The Mafia Don’s Graveyard Bride Chapter 01
Half a month before my due date, I was taken by my husband’s enemies.
By the time Don Adrian Moretti found me, the baby was already gone.
I lay on the ground, drenched in blood, my eyes hollow and vacant. I couldn’t even hear him calling my name.
The man who had always been cold and unyielding—his eyes turned red.
He executed every last person who had laid hands on me, then knelt before me, still reeking of blood:
“Willa, don’t be afraid. I’m taking you home.”
But after that day, I developed severe depression.
He fought tooth and nail to keep me tethered to this world.
Every sharp object in the estate was locked inside a safe. The corners of every table were padded with foam. Even when I bathed, the bathroom door had to stay wide open, and every two minutes he would call out my name.
Outsiders said he was devoted. Faithful. Until the day of our seventh wedding anniversary, when he placed another woman’s prenatal report into my hands.
“Willa, the Moretti family cannot be without an heir. I’ve stood by you for seven years, but the family needs a child.”
I looked at the man I had once loved with everything I had, and I nodded in silence.
My husband was going to have another woman’s child. And my child—my child was finally going to see his mother again.
…
When I accepted the report, I asked Adrian one question:
“Where is my baby buried?”
Adrian was silent for a long time.
Over the past seven years, I had asked this question again and again.
He was afraid that if I saw the grave, I would shatter completely. He never answered.
Now, at last, he spoke in a low voice: “Westchester Eternal Memorial Park. The Garden of Innocents. Plot 372.”
I nodded and smiled. “Thank you.”
For the first time in seven years, I dressed up. I put on a brand-new white dress and stood before my baby’s headstone.
My fingertips traced the name carved into the stone.
“Baby, Mommy’s here to see you. I brought you presents.”
I opened the suitcase I’d brought and took out the items one by one.
“This is your hundred-day gift—a soft little bear. You can hold it while you sleep.”
“This is your first birthday gift. It can keep you company while you learn to walk.”
“And this one…”
Adrian stood quietly behind me, watching as I patiently introduced each gift. He said nothing.
Perhaps he thought I had finally accepted reality.
Then his phone rang.
After the call, his tone turned urgent: “Willa, I’m sending the driver to bring you back to the estate right now.”
My heart was entirely consumed by the child before me. I barely noticed he had already left.
By the time I finished presenting every gift, night had fallen completely.
I turned to look at the empty plot beside me, my gaze drifting, my heart quieter than it had ever been.
I took out my phone and called the funeral services center.
“I’ve chosen a burial site. Westchester Eternal Memorial Park, the Garden of Innocents, the empty plot beside Plot 372. When I die, please bury me alongside the child in that grave.”
“Don’t engrave my name on the child’s headstone. I’ll purchase a separate stone next to it with my own name.”
“Remember—don’t let anyone know where I’m truly buried.”
“After I die, all I want is to be with my child in peace. Undisturbed by anyone.”
I hung up and immediately contacted the cemetery director to purchase the plot beside my baby.
Two hours later, the workers finished digging the grave and left.
The freshly dug earth gaped open like a wound, stark against the fading light.
I took a carving blade and etched my name into the headstone, stroke by stroke.
The scraping of stone was deafening in the empty cemetery. My fingertips cracked and bled, the blood seeping into the grooves of the stone, but I didn’t feel a thing.
Willa Shaw Moretti, born August 12, 1996, died—
I carved the date of my own death with my own hands. Every stroke drawn in blood.
When the headstone was finished, I lowered myself slowly into the cold pit.
I turned my head to look at my baby’s gravestone, so close I could almost touch it. For the first time in years, I felt something like peace. Something like contentment.
“Baby, Mommy’s coming to be with you soon. Just wait a little longer…”