He Chose His Mistress. I Became the Don.

After my new husband, Don Dante Marchetti, handed the family’s entire $1 million monthly share to that whore for her heart surgery, I snapped. I smashed everything in the house and hurled every vicious word I could think of at him. “Get out. Don’t bring HIV into my house.” “You and that woman could die in the East River, and I still wouldn’t spare either of you a glance.” “Whore! Once a cheater, always a cheater. You’re fucking disgusting!” At that, Dante crushed his cigar out against his palm and gave a humorless laugh. “Right. Because you’re so damn pure.” “Guess I forgot who stripped naked and climbed into my bed at eighteen, then went to school with a baby in her belly.” The trust I had once given him became a knife slicing straight through my heart. What Dante didn’t know was that the second he said those words, I gave up on our marriage. And I gave up on our second child too. … The room fell dead silent. The men who had come to talk us down all looked away in shock. The people closest to you always knew exactly where to hurt you most. I still remembered losing that baby in a pool of blood in the bathroom of my Catholic girls’ school. Back then, Dante was still the illegitimate son his family had exiled to Miami. He didn’t have a cent to his name. Two broke teenagers couldn’t scrape together enough for a private clinic, so all we could afford was a pack of black-market abortion pills from a corner pharmacy in the Bronx. In that filthy bathroom, with what felt like endless tearing pain ripping through my stomach, eighteen-year-old Dante held me while he cried until he had no tears left. “Baby… I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I’m a fucking animal. It’s all my fault…” And now, at thirty, as the Don of the family, Dante had dragged out the ugliest memory of my life just to call me filthy. All for that prostitute. My face went white. I swayed on my feet, unable to get a single word out. A flicker of regret crossed Dante’s face as he rubbed between his brows, while several of his men hurried to make excuses for him. “Mrs. Marchetti, this really wasn’t the Don’s fault. Vivi showed up outside the Fulton warehouse and blocked his car.” “Yeah. She dropped to her knees at the Don’s feet and said she couldn’t go on anymore. He just felt sorry for her.” “Christmas is almost here. Just forgive the Don this once.” A long time ago, I had believed that too. I thought Dante only pitied Vivienne Russo. She was a massage-parlor prostitute who hadn’t even finished community college. I had never once imagined a Don of the Marchetti family could fall in love with her. Until Dante used the family’s connections at Mount Sinai to find her one of the best cardiac surgeons in New York. Year after year, he kept paying for her treatment. When she said she wanted to see how the other half lived, he brought her to the family Christmas banquet, a gathering reserved for made members and legal wives. When she said her family had neglected her as a child, he personally drove her to Coney Island to make up for the childhood she never had. They kissed at the top of the Ferris wheel. Paparazzi caught it and put them on the front page of Page Six. That was how I learned the man who never had time to eat dinner with me had somehow found the time to become another woman’s safe place. That was when we had our first truly vicious fight. Dante said Vivi had kissed him first. He claimed she had been crying, and he hadn’t had the heart to shove her away. That fight ended with him kneeling in the family chapel before the Virgin Mary and taking a blood oath that he would never stay out all night again. In our world, a man’s oath before the Virgin carried more weight than testimony in federal court. I never imagined that what followed would be endless fights, silent treatments, and reconciliations. Sometimes it was over a Chanel lipstick in the passenger seat. Sometimes it was over perfume on his Brioni suit. He grew more impatient. More distant. And I grew more hysterical. But now, I had nothing left. Dante had already given Vivienne far too much. Money. Love. Time. He might as well give her the title of Mrs. Marchetti too. I gave the men a weak smile. “We won’t be married much longer.” Dante stared at me in disbelief. “You want a divorce over one million dollars?” “Aria Colombo, there’s a limit to how far you can take this!” He called me by my maiden name. Colombo. The name of the family that had served as the Marchettis’ consiglieres for three generations. Apparently, he had forgotten what my father, Vincent Colombo, had said on the day we signed our marriage contract. In front of every Don from the Five Families, my father had placed my hand in Dante’s. “She isn’t just my daughter. She is the alliance itself.” And now, after Dante had crossed my boundaries again and again for that prostitute, he still believed our family alliance was indestructible. It was absurd. While we were still fighting, Dante’s phone rang. His spare phone. The second I heard that ringtone, I knew who it was. My emotions spiraled even further. On countless nights, the moment that ringtone sounded, I knew I would be staring at the ceiling alone until morning. After only a few words, Dante grabbed his coat and headed for the door. “Where are you going? You’re not leaving!” I stepped in front of him, unable to believe what I was seeing. After everything that had just happened, with nothing resolved, he was still going to see that woman. “We’ll talk when I get back.” “You walk out that door, and we’re getting divorced!” “Don, say something!” “Don, maybe you should stay with Mrs. Marchetti. She’s really upset right now…” Everyone could see I was on the verge of breaking. Everyone except him. He didn’t ask. He didn’t care. Dante’s impatient voice cut through the room. “I’ve already said everything there is to say. Give her a few days to calm down and she’ll come to her senses.” “Our families have been allied for more than a decade. You really think it’s going to fall apart over something this small?” I gave a bitter laugh as the heavy oak door slammed shut. In the living room, the enormous wedding portrait the old Don had personally commissioned had been destroyed during our fight. My tears hit the floor. For years, I had made excuses for him out of habit. I had tolerated him. Forgiven him. Again and again. But Dante was no longer the reckless boy who used to climb the wall of my Catholic school just to bring me a warm cannoli from a corner shop in Little Italy. I was the only one still clinging to the last scraps of warmth from those memories. I had been lying to myself every single day. And now, I couldn’t even fool myself anymore.