My Husband Left Me Dying for Her. I Made Him Regret It novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Birthday Wish
Silvio annuls his marriage for Arianna's birthday wish, Mirella signs with her pregnancy test on the table, and after he leaves her bleeding on a curb in the rain, the driver who hit her knows her name.
Arianna blew out twenty-eight candles and said her wish out loud.
"This year I want to marry Silvio."
The private room went so quiet I heard the ice shift in someone's glass.
Thirty people turned to look at me.
The capos. Their wives. Silvio's mother at the head of the table, already smiling.
I was standing in the doorway with my coat still on and a folded lab report in my hand.
I had picked it up at four o'clock. Six weeks pregnant.
Five years of trying, and I'd been waiting all night for the right moment to tell my husband.
Silvio laughed.
He laughed.
"That's it? Done."
Every year on her birthday, Silvio Castellucci gave Arianna Rocca whatever she asked for.
Two years ago it was twelve helicopters spelling her name in lights over Manhattan. I watched it from our window with the lamps off.
Last year it was a pair of charm bracelets. He still wore his half every day, the family crest engraved inside.
I never got a ring.
We married at city hall when he was only the underboss, with two soldiers for witnesses. He promised me a real wedding someday.
He crossed the room and took my elbow, light and easy.
"Mirella. It's her birthday." He kept his voice low, like we were partners. "We sign an annulment tonight. Tomorrow we remarry. Twenty-four hours. No big deal."
"No big deal," I said.
"Don't make a face. It's a game."
I walked past him to the table.
I unfolded the lab report and slapped it down flat beside the cake, so hard the candles jumped.
"I'm pregnant."
Somebody's fork hit a plate.
Silvio looked down at the paper and blinked.
Arianna laughed first.
"Oh, Mirella. If you're jealous, just say so." She tilted her head, sweet as syrup. "You don't have to make up a baby."
His mother, Ottavia, dabbed her mouth with a napkin and said nothing at all.
Silvio patted my shoulder twice.
"Come on. Don't be dramatic. One day. Nothing changes."
Then he took out his phone and called the family lawyer, right there, in front of every man who worked for him.
"Bring the annulment papers. Now."
Across the table Delfina Vanni was staring at me. She was the only wife in the room who wasn't hiding a smile.
She shook her head at me, very slightly.
I knew what she meant. Don't sign.
The lawyer came in twelve minutes. He must have been waiting in a car.
He laid the papers in front of me, between the cake and my lab report.
Silvio signed in two strokes and checked his watch.
"Hurry up. We still have to get to city hall before the night clerk leaves."
Arianna stood behind him with her chin on his shoulder, watching me.
I picked up the pen.
I thought about the night I stitched his arm at our kitchen table after the Jersey shooting.
The three days I sat beside his hospital bed.
The three years I'd spent building a wall between his clean money and his dirty money, so the restaurants and the linen company and four hundred workers could stand on their own.
I signed my name.
Then I turned to the lawyer.
"File it tonight."
"Of course, Mrs. Castellucci."
"Fiore," I said. "And it's permanent. Write that down somewhere so he can't say I didn't tell him."
Silvio laughed again and kissed my cheek.
"See you tomorrow, sweetheart."
He walked out with Arianna under his arm.
The room emptied after them. A few of the capos grinned at me on their way past.
Delfina squeezed my hand hard on her way out and didn't let go until her husband said her name.
I don't remember the drive back to Staten Island.
I remember dragging a suitcase out of the closet in the bedroom on Todt Hill.
Clothes. My laptop. My father's watch.
My phone kept lighting up on the bed.
Arianna had posted a photo of herself holding up a marriage license, Silvio's arm around her waist.
Then a video. A church full of white roses. A priest. The two of them saying forever.
I put the phone face down and kept packing.
At one in the morning, the front door banged open downstairs.
Silvio came up the stairs two at a time, his tie gone, lipstick on his collar.
He'd forgotten his charger.
He saw the suitcase and stopped.
"What's this?"
"I'm leaving."
"Because of a birthday?" He laughed. "You're not leaving. Tomorrow we remarry."
"We were never married, Silvio. You just had it filed."
His face changed.
He hated being laughed at more than anything in the world.
He took my arm, not lightly this time, and marched me down the stairs.
"You want out? Fine. Get out."
He opened the front door and pushed me through it.
I was in a thin nightgown. My bare feet hit the wet stone.
The door slammed.
My suitcase was still upstairs.
Rain was coming down in sheets. The wind came up the hill through the trees.
I walked.
The gravel cut my feet. The gatehouse was empty, the guards all at the wedding.
I walked through the open gate onto the dark road below the estate.
I never saw the headlights until they were on me.
Brakes shrieked.
Something hit my hip and threw me sideways into the hedge.
My head struck the curb.
A cramp tore through my stomach, low and deep.
I put my hand there. When I lifted it, my fingers were dark and wet.
I found my phone in the pocket of my nightgown. I called the only number I knew by heart.
"Mirella?"
"Silvio. Please. I'm at the bottom of the drive. I'm bleeding."
He came in under two minutes.
His car slid to a stop behind the other one. He ran to me and dropped to his knees.
"Jesus. Mirella."
He saw the blood on my nightgown and went white.
He got his arms under me and lifted.
Then his phone rang.
Arianna's voice came out of it, loud and whining. "Baby, where are you? You promised me the whole day."
He stood there in the rain, holding me, with her voice in his ear.
Then he bent and set me down on the curb.
"I'm sorry. I promised her today." He touched my hair. "It's just scrapes. I'll call you an ambulance."
"Silvio. The baby."
Thunder swallowed it.
He was already walking back to his car.
The door shut. The tail lights went down the hill and around the bend.
I lay on the wet concrete and watched them go.
Footsteps splashed toward me.
A man knelt in the puddle beside me, tall and soaked, a phone pressed to his ear. "Yes, a woman, she's pregnant, she's bleeding, I'm driving her myself, call ahead."
He pulled off his raincoat and wrapped it around me.
He was the driver of the car that hit me.
He was the only one who'd stayed.
"I'm Aaron. Aaron Mathers," he said. "Stay awake for me, okay? Keep talking."
He pushed the wet hair out of my eyes and looked at my face in his headlights.
"Mirella Fiore," he said, very quietly. "I've had your picture on my wall for four years."
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