Second Life: The Mafia Wife’s Cold Awakening Chapter 01

Second Life: The Mafia Wife’s Cold Awakening Chapter 01

Chapter 1 The Button I Didn’t Press
When Dominic Vittori, the Don of the Vittori crime family, was ambushed, my husband Lucian Carvalho—their top hitman—took all Dominic’s personal bodyguards to rescue his first love Liliana Rossi, who’d lied about being kidnapped by a rival clan.
I didn’t press the emergency call button in my hand.
Instead, I became his shield. Eight months pregnant. Flesh and blood. And I gave him the seconds he needed to run.
In my past life, I’d pressed that button.
Lucian dropped Liliana mid-rescue and rushed back to save the Don.
His successful rescue got him promoted to the family’s head enforcer.
But Liliana? No one watching her back. She walked straight into a rival crew’s setup. Dead before she hit the ground.
On the surface, same old Lucian. Ice cold. All business.
However, on the day I went into labor, he threw me into an abandoned family freezer warehouse.
Pain had me twisted up like a pretzel. I asked him why.
Lucian looked at me. No heat. No rage. Just ice. “Twenty guards on the Don. Twenty. And you dragged me back.” His voice never rose. “You didn’t hit that button. Liliana’s still breathing. So here’s how this works. Every second of pain she endured, I’m taking out of you. Tenfold.”
In the end, my unborn baby and I froze to death in that twenty-degree-below-zero vault.
Then I opened my eyes. Same day. Same ambush. Same sh*t show.
…
“Cover the Don! Now!” I screamed.
Black tactical gear. Everywhere. My feet backpedaled before my brain even caught up.
Then it clicked. I was back. Back to the exact second everything went to hell. Back to the moment I could flip the whole godd*mn script.
That freezer flashed behind my eyes. I hurled the panic button like it was on fire.
I threw myself forward. Took the hit meant for the bleeding Don. My body. His shield.
I watched his face shift. Confusion. Then something else. Gratitude. Disbelief. Like he couldn’t process what I’d just done.
I knew I had made the right choice this time.
My husband, Lucian Carvalho, was the family’s top hitman.
He’s glued to the Don’s side.
Yet today? Bullets flying. Don bleeding out. No Lucian.
He was too busy playing therapist to his precious first crush. Liliana Rossi had thrown a tantrum and stormed off, and he’d chased after her like a loyal, obedient puppy.
In my previous life, I was scared he would be punished, so I hit the button.
After he pulled the Don out? He twisted it. Decided I’d done it for a payday and a title.
He tossed me in that freezer he’d rigged. Let me and our kid freeze to death. Premeditated.
Since I had gotten a second chance at life, I would never walk that path again.
I covered him like my life depended on it. Bullets punched through my flesh. I clenched my jaw so hard I thought my teeth would crack. Didn’t make a sound.
Besides the guards my husband had taken, the Don had plenty of others. If I could hold out until backup arrived, I’d survive.
The Don knew it too. Reluctant as he was, he had to take cover behind me.
I was eight months pregnant.
I felt that kid every day. Little kicks. Flutters. Last life, in that freezer, the last thing I heard was his cry, tiny and fading.
This stinging pain was worse than the bitter cold ever had.
Soon, chaotic footsteps approached, and I heard the Don shouting frantically.
“Where the f*ck are the medics?! Get them here! Who is this woman?!”
I tried to answer. Just gurgled blood.
However, the Don didn’t care. He leaned in close to me.
One last push. Forced the words out.
“Lucian Carvalho’s wife.”
The words scraped out of me. Then the pain swallowed everything. Black. Silent.
The doctor wiped cold sweat from his forehead, his voice urgent. “Mrs. Carvalho! Stay with me! You close your eyes now, you don’t open them again! Your husband! Your baby! They’re waiting!”
The Don cut him off.
“You saved my life. The Vittori name means something. If you pull through, you’ll get the highest honor this family’s got. Just hold the line! I sent for Lucian already!”
I smiled at that. Weak and bitter.
To Lucian, me and the kid inside me—we didn’t add up to a single strand of Liliana’s precious hair.
When I shielded the Don from the hitmen, I already knew the baby in my womb couldn’t be saved.
As for Lucian, he’d never come.
Just then, the man the Don had sent to fetch Lucian rushed back.
He dropped heavily to his knees, too afraid to look at the Don.
The Don’s expression turned to stone, but behind his eyes, a volcano churned.
“Where is Lucian?!”
Vinci Marco, the family manager, trembled as he spoke.
“Mr. Carvalho… he refused. He said… he said stop with the cheap tricks. Stop begging for scraps.”
In Lucian’s mind, pregnant as I was, I wasn’t even as important as Liliana.
And yet, I was Lucian’s legal wife, while Liliana was nothing more than a mistress.
One message. From Liliana. Textbook damsel-in-distress. “Help, they’ve got me!” It reeked of a setup. Didn’t matter. Lucian snatched up every guard in sight and bolted. No look back. No thought for the Don bleeding out on the pavement. Just her. Always her.
Why would he care now that his worthless wife was injured?
If Liliana was his whole world, why the hell did he put a ring on my finger?
Rage flooded my chest. More blood came up.
The doc braced himself. Looked at the Don. Desperate.
“Don, Mrs. Carvalho is too agitated. If she doesn’t have someone here—someone she knows, I don’t think she’s coming back from this.”
The Don looked at me. Swallowed the rage.
He tore a pendant engraved with the family crest from his waist and tossed it to Marco.
“You tell him it’s not a request. It’s my final order. If he values his current position—in this family, in this city, in this life—he’ll comply.”
The Don was beyond pissed.
An army of bodyguards on payroll. Not a single one there when the bullets started flying.
I’d risked my life to save him, and he couldn’t even get my husband to show up.
To the supreme ruler of the underworld, this was a massive humiliation.
This time, Marco didn’t return alone.
I cracked my eyes open. More than just my husband standing there.
There was another face. One I knew bone-deep from my last life. Liliana’s little maid. Mia Potter.