The Frame-Up He Believed Chapter 01

The Frame-Up He Believed Chapter 01

The third time my husband’s mistress slapped a pregnancy test result in front of me, I felt absolutely nothing.

I even had the composure to coldly glance at the photo she’d deliberately leaked to me—her wedding portrait with Dominic.

Dominic frowned, his demeanor icy, as he stepped in front of Irina without a word.

“I know I promised you I wouldn’t have kids on the side.”

“But Irina’s been with me for years. The last two abortions wrecked her body. This one stays.”

“If anything happens to her, Elena—even if you’re the Donna—I won’t go easy on you.”

He shifted into a defensive stance, bracing for my reaction.

Probably waiting for me to lose it. Scream. Scratch. The way I always did.

But I was tired.

Three days ago, I’d already said yes to someone else’s proposal.

…

I raised an eyebrow at Irina’s hand, her fingers white-knuckled around the photo.

“Nice picture. The dress doesn’t suit you, though.”

If she hadn’t deliberately sent that pregnancy test to my encrypted phone, I wouldn’t even have known she was pregnant again.

I’d grown used to her provocations over the years.

Every time she showed up, it was like a reminder—I was just the wife Dominic had brought back from old Brooklyn.

The first time she came to me, it felt like being thrown into the Harlem River in winter. Like I’d been split in half. Even breathing hurt.

My eyes went bloodshot. I grabbed a crystal glass and smashed it over Dominic’s head.

Dominic just licked the blood off his lip and gave me that helpless look, but every word out of his mouth was about protecting her.

“Elena, you really do go off at the smallest thing.”

“But I actually like her. Don’t touch her, and we can work anything out. Feel better? Want another shot? Go ahead—get it out of your system.”

Back then, I thought my world had ended. I lost hair by the handful, couldn’t sleep, wasted away until I barely recognized myself.

Now? I felt nothing.

Dominic paused, studying me with that half-smirk.

“New strategy?”

“You know it won’t end well if you try to stop this.”

He was right.

I nodded in full agreement.

“I’m not stopping you. Go ahead.”

Seeing me dry-eyed and silent, Dominic finally relaxed. A flicker of guilt passed through his eyes.

“Buy whatever. Put it on my tab.”

With that, he scooped Irina up in his arms and walked out, careful not to strain her.

I watched their backs fade and felt a strange sense of distance.

Back when I first found out he was keeping a woman on the side, I laid it all out in front of all the family elders.

I wanted to humble him. Make him come back.

But the next day, he doubled down. In front of every captain in the Castellano family, he introduced Irina like she was royalty.

One soldier talked shit about her. He made sure that soldier never talked again.

Someone called her a Russian plant. He made sure that someone never set foot on Castellano estate again.

After that, no one dared disrespect Irina.

I was practically hysterical.

“Dominic! What do you take me for?! Didn’t you promise you’d love me forever?”

“I want a divorce!”

Dominic laughed softly and kissed me on the mouth.

“Elena, would you really leave me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t love you anymore. It’s just… after all these years, things get stale. Just behave, alright?”

“Divorce? Where would you even go? Back to that old apartment your grandmother left you?”

The words died in my throat.

Before Dominic was claimed by the Castellanos, he was just a street punk from Brooklyn.

When we were sixteen, he got into a shootout with a rival crew. I took a blade for him. It hit my uterus. The quack at the underground clinic said I’d never carry a child.

After we married, his mother Gianna Castellano looked at me like I was a hand-me-down that didn’t fit anymore.

She said I was a woman who crawled out of the old neighborhood into the Upper East Side—no lineage, no social circle, not even fit to give the Castellanos an heir.

To shut them up, to keep me from being humiliated, Dominic got a vasectomy.

When I found out Irina was pregnant, I tracked her down, slapped her twice, and had the enforcers drag her to the family’s underground clinic for an abortion.

Dominic found out and had my grandmother’s headstone at Greenwood Cemetery smashed to pieces.

That moment, I felt like I’d died.

My heart felt like it was being pierced by a thousand needles. Every beat drew blood.

I was pale as a ghost. I asked him if he’d lost his mind.

If my grandmother hadn’t taken him in when he was nothing, would he even be alive?

My grandmother, Abuela Luisa, split her life savings before she died. Half for me, half for him—seed money to build his empire.

She trusted him to take care of me.

She never imagined that ten years later, he’d be the one destroying her grave.

I laughed—two bitter, hollow laughs—and coughed up blood.

Dominic didn’t flinch. He lounged on the couch like it was nothing.

“Elena, you’re the one who made the first move against her.”

“I warned you. You just wouldn’t listen.”

After that day, Dominic didn’t come home for weeks. He stayed by Irina’s side, keeping her happy.

I rotted in that empty mansion like something already dead.

When I saw the news—Dominic had bought out the entire Times Square screens for Irina—I slit my wrists.

Life bled out of me, drop by drop. The sounds around me faded.

Cold seeped into my bones.

All I felt was relief. I closed my eyes.