The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 04

The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 04

Twelve men in black flooded the NICU floor, and my first thought was: the Russos came to erase the loose end. Me. My daughters. Three loose ends in glass boxes. I threw my body in front of the incubators, IV line ripping from my arm, ready to die ugly and fighting –

Then the men parted.

And an old man in a charcoal overcoat walked through them, silver-haired, granite-faced, with my father’s

eyes.

“Aria,” Nikolai Volkov said, and his voice broke on my name. “You look like my son.”

I burst into tears. Embarrassingly. Completely.

The Wolf of Brighton Beach – the man whose name made hardened killers find religion – pulled a chair to my hospital bed and sat with me for three hours. He didn’t offer comfort. He asked questions. Precise, surgical questions about the contract, the NDA, the pregnancy, the email from the assistant, the text from Camilla

Russo. He listened the way a demolition expert studies a building.

When I finished, he was silent for a long moment. Then he stood and walked to the incubators. He looked

down at my daughters – Luna, three pounds two ounces, with her father’s gray eyes; Stella, slightly bigger, already loud – and the most dangerous man on the Eastern Seaboard pressed one scarred hand flat against the glass.

“Pravnuchki,” he whispered. Great-granddaughters.

When he turned back to me, his eyes were wet and absolutely terrifying.

“Your father made me swear never to touch your life,” he said. “I kept that oath for twenty-six years. I watched

your graduation from a parked car. I read your mother’s medical files every month. And three years ago, when

you married the Moretti boy, I sat in this city and did nothing, because your mother begged me to let you

choose your own road.” His jaw tightened. “I will regret that until they bury me.”

“Grandfather -”

“No. Listen.” He buttoned his coat with deliberate precision. “Here is what happens now. My lawyers void that NDA by Friday – it was signed under duress, without counsel; half its clauses are illegal. My doctors take over this floor tonight. My men guard these babies until the day I die. And the Moretti famiglia -“he paused, and his smile was thin and sharp as wire, “- the Moretti famiglia is about to learn why the old country still tells

stories about the Wolf.”

“I don’t want a war,” I whispered. “I just want my girls safe.”

“There won’t be a war, vnuchka.” He kissed my forehead, gentle as snowfall. “A war requires two sides

capable of fighting. By the time I am finished, Dante Moretti will not be offering you five million dollars

He paused at the door.

“He will be on his knees, begging you to take his entire empire.”

Dante found out about the twins fourteen days later – not because he asked, not because some flicker of instinct pierced his armor, but because the birth certificates listed his name, and his consigliere nearly had a

stroke.

The call came while I sat in the NICU, my finger through the incubator port, stroking Luna’s impossibly small

hand.

“Mrs. Moretti.” Gerald Marsh, his head attorney, nasal and precise. “Mr. Moretti has been made aware of two children registered under his name. He is concerned. He has questions about -”

“Direct them to my attorney,” I said calmly. “Katya Volkova, of Volkov, Park and Associates. She’s expecting

your call.”

The silence on the line was exquisite. Volkov. I could hear the name detonate in his brain.

“Mrs. Moretti… whose firm did you say?”

“My family’s,” I said, and hung up.

Down the hall, my grandfather’s men stood like a wall of black granite between my daughters and the world.

Let the king of New York make his calls tonight. Let him pull the thread.

Let him find out exactly whose ghost he buried in a guest room for three years.