The Don’s Wife Was Never Weak Chapter 02

The Don’s Wife Was Never Weak Chapter 02

The next morning, I woke in my childhood bedroom at the Calabresi compound—a fortress built into the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, guarded by forty armed men and a woman who scared them all more than bullets did.

My mother, Serena Calabresi, was sitting at the edge of my bed when I opened my eyes. She didn’t ask what happened. She didn’t need to. She simply handed me a cup of ginger tea and said, “The doctor is here when you’re ready.”

That was my mother. No wasted words. No wasted mercy.

After the doctor confirmed the pregnancy and ordered complete rest, I sat in the sunroom and did what I’d been avoiding for months—I opened Catalina’s social media.

The photos from last night were already posted.

Catalina, seated at the Don’s table, Luca’s hand on the back of her chair. Catalina, toasting with the capos, wearing a red dress that matched the Valentini family colors. Catalina, captioned: “Family is everything. Blessed to be part of something bigger than myself. 🖤”

Part of the family. She called herself part of the family. My family. The family I married into at twenty-two, when I gave up the Calabresi name and everything that came with it because Luca Valentini looked me in the eyes and said, “I will protect you with my life.”

The comments were worse. Luca’s associates, their wives, people I’d hosted in my own home—all of them praising Catalina like she was the queen of the empire.

Not a single person asked where I was.

I scrolled further. Catalina had posted a photo from three days ago—her and Luca in his private study, documents spread between them, her leaning close to point at something on the page. His hand was on her waist. Casually. Possessively. The way he used to touch me.

The caption: “Late nights building empires with this one. 💪🖤”

My hands trembled. I closed the app and set the phone face-down.

I thought about the first time Catalina “made a mistake.”

She’d sent the weekly security briefing to every member of the inner circle—except me. When I confronted her, she’d widened those enormous brown eyes and pressed her hand to her collarbone.

“Oh, Mrs. Valentini, I’m so sorry! I’m still learning the distribution list. You’re so intimidating—I get flustered around you. Please don’t mention it to Luca. He’ll think I’m incompetent, and I really need this position.”

Luca had walked in on the tail end of the conversation, seen Catalina’s trembling lip, and turned on me.

“Isabella. She’s new. She made one mistake. You don’t need to interrogate her over an email.”

“I wasn’t interrogating—”

“Be patient. She’s an asset to this family.”

Be patient. That was his version of “be gracious.” His way of telling me to shrink.

The second time, Catalina rearranged the security rotation so that my personal guard—a woman named Gia who’d been with me since the wedding—was reassigned to Catalina’s detail. “Operational efficiency,” she called it.

The fifth time, she moved my things out of Luca’s home office to “make room for strategy materials.”

The tenth time, she scheduled a weapons shipment review on our anniversary. Luca chose the shipment.

By the twentieth time, I’d stopped counting offenses and started planning my exit.

Now I sat in my father’s compound, seven weeks pregnant, and I pulled a suitcase from under the bed. I hadn’t unpacked much from the Valentini mansion. Four years of marriage, and everything truly mine fit in one bag.

Because everything else—the mansion, the cars, the jewelry vault—belonged to the Valentini family. And Luca had never let me forget it.

“You married into this, Isabella. Everything you have, this family gave you.”

What he never knew was that the family I came from could buy his empire three times over and burn the receipt.