My Mafia Husband Chose His Mistress Over Our Dead Son

Serena Bellucci deliberately spread her legs wide and let the examination lamp shine over the reddened skin of her inner thighs. Finger marks and bite marks crisscrossed the area, leaving no doubt how roughly she had been handled.   She was in her early 20s, with a voluptuous figure.   "The second he pulls off my panties, he loses his mind." She sat up and deliberately exposed the love bites along her collarbone. "He took me all night. Near dawn, he even made me kneel in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows... Dr. Mercer, was Carmine always this rough in bed? Or has it been so many years that you've forgotten what he tastes like?"   I closed the medical file and said nothing.   The lipstick stain I had found on Carmine Varelli's suit collar three months earlier had come from this woman, the Bellucci family's illegitimate daughter and the newest prize Carmine had taken in exchange for opening an arms-smuggling route through the Eastern Territories.   Men like Carmine in the Mafia were never satisfied. No magazine ever held enough bullets, and they were always chasing someone younger.   "If you pass out from blood loss, I'll call Carmine to pick you up." My face stayed blank. "The Bellucci family has plenty of enemies. Don't bleed all over my clinic hallway."   "Who do you think you're scaring?" Serena stepped forward in her heels until she was almost pressed against me. Her cloying perfume mingled with the unmistakable scent of Carmine's cigars. "What if I get pregnant and give him a boy with perfectly healthy arms and legs? Do you really think he'd spare another glance at that cripple of yours who can only sit in a wheelchair and s**t and piss himself?"   All her earlier bedroom boasts—I hadn't taken a single one to heart. But the moment she called Luca a "cripple," the last string in my mind snapped.   Serena stepped closer. "You're old. You gave him a cripple, and your womb is useless now. In this family, if you can't give them an heir, they'll throw you away sooner or later."   I slapped her hard across the face.   I didn't hold back. The blow sent Serena reeling backward, and her lower back slammed into the stainless-steel instrument cabinet behind her.   Rows of scalpel blades and hemostats crashed across the floor.   "Mrs. Varelli!"   The door burst open. Two bodyguards rushed in with submachine guns, and my assistant came in behind them with her pistol drawn.   Serena sprawled among shards of glass. Half her face was already red and swollen, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She clutched her cheek in disbelief. At last, there was fear in her eyes.   I stepped closer and met her eyes coldly.   "First, if you're tearing yourself open down there, learn to keep your legs closed. I have no interest in washing out your vagina." I looked down at her. "Second, here in Valdoria, I stitched Carmine's life back together one suture at a time. Who the hell are you to come onto his turf and run your mouth about my son's legs?"   Serena's hand crept toward the holster at the small of her back.   Then I heard the soft roll of wheelchair tires outside the door.   The door opened all the way.   Carmine stood in the doorway with an insulated takeout bag stamped OLD MARKET dangling awkwardly from his right hand.   In the wheelchair in front of him sat 7-year-old Luca Varelli.   "Ella, I passed through the Central District today and stood in line for your favorite..."   Carmine's voice died the instant he took in the room.   Serena, his mistress, was on the floor beneath my shoe with blood at the corner of her mouth.   Carmine's hand tightened around the wheelchair handle until his knuckles blanched.   "Carmine, she tried to kill me! She's insane!" Serena sobbed from the floor.   Carmine came inside with a frown, blocking the woman on the floor from my sight.   "Who gave you permission to come here on your own? Get the hell back where you came from!" he snarled.   But he just had to block her.   When two women were ready to draw blood and a man's first instinct was to shield one of them, there was no need to ask which way his loyalties leaned.   All I felt was disgust. I walked past him and took hold of Luca's wheelchair.   "Carmine." I didn't look at him as I pushed Luca toward the door. "Clean up your own mess."