My Mafia Husband Forced Me to Bleed for His Pregnant Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Our Ninth Anniversary
Rocco brings his pregnant mistress home in front of his capos and orders Cosima to the guesthouse. When the mistress starts bleeding, Ugo holds Cosima down and her blood is drained for Fabiola. She wakes locked in the guesthouse with an appointment for another pint.
On our ninth wedding anniversary, my husband walked into the marble foyer with his pregnant mistress on his arm.
Twelve of his capos stood in the hall with their wives and their champagne.
They had come to toast us.
Rocco did not look at me.
His hand rested on Fabiola's belly, and she smiled at the room like it was already hers.
She was wearing his dead mother's pearls.
"Cosima, my love," Rocco said, and smiled at me across the room. "Move your things to the guesthouse tonight."
I thought I had misheard him.
"Say that again."
"Fabiola takes the main bedroom tonight. You'll be comfortable out back."
Behind me, a wife put down her glass so carefully that it made no sound at all.
For nine years this man had kissed my knuckles in front of rooms like this one.
At his mother's grave, he had sworn I would be the only woman he ever had.
Now he wanted me out of my bed so his pregnant girlfriend could have it.
"No," I said.
The hall went quiet.
"You knocked up a girl half your age, and you brought her to our anniversary dinner," I said. "I'm not moving out of my own house."
Rocco finally turned his head.
His voice dropped to the low tone that made grown men look at their shoes.
"I'm not asking for your opinion. Do it now."
"Then you'll have to carry me."
He laughed.
"Fine. Stay in the main house tonight if you want to make a scene. In three days you'll crawl back to me like a dog, and you'll thank me for the guesthouse."
I took my coat off the hook by the door.
"I'll be gone in two."
Fabiola made a small sound.
It was not a laugh.
She bent forward with both hands on her stomach.
A bright line of blood ran down her leg and onto the white marble.
Then it ran faster.
Somebody screamed, and a capo's wife dropped her whole glass.
Rocco caught her before she hit the floor.
"Doctor!" he shouted. "Get the doctor!"
The family doctor came running from the clinic wing with his bag.
Every March he took six tubes of my blood for my anemia, and Rocco was always the one who read the results.
Tonight the doctor knelt by Fabiola and did not look at me once.
"It's a placental tear," he said. "She needs blood now. Her type is AB negative."
"Then get it," Rocco said.
"There's none in the house. The nearest hospital that stocks it is an hour away."
"Take her to the hospital."
"She won't survive the drive."
Rocco's face did not change.
"No hospital. My son isn't going to be born on a police report."
The doctor's eyes finally came up to me.
"Mrs. Lucarelli is AB negative too."
The foyer turned toward me, all twelve of them, all at once.
"No," I said.
Rocco stood up.
He wiped Fabiola's blood off his hands with his own pocket square, calmly, one finger at a time.
"Cosima."
"She's your mistress. Let her bleed."
"Ugo," Rocco said.
Ugo Mancuso crossed the marble and took my left arm in both hands.
I swung my coat at his face.
He caught my wrist, and the other one, and walked me backward to the dining room table.
"Rocco!" I said. "Rocco, I'm your wife!"
"That's exactly why you're going to do this."
Nardo Gallo, the oldest man in the room, stepped forward on his cane.
"Rocco, she is your wife. Not a donor. Let me drive her."
"Sit down, Nardo."
Nardo sat.
The capos looked at their wives, and the wives looked at the floor.
Not one of them moved.
Ugo pinned me flat against the table with my sleeve pushed to the elbow.
The doctor tied a rubber band above my arm.
I bit Ugo's hand until I tasted his blood.
He hit me across the face with the back of the other one.
The needle went in.
I looked at the chandelier our wedding photographer had once photographed us under.
I looked at Rocco, standing over me with his hands in his pockets.
"Take what she needs," he told the doctor. "All of it, if you have to."
The first bag filled.
The doctor hung a second.
"Mr. Lucarelli, a second pint is more than we should..."
"Hang it."
The room went grey at the edges.
I looked at the capos who watched me and did not stop it, because I wanted every face.
Twelve, and Rocco, and Ugo, and the wives.
When my eyes closed, I heard Rocco's voice by my ear, almost kind.
"Two days, you said. You've got three, Cosima. Start counting."
I woke up in the guesthouse.
My things were already hanging in the closet.
The door was locked from the outside.
There was a gauze square taped to my arm, and an index card propped against the lamp.
In the doctor's neat handwriting it said: Thursday, 9 a.m. Another pint.
Through the window I watched Rocco carry Fabiola, pale and smiling, up the steps of my house.
So I waited.
I had two days left to get out of here, and I meant to use both of them.
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