter.

She’d just woken up, dark eyes rolling around curiously, her little mouth making soft smacking sounds.

“Throw them out.”

Day fifteen now, Elena told me. She brought it up like a daily complaint.

Andrea sent flowers every day.

Sometimes daisies. Sometimes red roses, golden acacias, even white lilies.

On day five, he sent my favorite. Tulips.

Day eight, a bouquet of yellow roses with a card: [I’m sorry.]

Day twelve, a stuffed teddy bear with a note: [For Bianca.]

I threw them all away.

The flowers went in the trash. The teddy bear ended up at the secretary’s desk.

“Ms. Russo, if you don’t want it, can I keep it at my station?”

“Sure.”

Riccardo reached out to Elena privately and gave her the full picture. The Camorra family was barely holding together.

The eight-million-dollar partnership with Don Giuliano was gone. Other allied families were pulling out one by one.

Riccardo was even considering defecting to another family.

“Chiara, Andrea really has changed,” Riccardo said on the phone.

“He’s up until three in the morning now, personally running routes, negotiating terms, even going to the docks himself to oversee shipments.”

“He finally figured out that glory doesn’t just fall from the sky.” Elena said.

Riccardo gave a bitter laugh. “And his mother. He tore into her.”

“Greta called me crying. Said Andrea smashed the family portrait and screamed at her: ‘Happy now? You drove her away. Are you happy?'”

I listened to all of this and felt nothing.

No satisfaction. No sympathy. Just a quiet sense of how distant it all was.

Everything felt like it belonged to someone else’s life.

I could picture every scene. But those rules and cages could never hold me again.

That evening, the night before Thanksgiving, I took Bianca to my parents’ house.

Mom made a full spread. Margherita pizza, Florentine steak, fried calamari, a pot of vegetable soup.

Dad held Bianca, his eyes crinkling into half-moons. “She looks just like you.”

“Where?” Mom leaned in to see.

“The eyes,” Dad said.

Bianca kicked her little legs and blew a bubble. Everyone laughed.

After dinner, I washed the dishes.

Through the window, I watched scattered fireworks bloom across the Vomero night sky. Sparse but bright.

Mom leaned against the doorframe, watching me.

“Sweetheart, do you regret it?”

I dried a dish and placed it in the cabinet. “No.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It did.”

She came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me gently.

So gently. Like she was afraid of breaking something.

“You did the right thing.”

I heard those words again.

I didn’t cry. Not this time.

My throat tightened for a moment, but my eyes stayed dry.

I dried the last dish, put it away, and closed the cabinet.

On the drive home, Bianca fell asleep in her car seat.

The million lights of Caserta stretched out like an ocean beneath the night.

My phone buzzed. A message from Andrea. Just one line.

[Chiara, can I see the baby?]

I looked at it for three seconds.

Then I put the phone back in my bag and started the car again.

The road ahead stretched straight and long, streetlights painting the asphalt bright.

An old song played softly on the radio.

Bianca breathed quietly in the back seat. Steady. Warm.

I hit the gas, and didn’t look back.