The Don's 99 Betrayals

"Divorce?"

Lorenzo looked stunned, completely caught off guard.

In a traditional Mafia family, divorce isn’t just a taboo; it’s a humiliation. Unless one party ends up in a casket, the marriage contract is ironclad.

Lorenzo’s face went pale, his eyes instantly turning ferocious. He growled low in his throat, "Impossible! Elena, unless I die, you are a Moretti forever!"

Suddenly, he rushed over. Ignoring my struggles, he dragged me by the arm, shoved me into a room, and slammed the door shut.

The moment the door closed, I heard the heavy sound of the lock clicking from the outside.

That shove sent a sharp spike of agony through my already aching lower abdomen.

I thought about the fall I just took, and then I thought about the baby in my belly. Terror drowned me in an instant.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my voice as I begged him, "Lorenzo, my stomach hurts. I won’t fight with you anymore. Just take me to the hospital first, okay? Please."

Through the heavy solid wood door, his voice sounded pained and paranoid. "Elena, stop lying to me. If I let you out, you’ll leave me. You promised the priest you’d stay with me for life."

"I won’t sign the papers. Just let that dream die."

"I’ll handle the Sofia situation. I want the child, and don't you even think about running!"

"Lorenzo, I’m really in pain! It’s our baby..."

But the footsteps outside drifted further away until they vanished.

No matter how hard I pounded on the door, no matter how much I screamed, no one answered.

I don’t know how much time passed. My throat was so hoarse I couldn’t make a sound.

The pain in my stomach grew more intense, and a warm liquid rushed down my thighs.

My dress was stained with a large patch of blood—a bright, crimson red, looking exactly like that red diamond in his hand.

Waves of cold washed over my body. Somewhere deep down, I felt the life inside me slipping away, bit by bit.

Just then, a rustling sound came from under the door gap.

I thought Lorenzo had come back, and a spark of hope ignited in my chest.

"Lorenzo! Lorenzo! I’m bleeding! Call an ambulance!"

However, the response wasn't the sound of the door opening. It was several balls of lit newspaper and strips of cloth soaked in alcohol being shoved through the gap.

The storage room, already sealed tight, was instantly filled with fire and rolling thick smoke. It choked me, stinging my eyes shut.

From outside came that child’s vicious, immature voice:

"Bad woman! Papa left you to me and Mamma. He went back to New York. No one will save you no matter how much you scream. You can just die in there!"

A child.

My child was gone.

And his child wanted my life.

I couldn't wait any longer.

I staggered to my feet. This was a second-floor storage room with only a small, high-positioned ventilation skylight.

I looked around and found only an old, dusty sheet in the corner.

Biting my lip until it bled, the sharp pain brought a moment of clarity to my consciousness. I wrapped the sheet tightly around my hand, binding it the way a boxer wraps their knuckles.

Facing that reinforced glass window, I used every ounce of strength I had left and smashed my fist against it.

Once. Twice.

The pain felt like my hand bones were shattering. My vision went black, and I nearly fainted.

It wasn't until the seventeenth hit—as long and painful as the seventeen white diamond bracelets he gave me—that the glass finally shattered.

I climbed out through that tiny skylight.

Shards of glass sliced my arms and thighs. Covered in blood, I looked like a vengeful spirit crawling out of hell.

I jumped from the second floor onto a pile of garbage in the back alley. Dragging my broken body, I flagged down a passing black sedan on the roadside.

"Take me to the nearest hospital... Tell them I am a Moretti."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I plunged completely into darkness.

When I woke up, I was in a VIP suite at St. Mary’s Hospital.

The doctor told me I had been in a coma for four days.

The baby didn't make it.

My right arm had multiple fractures from smashing the glass and needed to be in a cast for three months. I had over thirty stitched wounds on my body.

I didn't care about the other injuries.

The only thing that turned my heart into dead ash was the loss of the child—the one that had reignited hope for this dark marriage.

Originally, I had fantasized about telling Lorenzo I was pregnant on our seventh anniversary. I wondered what kind of surprised expression the arrogant, untouchable Don would make.

Now, none of that was necessary.

Good.

He already had an heir with someone else; why would he care about the unformed life between us?

Ignoring the objections of the doctors and bodyguards, I demanded my discharge papers.

I hadn’t even walked out of the hospital gates when I received a call from Lorenzo.

I thought that after seeing the wreckage of the room, the scorched floor, and the blood, he had finally remembered to care about me.

But when the call connected, his voice was cold as ice, carrying the judgment of a superior:

"Elena, I only locked you in for three days to let you cool off. I even specifically left Leo there to help you order takeout."

"I can't believe you set fire to my safe house! And you hit Leo!"

"Elena, out of jealousy, you were actually capable of hurting a child and almost burning him to death! This violates the family's iron law regarding the protection of women and children!"

"Lorenzo, you called me just to say this?"

My voice was choked with emotion, yet it carried an unprecedented calmness.

In the past, Lorenzo would have sensed something was wrong immediately. No matter what happened, he would have scrambled a helicopter to appear in front of me and make me happy.

But this time, there was only dead silence on the other end of the line.

After a dozen seconds, his voice—once so gentle, now incredibly cruel—spoke again:

"I’ll give you one day. Tonight, I’m bringing Leo back to the estate. You must apologize to him in front of every family member!"

"Otherwise, don't bother threatening me with divorce. You need to understand that arson and attempted murder of a child in New York will land you in prison! If you actually go to jail, it'll be hard not to get divorced then. At that point, the Moretti family will clean you out like trash."

My fingers gripped the phone so hard they turned white.

In that moment, a part of my heart truly died.

"Lorenzo," I said softly, my voice as light as a sigh. "You are pathetic."

I didn't listen to his roaring response. I hung up directly and tossed the phone into a trash can at the hospital entrance.

I flagged down an unlicensed black cab and gave the address of an abandoned auto repair shop under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the inheritance my grandfather left me before he died—a safe house that not even Moretti’s spies could infiltrate.

Pushing open the dusty door, I took a heavy iron box from a hidden compartment.

Inside was the final gift I was mailing to the Moretti office.

The divorce agreement was crumpled, and not only did it have my signature, but it was also soaked with a large patch of dried, dark red blood—the only trace our child left in this world.

I placed it into the iron box. Then, I added all the "redemption codes" he had given me over the last seven years—those diamonds.

I mailed them all together.

These top-tier jewels weren't love; they were nails of shame Lorenzo had hammered into my self-respect.

Before leaving, I opened the encrypted laptop in the safe house. My fingertips danced across the keyboard as I sent an anonymous email to the Don of the Savino family—the Morettis' mortal enemies.

Inside was a record of every secret route Lorenzo was using to smuggle arms through Sicily next month, as well as the money laundering codes for several of his docks in Manhattan.

After doing all this, I turned and left, boarding the plane.

Lorenzo, goodbye.

No, or rather—never see you again.