He bought her jewelry. Gave her a penthouse uptown. Took her to private parties, dripping in diamonds, while I sat at home stitching lies together for our six–year–old twins. His twins.
They kept asking why Daddy never tucked them in anymore.
And when I cried, when I screamed, when I begged him to choose us over whatever illusion Margot had woven, he just stared through me…cold, detached.
“Stop being so fucking dramatic, Geneva.”
That’s all he said. I wasn’t a wife to him anymore. Just noise. A problem that needed quieting.
So I did what any cornered woman would do.
I sent her out. Margot disappeared, erased from our lives before she could finish tearing apart what little was left of our family.
I thought that would be the end. But instead? He kidnapped our twins.
“She’s in Monochalie,” I said, my voice splintering. “That villa under my name. The one by the lake in Klarevia”
Niccolo didn’t move for a few seconds. He just stared at me, those dark eyes drilling into mine, silent, cold, unreadable.
Then he picked up his phone and made a call.
He didn’t even step out of the room to do it.
After a few words in Italian, he hung up, grabbed his suit jacket, and turned to leave…fast, urgent. Going to get his precious Margot.
I grabbed his sleeve, fingers trembling. “What about the twins? Niccolo!”
He stopped. Turned halfway. His face was stone. “They’re at the old hospital. Eastwood District.” His voice was flat. “Go get them yourself.”
My knees almost buckled.
I didn’t say anything else. I just ran.
I drove so fast my vision blurred, nearly crashed into a truck at an intersection. My heart was beating in my throat, my mind was already there already in that hospital, already pulling them out and wrapping them in my arms.
When I finally got there, the place was dead quiet. Rusted gates, broken glass, old machines half–covered in dust. But inside… I found them.
Eli and Elle.
Tied to chairs. Mouths gagged. Bomb strapped to their chests.
My heart shattered right there.
Elle’s eyes were soaked in tears. Eli looked at me and started shaking his head over and over, as if telling me to run.
“No… no, no, baby…” I rushed forward, hands shaking so badly I couldn’t even grip the damn ropes right.
183
01
The timer on the bomb ticked louder than my own breathing. 03:12.
I kept fumbling, crying, doing everything I could to loosen the straps. Elle sobbed beneath the gag. I let go of Elle first and told her to run. She listened. Then I turned to Eli. My brave boy just
stared at me.
And then he did something I’ll never forget. He looked straight at me… calm. Too calm.
And then he moved. “I love you, Mommy. Tell Daddy, I love him, too.”
He threw himself forward, hard, toward me. His small body slammed into mine and knocked me back. I fell, hit the concrete, scraped my hands.
“Eli!” I screamed.
But he didn’t stop. He turned… and lunged at the bomb.
“ELI!”
The blast threw me back. My head hit the floor. My ears rang so loud I couldn’t even hear myself scream. Blood poured into my mouth. Smoke choked me. And through it all… I couldn’t hear my son’s voice anymore.
I woke up in a hospital bed. Tubes in my arm. Elle beside me, hooked to machines, but breathing. The doctor said we made it out alive.
But not all of us.
Eli was gone.
I knelt beside the hospital bed, forehead pressed against the edge of the mattress where Elle lay, wrapped in bandages and wires.
Tears slid down my cheeks, “I’m so sorry, baby…” I whispered, my voice torn. “Mama chose the wrong man. I thought he’d protect us. I thought he loved us.”
Her eyelids fluttered weakly, “You don’t have to be sorry, Mama…” she mumbled. Her voice was dry and broken. “You’re here now.”
That shattered me. I buried my face in her small hand and cried. I cried until I couldn’t breathe. Until my chest hurt. Until all I could taste was salt and grief.
Eli was gone.
My son. My brave, bright boy. The one who used to call me “soldier mama” when I patched up his scraped knees. The one who used to hum lullabies to his sister when she had bad dreams. The one who shielded her in the end, and paid for it with his life.
I wasn’t strong enough to protect him.
I wasn’t fast enough.
And I let a man like Niccolo Salvacion into our lives, into my body, into my heart thinking he’d be the kind of father he never was.
When I first found out about Margot, I should’ve walked. I did try. Wrote the divorce papers three times. Each time, he tore them up in my face.
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“She’s just a toy, Geneva. You’re my home.”
Chooter!
“You belong to me. Always.”
I begged him to let me go. He never did. Until now.
Now I had something he didn’t remember. Something he signed without reading, back when he still trusted me. One piece of leverage.
It happened months ago. Right after our twins got into that elite academy for mafia heirs‘ children. There was a stack of paperwork, and he was sitting behind his desk, signing with one hand while sipping whiskey with the other.
Margot had walked in mid–way wearing my silk and threw herself into his lap like she owned him. They started kissing right there, right in front of me.
felt invisible.So I slid the divorce agreement quietly into the pile.
Just one signature.
When I handed him the pen, I said, “The twins‘ school needs your signature for the field activity clearance.”
He paused. Squinted at me. “Didn’t I sign something for them already?”
‘Just this one more,” I said, calm, collected.
Margot giggled and tugged at his collar. “Come on, Nic, let her finish whatever housewife thing she’s doing. We’ve got plans.”
He scribbled his name across the page without looking and waved me off.
“Go,” he said. “I’m busy.”
He didn’t even notice.
And now, a week later, after we buried Eli… just me and Elle, no flowers, no family, no father beside us we walked into that law office hand in hand.
I sat there with her tiny fingers wrapped around mine, while the lawyer flipped through the document, brow raised in surprise.
“This is valid,” he said after a pause. “Legally binding. His signature is here. The divorce is effective immediately.”
Chapter 2
