The Mafia Don’s Graveyard Bride Chapter 06
The letter drifted from his nerveless fingers.
He let out a low laugh—hollow, desolate—until it finally broke apart into a strangled, muffled sob.
Seven years.
He had coaxed her patiently for seven years. Guarded her for seven years.
He had always believed that what trapped Willa was her obsession with the lost child.
Only now did he finally understand.
What trapped her was never just the dead baby.
It was him—overbearing and possessive. It was her family, endlessly taking. It was everyone around her, demanding and draining as though they had every right.
He had stubbornly insisted that keeping her caged at his side, never letting her leave, was the same as keeping her safe. Keeping her alive.
He never realized that his relentless binding, his control—day after day, year after year—was the prison she’d been locked inside for seven years.
Just then, Enzo’s phone shattered the silence with its urgent ring.
“Don! Emergency call from the medical center! Gia Romano—massive hemorrhage. The baby can’t be saved!”
Adrian’s eyes were vacant. His voice came flat, devoid of inflection:
“Understood.”
The child he had poured every resource into saving, fought with everything to protect—was gone after all.
And the child Willa had fought her whole life for, had suffered unimaginable agony to keep—that child had finally been joined by a mother who would never leave.
Not long after, Willa’s mother and brother showed up, barging directly into the top-floor office of the Moretti Holdings tower in Manhattan.
The office was in disarray—documents scattered across the floor.
In just a matter of days, the once commanding Don Adrian Moretti had gone grey at the temples. His eyes held nothing but barren desolation.
Margaret Shaw burst through the door, wailing and thrashing:
“Adrian! Give me back my daughter! Our Willa was perfectly fine—how can she just be gone! You owe us an explanation!”
Beside her, Ethan’s tone was brazen with greed:
“Adrian! Even if my sister’s gone, you can’t just cut us off! That two million was just her way of being a good daughter—pocket change! You’re the Don of the Moretti family! You need to give me a real investment! Even without my sister, the Moretti resources have to keep supporting me!”
Adrian slowly lifted his gaze. His eyes were frost itself—not a trace of warmth.
“Two million. And that wasn’t enough to repay twenty-seven years of raising her?”
Margaret faltered, then immediately resumed her tirade:
“That was her duty as a daughter! Now that she’s dead, you think you can just shake us off? That’s not how this works!”
“Willa was depressed for seven years.”
Adrian spoke each word with deliberate, cutting precision, his voice low and glacial.
“Seven years of sleepless nights. Seven years of torment. Did you visit her once? Did you ask how she was even once?”
Ethan fired back immediately:
“That was between you two as husband and wife! How were we supposed to get involved? If she’d just been sensible—accepted your child, settled into her role as Mrs. Moretti—none of this would’ve happened!”
“Sensible?”
Adrian slammed his hand against the desk so hard the entire room seemed to shake.
“You wanted her to be sensible—to graciously accept another woman bearing my child.”
“To be sensible—to endure the loss of her baby alone, suffering day after day.”
“To be sensible—to empty her savings for you, to feed your greed.”
“She gave everything she had to ensure everyone else’s comfort and ambition. And from start to finish—who showed her a single ounce of consideration?”
Margaret’s face cycled between ashen and flushed. She grasped at a defense:
“We were doing it for her own good! We just wanted her to have a stable life!”
“For her own good?”
Adrian’s eyes were bloodshot. He let out a cold laugh and pressed play on a phone recording.
Ethan’s voice came through, crisp and unmistakable—the words from that day:
“Sis, even if Adrian has another woman bear his children, just be grateful. I need money for the business. Take one for the team, lean on Adrian’s connections to help us out. Think of it as repaying Mom and Dad.”
The recording hung in the air. Ethan’s face went white. His body locked rigid.
“When did you record that!”
“The day Willa went to the cemetery to say goodbye to her child. The day she walked toward her own death, alone.”
Adrian rose to his feet and advanced on the two of them, step by step. The pressure radiating from him was suffocating.
“While she was drowning in despair, with nowhere left to turn—the only thing on your minds was how to use her to extract money and resources.”
Margaret still tried to hold her ground:
“She’s dead! The money’s spent! Don’t think you can make us give it back!”
“Spent?”
A cruel, frozen smile curved Adrian’s lips.
“Fine. Effective immediately—all connections, projects, and advantages you’ve enjoyed through the Moretti family are severed. Every resource and partnership you obtained using the Moretti name is frozen. Every benefit you ever gained through Willa will be reclaimed in full. Whatever’s already been spent—principal plus interest, court-ordered repayment.”
Ethan’s eyes went wide, livid: “Adrian! You’re heartless! My sister just died and you’re already crushing us! Aren’t you afraid of karma?”
“Karma?”
Adrian’s eyes were rimmed in red, his voice bleak and frigid:
“Karma is coming for you.”
He raised his hand. The family soldiers posted at the door immediately entered.
“Remove them. From this day forward, no one from their family is to come within reach of any Moretti enterprise.”
Two enforcers stepped forward, seized the shrieking mother and son, and dragged them from the office.