30 Days Before Divorce: Mafia Don’s Regret Can’t Win Me Back Chapter 06

30 Days Before Divorce: Mafia Don’s Regret Can’t Win Me Back Chapter 06

Day nineteen. Riccardo called.

Elena had given him my new number. I’d told her to screen everyone who came asking, and only share it with people she trusted.

“Chiara, are you really going through with the divorce?” A long silence on the other end.

“There’s something you might not know. The partnership with the Palermo boss, Don Giuliano. That eight-million-dollar deal from last year…”

“What about it?”

“Don Giuliano told me last week that his condition for renewing the contract is you. You have to be the one managing the partnership with the Camorra family.”

“He said even if Andrea had a hundred men, none of them are worth as much as you alone.”

“He said you’re the smartest woman he’s ever met. Not the most beautiful. The smartest.”

I held the phone and said nothing.

“Chiara, Don Giuliano is coming this week to discuss the partnership. Andrea still doesn’t know about any of this.” Riccardo’s voice was tight.

I said, “There’s a lot he doesn’t know,” and hung up.

Day twenty.

Elena was organizing the company’s credentials when she pulled out every project I’d ever worked on.

The longer she looked, the quieter she got.

Finally, she closed the folder, looked up at me.

“Chiara. You were the Camorra family’s shadow Consigliere for three years, and you never got paid a single cent?”

“I got paid.” I tapped the case files on the desk. “All of this. It’s mine.”

Day twenty-two.

Three in the afternoon. Sitting in the obstetrics waiting area, waiting for a fetal heart rate monitoring.

Thirty-five weeks and three days. All of the baby’s numbers looked normal.

The nurse strapped the monitoring band around my belly. The machine picked up a steady heartbeat almost immediately.

Every beat was strong and reassuring.

I pulled out my phone and opened my social feed.

I shared the ultrasound image with a single line.

[Baby, Mommy’s waiting for you.]

The scan clearly showed the gestational age, biparietal diameter, femur length.

Hidden from no one.

Five minutes later, Elena called. “You sure? He’ll see it.”

“I know.”

“You want him to see it?”

“Yes,” I said.

Elena was quiet for a few seconds. “Okay.”

She didn’t say anything more.

I wasn’t doing it on purpose. But I wasn’t doing it accidentally, either.

I was over thirty-five weeks. I went to every appointment. I’d prepared everything, signed every form.

My social feed was simply my real life.

Whether Andrea saw it or not wasn’t my concern. But he did see it.

That night at 11:47, an unknown number lit up my new phone.

I hadn’t saved his number. But I knew it by heart. Could recite it with my eyes closed.

A number I’d used for six years, more familiar than my own birthday.

One missed call notification after another appeared on the screen.

He kept calling. Over and over. Seven times total.

I didn’t answer a single one.

His eighth attempt turned into a message.

[Chiara. When was the ultrasound? How far along are you? Is the baby mine? Why didn’t you tell me? Which hospital? Where are you?]

A barrage of question marks. Frantic, panicked, with a thread of desperation woven through.

I’d never seen him like this.

Never. Not even when he asked for the divorce.

Back then, his voice had been steady. Like he was negotiating with a stranger over an arms deal.

I set the phone on the nightstand and slowly lay down on my side.

The baby shifted gently inside me.

I whispered, “Don’t worry. Go to sleep.”

That was for the baby. Maybe for myself, too.