The Capo's Regret: The Curse Was A Lie

For fifteen years, my husband Bennett refused to let me get pregnant.

"My blood is a curse, Kelsey," he would say, gripping my hand with terrified intensity. "It kills the women who carry it. I won't risk you."

I believed him. I mourned the children we never had just to stay alive for him.

Then he brought Aria home.

He claimed she was a distant cousin in trouble. But from the shadows of the ballroom, I watched him caress her swollen belly with a tenderness he never showed me.

When I confronted him, the mask fell.

"You provide the image, Kelsey," he said coldly. "She provides the bloodline. Do not make a scene."

To teach me a lesson in obedience, my horse's reins were sabotaged.

I woke up in the hospital with a fractured leg, only to learn he had ignored my emergency calls to hold Aria’s hand during a routine ultrasound.

Lying in that sterile bed, the truth hit me harder than the fall.

There was no curse.

He had medically gaslighted me for a decade, stealing my fertility with a lie, just to replace me with a mistress he called "cousin."

He thought he had broken me. He thought I would fade quietly into the east wing.

Instead, I wiped my tears and planted listening devices in his office.

He wanted a legacy?

I boarded a train to Paris, leaving behind a bomb that would burn his entire world to ash.

Chapter 1

(Kelsey POV)

I stood in the shadows of a massive marble pillar, weighed down by diamonds that cost more than most people earn in a lifetime, and watched my husband caress another woman's swollen belly.

He didn't see me.

He saw only her, and the child that was supposed to be impossible-a miracle denied to us by the curse that had kept my own womb empty for fifteen desolate years.

It felt like a lifetime ago, but it was only this morning that I had woken up in our penthouse overlooking Central Park.

The sheets were cold on his side.

They were always cold.

I had spent the morning meticulously constructing the mask I presented to the world.

Foundation to conceal the violet shadows under my eyes.

Silk to drape over the hollowness in my chest.

I was Mrs. Kelsey Randolph.

The wife of Bennett Randolph, the most feared Capo in the New York syndicate.

Downstairs, the house manager and the wives of three senior soldiers had been waiting for me.

They perched on the edge of the velvet sofas, clutching their china cups as if they were lifelines.

"Mrs. Randolph, the charity gala is set for next week," one of them ventured.

Her eyes flickered to my flat stomach.

They always did.

I ignored the slight, taking a slow sip of my black coffee.

"Excellent," I said.

My voice was steady.

It was the voice of a woman who had everything.

But I had nothing.

Later, at breakfast, Bennett had sat across from me