Reborn I Refused The Mafia Husband Who Buried Me Alive Chapter 02
They Wanted Me for His Heirs
Copies of Adrian and Isabella’s letters cover his desk.
My father looks ready to kill someone.
“The Morettis do business with people who care about loyalty. I’m not sending Elena into a marriage while the entire city thinks her fiancé is sleeping with her sister.”
His eyes move to Isabella.
“Adrian marries you.”
Exactly what I wanted.
The letters aren’t real.
The affair is.
In my first life, I spent years handling Adrian’s correspondence when we were exiled from Chicago.
Before that, I had spent half my childhood helping Isabella with schoolwork whenever she was too sick to finish it herself.
I know how both of them write.
I only had to put the right words in the right hands.
By dinner, every important family in Chicago knows about Adrian DeLuca and Isabella Moretti.
The alliance can survive a scandal.
But only if the two people at the center of it get married.
Later, Isabella’s mother asks me to take her medication upstairs.
I do.
Then I hear Isabella speaking before I enter.
“Mom, I can’t marry him alone.”
I stop outside the door.
“You wanted Adrian.”
“Wanting him isn’t the problem.”
Her voice drops.
“The doctors already told you what pregnancy could do to me.”
“And Adrian needs children.”
“The DeLucas need children. There’s a difference.”
I don’t move.
“His father won’t accept a marriage that could leave the succession uncertain,” Isabella says. “You know that.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
Then Isabella says my name.
“Elena.”
“She can have the children.”
Her mother doesn’t sound shocked.
That is the worst part.
“Elena marries into the family too,” Isabella continues. “Not publicly. I don’t care what arrangement they use.”
“I’ll be Adrian’s wife. She can give the DeLucas what they need.”
“And Adrian?”
“He’ll agree.”
Of course he will.
Suddenly, thirty years of my first life make sense.
Why Isabella got the life Adrian showed the world while I got the pregnancies.
Why no one cared how many times childbirth nearly killed me.
Why eight children I carried grew up believing Isabella was their real mother.
I wasn’t accidentally trapped in their marriage.
I was part of the plan.
I leave the medicine outside the door.
Two weeks later, my father still refuses to reconsider.
The DeLucas will get their alliance.
Adrian will marry Isabella.
And I will be free.
Or so I think.
Five days before the wedding, Lena finally comes into my room carrying two envelopes.
“Both of them answered.”
Dante.
Julian.
For the first time in weeks, I can breathe.
I reach for the letters.
A knock interrupts us.
One of my father’s men stands outside.
“Elena, your father wants you downstairs.”
“Why?”
“There’s someone here from the Commission.”
My stomach tightens.
When I enter the study, Adrian is waiting beside a Commission representative.
A contract lies open on my father’s desk.
I see my name before anyone says a word.
Adrian watches me read.
“I transferred one of our most profitable shipping corridors to get the Commission’s approval.”
I look up.
He gave away DeLuca territory.
For me.
“The Moretti-DeLuca alliance goes forward,” he says.
“Isabella marries me.”
He pauses.
“And you’re coming with us.”