After Dad Brought His Mistress to Mock Mom, I Crushed Them

My mother, Caterina Moretti, was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. That same day, my father's mistress came to our door, Bianca Russo, the one he'd kept hidden in Palermo's old quarter for more than twenty years. Two soldiers in black suits set a white lily wreath at the foot of Caterina's bed. Gold Latin had been burned into the black ribbon: May she rest in peace. Bianca took Caterina's hand and smiled like she was receiving a blessing in church. "Caterina, don't you worry. Once you're resting in the family tomb, I'll raise Aria like my own." Then she turned to me. "Aria, you've worn yourself thin all these years, running the Moretti docks and keeping the olive oil books. From here on, leave it all to Marco. "Don't worry. You're Lorenzo's blood after all, and blood runs thicker than water. I'll send you a thousand dollars a month, enough for you and your mother to take a little apartment beside the convent." Two sentences, and she'd cast Caterina and me out of our own home. She erased the thirty years Caterina had endured at his side, at the docks, in the lemon groves, at the family table. My father stood in the doorway, silent. Caterina looked at him through her tears, and he didn't say a word. My father spared me one flat glance. "Stay with your mother and take care of her. Leave the family's business to your new mother." Then they were gone. I looked at Caterina shaking on the bed, sobbing, and I called Ricci, the family's consigliere. Three months later, Bianca was on her knees in front of me, begging me to spare her and her boy. …… "Thank you for handling this, Ricci." I hung up and turned to my mother, Caterina Moretti, her eyes red and swollen. "Aria." She spoke slowly, her voice gone to gravel. "I couldn't protect you. I never saw that he had a woman on the side, never saw him trading away our Moretti seats one by one for his own people. And now I'm sick, dragging you down with me. I'm a useless mother." The monitor beside her bed screamed an alarm as her heart raced. Eyes burning, I hit the call button, my lips shaking. "Mom, this isn't your fault. He just hid it too well." Before Bianca came along, Lorenzo Vitale was the model husband and father all of Palermo admired, and the steadiest underboss the Moretti family had. He and Caterina had grown up together, childhood sweethearts. The difference was, Caterina was the only daughter of Vittorio, the old Moretti godfather, and Lorenzo was just the driver's son. When Caterina was in college, my grandfather beat the Tarantino family in a war over the port shipping lanes. They lost their warehouses, lost their docks, and went deep into debt. For payback, they sent men with knives into the university chapel to kill Caterina and hurt my grandfather. It was Lorenzo who threw himself in front of her and took the blade meant for her. That blade left a five-inch scar across his belly and cost him a kidney. To thank Lorenzo, my grandfather handed him a check he could cash at any Moretti operation. "You saved what matters most to me. Name it, and if it's mine to give, it's yours." Lorenzo looked at Caterina, his eyes burning, and turned to my grandfather. "Godfather, I ask for one thing only. Give me Caterina." He said the word "Godfather" with all the right respect, and still it laid his ambition out in the open. My grandfather looked at the young man in the bed, the hunger plain on his face, then at the daughter he'd doted on since she was small, and gave a firm shake of his head. Lorenzo was a poor nobody back then, without a cent to his name. Even the suit and shoes he wore were gifts from my grandfather. My grandfather could give him money, a clean path, a foot in the door of the family's outer ranks. What he would not do was gamble his daughter's whole life. But Caterina said through her tears, "It's him or no one." A few days later, Caterina climbed onto the roof of the old estate and forced my grandfather to agree to the marriage. My grandfather had no choice but to grit his teeth and accept him as a son-in-law. On their wedding day, Caterina stood there pregnant and threw her bouquet into the crowd before the Madonna, glowing under everyone's blessings. She thought it was the start of a happy life. She had no idea it was the start of a nightmare. Seven years into the marriage, my grandfather died, and Lorenzo, as both son-in-law and underboss, took control of the Moretti family's legitimate holdings. The moment he took over, he started "cleaning house," pushing the old capos who'd built the family alongside my grandfather away from the inner table, one at a time. Then he coaxed Caterina into signing over the dock ledgers and the olive press contracts, leaving her with nothing but an empty title, the old godfather's daughter. Once Lorenzo had his hands fully around the Moretti port, the lemon groves, and the cash coming out of the restaurants, he showed his true colors. What came next was cold cruelty, betrayal, and a bastard son. For years, he drifted between two households, and he left Caterina's heart in tatters. It wasn't that Caterina never thought of leaving. But she thought of me, and of the Moretti name my grandfather had spent his whole life guarding, and she gritted her teeth and held on. "She's not in any danger. She just got too worked up. I'll give her a sedative to let her rest." The doctor's voice cut through the memory and pulled me back to the room. He hesitated a moment before he went on. "Stage two breast cancer isn't a death sentence. In three days, a top surgeon from Milan is coming to our clinic for a teaching exchange. If she leads the operation, your mother's recovery and her odds improve a great deal. It's just..." He glanced at the white lily wreath in the corner, something complicated crossing his face. "Convincing her to operate won't come cheap. And the family account you've been paying the bills from, Mr. Vitale had it frozen." At the word frozen, my heart lurched. A chill spread over my neck, right where the St. Rosalia medal rested, the one set with black onyx that Lorenzo had given me for my eighteenth birthday. When it served him, he'd spend a fortune and play the devoted father to keep Caterina docile. When it didn't, he could throw us out like empty crates on the docks. Thirty years of marriage, and he wouldn't even cover the money to save her life. "Doctor, just schedule the surgery. Don't worry about the money." My voice was steady.