The morning of my prenatal checkup, I learned that my mafia husband, Dante Salvatore, had quietly arranged for me to be admitted as a post-abortion recovery patient instead of an expectant mother.

I almost laughed and told him he'd gotten the paperwork mixed up.

But he beat me to it, his voice as composed as ever. "It wasn't a clerical error. There's something I have to say to you."

"I've been keeping a college girl. She's gentle, she has never demanded a title, and she has never tried to take what's yours."

"But she's pregnant now. I've already put her through enough. I refuse to let her child suffer along with her. The baby needs my name."

I went rigid on the ultrasound table.

My voice trembled so badly the words came out in pieces. "So you want a divorce, and then you'll marry her?"

He smiled as he wiped the gel from my belly. "What are you saying? When I married you, I promised you'd be my only wife as long as I lived."'

"Anyway, your parents are gone. If we divorced, where on earth would you go?"

"All I want is for you to adopt Lorelei Bishop's baby. And I'm terminating your pregnancy because I can't have you favoring your own child later and refusing to treat mine and Lorelei's right."

His face didn't shift even a fraction as he passed me the consent form for the procedure.

"Be a good girl. You'll always be my Donna. No one is ever going to outrank you."
I held his eves for a long while.

Then I turned and made my unsteady way toward the operating room.

"Don't bother. Dante, I hope the choice you made today is one you can live with."

What he didn't realize was that, in this entire world, I was the only woman alive who could ever carry his child.

Three days later, I came back to consciousness.

The first sound that reached me was a man's frantic voice.

"Don, this was reckless beyond reason. You didn't only force her to end an eight-month pregnancy. You insisted on a hysterectomy in the same surgery. Donna nearly bled to death. We almost couldn't save her."

Dante's voice came back, casual and detached. "I gave Lorelei my word that I would only ever have one child in this life, and that the child would be hers."

"The cleanest way to keep that promise was to make sure Carmela Russo could never have another."

His gaze drifted across the room and locked onto mine.

There wasn't even a hint of guilt on his face.

He simply leaned over and tucked the blanket more snugly around me, sounding faintly resigned.

"So you heard. There wasn't any other choice. Lorelei said the adoption could only go through if the wife was medically incapable of bearing children."

"Since the pregnancy was already being terminated, I figured it was simpler to handle everything in one operation."

When he noticed the tears welling at the corners of my eyes, he wiped them away with surprising gentleness.

There was even a teasing lilt in his words.

"I honestly didn't expect a hysterectomy mid-pregnancy to bleed that severely. Lucky thing I'd already lined up the top OB-GYNs at this hospital for Lorelei."

"You owe her your life, too. Thanks to Lorelei, you're still breathing."

My whole body convulsed as I forced myself upright and swung at his face.

The pain in my chest was so severe it felt like something inside me was tearing open.

"You're a bastard, Dante."'

But I had nothing left in me, and my hand only grazed his cheek, leaving no mark at all.

A small, fierce figure suddenly came rushing in with a shriek and slapped me hard across the face.

I crumpled back onto the bed.

My oxygen mask jerked loose, and I gasped raggedly, humiliated.

When I lifted my eyes, I saw a young girl standing in front of Dante, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She screamed at me, "Who do you think you are, hitting him?"

"Do you have any idea he stood vigil outside the ICU for three full days waiting for you? If 1 hadn't been bringing him meals, he would have collapsed by now."

"The man I love this much is not your punching bag."

I didn't miss the flicker of tenderness that softened Dante's eyes.

It was a look I knew.

It was the same look he'd worn when I drank in his place until alcohol poisoning took the first child we'd ever made

It was the look he'd given me when debt collectors threatened to take his hand, and I knelt on the pavement sobbing until my forehead split open, pawning the only keepsake my mother had left me just to buy him another chance to live.

I had given him so much.

And in the end, I still mattered less to him than a single tear from his new woman.