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He married the perfect mafia wife, and my mother stood proudly beside him, loving him through his reign as the city’s most powerful man. They’re buried side by side in the cemetery now. Forever together, as they were in life.

"You know the old capos have been talking," John Marco continues. "Gambini. Di Sena. Giacomo. They respect you, Dante. But they're traditional men with traditional expectations, and a don without an heir has an expiration date. It makes them nervous. And nervous men start looking for alternatives."

"Let them look."

"You don't mean that."

He's right. I don't. Because I know exactly what happens when powerful men start looking for alternatives. They find them. And in my world, alternatives come with bullets.

But a wife.

Fuck.

“The conundrum is simple. You pay someone to be your wife and to give you a child,” he says as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“I’m not paying someone to have my child.”

"A ring buys you time," John Marco says. "An heir buys you loyalty. You know they'll want both."

"A ring buys me a year."

"And after the year?"

"One problem at a time."

The thought of marrying someone twists inside me. Not because I'm opposed to the concept of marriage. I understand its strategic value. A wife is an alliance, a symbol of stability.

But I’m not someone who has ever desired a permanent attachment.

Every woman I’ve been with has been a transaction. My attention for her company. Jewelry, clothes, mind-blowing sex. Nothing deeper. Nothing permanent. But paying someone to have my child? That’s a transaction I won’t make.

Although, it might be the only option I’ve got. Because falling in love isn’t one of them. Love creates the kind of collateral your enemies won’t hesitate to use against you.

I learned that lesson young.

I was there when they brought my mother home.

I remember my father's blood-soaked shirt. The way his hands shook as he stood beside her, staring down at the woman he'd spent his entire life loving as though sheer force of will could bring her back.

I remember thinking that he looked smaller without her.

For weeks, he barely spoke. Then came the drinking. The sleepless nights. The moments when I'd find him sitting alone in the dark, staring at nothing, her wedding ring clenched so tightly in his fist that it left marks in his palm.

I watched my father become a ghost of the man he'd been. Grief slowly tore him apart piece by piece until there was almost nothing left.

And then, one day, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

I was old enough to understand what he'd done.

Old enough to understand why.

And young enough for it to change me forever.

Because I learned something that day.

Love doesn't make you stronger.

It gives someone else the power to destroy you.