FRAMED FOR MURDER WHILE PREGNANT: NOW I'M THE MAFIA'S WIFE

Marissa POV

I was going to tell him about the baby. Instead, I told him nothing because by the time I walked through our door, my husband was already dead.

The pregnancy test sat in my purse like a secret weapon. Three pink lines. Three impossible, miraculous lines after five years of trying, three devastating miscarriages, and enough tears to fill the marble fountain in our front garden. My hand had been resting on my stomach for the entire drive home, as if I could protect this tiny spark of life through sheer will alone.

"Chris, I'm pregnant." I practiced the words again, watching my lips move in the rearview mirror. Would he cry? Probably. Chris always cried at the emotional moments, proposal, wedding, every negative test that came before this positive one. "We're finally going to be parents."

The gates of our Bel Air estate rolled open automatically. Security system armed, cameras recording, everything running like the well-oiled machine my father had built before passing it to me. Before passing me to Chris, really. Dad had never trusted my husband, had warned me with his dying breath: "That man loves your money more than he loves you, tesoro."

I'd called him paranoid. Cruel. I'd married Chris anyway, desperate to prove that love could be real, that happy endings existed outside of fairy tales.

Lights blazed in every window of the mansion. That was strange, Chris usually kept the house dark when he worked late, said it helped him think. But tonight our home looked like a carnival, like something was celebrating.

Then I saw the police cars.

Four of them, parked at angles across our circular driveway, their red and blue lights painting our white walls in frantic colors. Officers everywhere, on the steps, in the doorway, moving through rooms that were mine, touching things that belonged to me.

My heart lurched into my throat. Something's wrong. Something's terribly wrong.

I threw the car into park and stumbled out, my heels catching on the cobblestones. "What's happening? Where's my husband?" My voice came out high, panicked.

A detective stepped forward, shield gleaming on his belt. Mid-fifties, gray at the temples, eyes that had seen too much. "Marissa Hale?"

"Yes! Yes, this is my house, where's Chris? Is he hurt? Let me through, I need to see him..." I tried to push past, desperate to get inside, to find my husband, but strong hands caught my arms.

"Ma'am, you need to calm down..."

"Don't tell me to calm down! .The baby. Oh God, what if something happened to Chris? What if our baby would never meet their father?

The detective's expression shifted into something harder, colder. "Marissa Hale, you're under arrest for the murder of Christopher Hale."

The world stopped.

"What?" I barely recognized my own voice. "What did you just say?"

"You're under arrest for the murder of...."

"No." I shook my head violently, my vision blurring with tears. "No, that's...that's insane! Chris isn't...he can't be....I need to see