The Capo's Surgeon

I was five months pregnant and the top underground surgeon for the Chicago mafia.

On Christmas Eve, I was called in to perform an off-the-books C-section on a VIP patient.

But through the operating room glass, I saw my mafia boss husband, Julian.

He wasn't there for me. He was slamming his fists against the door, screaming in desperation for the bleeding mistress on my table.

"I swear on my life I will marry you, Lyla. Just hold on."

I delivered his illegitimate son while he completely ignored my existence, kissing her knuckles with a reverence I thought was mine alone.

The nightmare didn't end there. When I returned to our cold penthouse, I had my prenatal vitamins tested.

They were laced with black-market hormones designed to cause severe fetal deformities and force a late-term miscarriage.

Julian, the man who once took a bullet for me and swore a blood oath to protect me, had been secretly poisoning our unborn child.

His entire family had been covering up his four-year affair, praising the mistress while using me as a convenient shield.

How could the fiercely protective husband I loved be the very monster plotting to destroy me from the inside out?

The last shred of my affection for the Capo instantly turned to ash.

I calmly booked a discreet termination, drafted ironclad annulment papers, and walked out to build my own empire.

---

Chapter 1

Serena POV

Five months pregnant with the Chicago syndicate heir, and my gloved hands are buried deep inside another woman's body. I am performing an off-the-books caesarean when the sound of my husband's voice shatters the corridor's sterile calm.

He is screaming, not for me, but for the mistress whose blood is slick on my instruments.

In that instant, the acid in my stomach surges into my throat. I smell the acrid, rusty scent on my own latex gloves, more potent than the patient's blood, and understand that the man who swore a blood oath to protect me is the very reason my life must be razed to the ground tonight.

The air in the underground clinic is thick with the cloying vapor of iron and the sharp bite of isopropyl.

My surgical mask, damp against my lips, does little to conceal the tremor in my own breathing.

The woman on the table lets out a low, guttural moan, her head thrashing against the headrest.

I do not know her name, only that she is a VIP patient brought in through the mafia underground system.

His voice is a muffled roar against the sound-dampening glass of the operating room door. Julian. A Caporegime who, only last month, crushed the life from three cartel bosses with his bare hands, all, he claimed, to secure a future for our child. The same man who once let his own blood pool on the ground to seal an oath of devotion to me.

Now, his body slams against the plate glass, the shoulder pads of his Brioni suit deforming with the impact. His forehead is pressed hard against the cold pane, a circle of condensation blooming from his breath as his voice bleeds through the seals, thick with a desperation I have never known.

"I swear on my life I will marry you, Lyla. Just hold on."

For a single, suspended moment, my hands cease their work. The scalpel in my grip feels foreign, its familiar weight suddenly a dead thing against my fingers.

"Doctor, we're losing the fetal heart rate."

Sienna, my surgical nurse and best friend, speaks from across the table. Her voice is a blade, cutting through my paralysis, her gaze fixed on the frantic dance of the monitor's green line.

I blink the sweat stinging my eyes and force my hands to move.

I cut through the final layer.

I lift a slippery, wailing infant into the world. His cry is a raw, living thing in the sanitized air.

Sienna receives the newborn, her movements swift and sure as she carries him to the warming station. The intercom crackles, carrying the child's first full-throated cry into the hallway. The impact against the glass door resumes, harder this time, a frantic, muffled pounding. But the electronic locks hold. He is a captive audience on the other side of the window as I begin the slow, methodical work of suturing the layers of his mistress's abdomen. I smell his cologne-the familiar notes of cedar and tobacco-even through the door seals, a scent that makes the muscles in my own neck tighten. With each pass of the curved needle, I focus on the clean entry, the slight resistance of the fascia, the perfect alignment of the edges. I do not look up. Not once. Only when the final dressing is taped in place and the sterile field is cleared do the electronic locks on the operating room door disengage with a heavy thunk.

Julian shoves his way into the room, the door swinging back to hit the wall with a loud crack.

Two junior nurses move to intercept him, their hands raised to maintain the sterile perimeter.

He does not look at the medical staff.

He does not look at the surgeon who just saved two lives.

He rushes to the edge of the gurney, his expensive leather shoes smearing a trail through the blood on the floor tiles. He does not kneel; he leans over the barrier, his body a tense arc of possession.

He grips Lyla's hand, burying his face in her damp hair, his shoulders shuddering with a single, violent tremor.

"You did it, baby. You gave me a son. I love you so much."

I stand at the foot of the table, my gloved hands held up in the air, the blood on them beginning to cool and feel tacky.

The harsh surgical lamps bleach all color from his familiar face, carving out the lines of a tenderness I had believed was mine alone.

This is the same man who kissed my forehead five hours ago at the Family's Christmas Eve dinner, his hand resting on my own swollen belly.

He had played the part of the fiercely protective husband.

He had shielded my pregnant belly from the Elders, intercepted every whiskey toast, and told the entire syndicate how much he adored his wife.

Now, he presses his lips to the pale forehead of his mistress, a gesture of such quiet, reverent finality it stops the air in my lungs.

Behind me, the junior nurses are whispering. I can feel their gazes, not on me, but on the tableau of the devoted mafioso, admiring his capacity for softness.

A cold dampness spreads across the back of my neck, the sterile air suddenly feeling thick and unbreathable.

"Congratulations on the birth of a healthy baby boy."

My voice comes out from behind my surgical mask, a flat, toneless thing that seems to come from across the room.

Julian does not even turn his head to acknowledge me.

He just keeps holding her hand, pressing his lips to her knuckles, one by one.

Sienna wheels Lyla and the baby out of the room toward the secure recovery ward. The rhythmic squeak of the wheels recedes down the corridor, leaving behind only the low, electronic hum of the heart monitor.

I walk to the scrub sink and peel the stiff, bloody gloves from my hands, and drop them into the biohazard receptacle.

Sienna comes back in and pulls down my surgical mask.

Her own face is etched with deep concern as she studies mine.

"Serena," she says, her voice low. "There's no color left in your face. Are you alright?"

My mind flashes back to the moment I told Julian I was pregnant-the split second of cold calculation in his eyes before the requisite smile was fixed in place. His suggestion that I rid myself of the 'complication,' cloaked in false concern for our safety in the life.

I walk out of the operating room and pass the secure recovery ward. I hear my own surgical clogs make a sticky, slapping sound on the corridor tiles, and feel a muscle in my left leg begin to twitch in a faint, uncontrollable spasm.

Through the glass, I see Julian and Lyla on the hospital bed. He is holding their child, his gaze fixed on the infant's face with an intensity he once reserved for me, back when he would frown if I so much as took an extra sip of cold water.

I turn away and walk out the back exit into the raw Chicago winter, the first sharp sting of a snowflake on my cheek a welcome distraction.

I climb into the passenger seat of Sienna's armored SUV.

Sienna gets in behind the wheel and the heavy lock bolts slide into place with a definitive chunk of metal.

"Where to, Serena?"

I stare out the bulletproof window at the falling snow, my own hand coming to rest, not on my stomach, but on the cold glass that separates me from the city.

"Book me a discreet termination."

Serena POV

I drive myself back to the penthouse, a sprawling mausoleum of glass and steel set against the city's heart.

The massive rooms are not merely silent; they are cavernous enough to echo the low, thrumming hum of the central air system, a sound like some great insect vibrating within the walls.

My keys make a sharp clatter on the marble kitchen counter as my secure phone buzzes against the cold stone.

It is an encrypted message from Julian.

"A critical syndicate shipment requires my immediate attention at the docks. I will not be home for the holidays. Lock the doors."

I stare at the words glowing on the screen.

He is not at the docks.

I know with the certainty of a surgeon diagnosing a terminal illness that he is precisely three miles away, sleeping in a vinyl visitor's chair next to his new family.

The phone rings in my hand.

I answer it, the receiver cool against my ear, without saying a word.

"Serena, did you get my message?"

Julian's voice is thick with exhaustion, but the underlying edge of impatience is a texture I know too well.

"Yes."

"Why that tone? Are you preparing another tantrum because I am obliged to work on Christmas?"

I press my eyes shut, listening to the familiar, caustic harshness in his voice.

"I am securing territory for our heir. If you cannot bear the pressure of being a wife in this life, you should simply terminate the pregnancy and spare us both the vexation."

His words, clinical and sharp, hang in the stale air between us.

My memory presents, with the unwelcome clarity of a surgical photograph, a scene from my second month of pregnancy.

I was afflicted with severe morning sickness and could barely stand.

Julian had, with visible impatience, scraped my untouched meals into the bin.

He had complained without cessation about my fragility, remarking with a sneer that he knew syndicate Associates who did not weep over a trifle of stomach pain.

I remember the exact, searing moment I had petitioned him for a plain glass of water, and he had refused me outright.

"If you cannot endure it, be rid of it," he had snapped.

He spoke those exact, venomous words to me two months ago.

Now, that terrifying truth no longer drifts as suspicion but settles in my bones like a deposit of lead.

Julian's words back then were not stress-induced outbursts.

They were his genuine, cowardly desires seeping through the cracks in his facade.

He never wanted this child with me.

"Are you listening to me, Serena?" he demands, his patience fraying like a worn suture.

A heavy, airless silence stretches over the encrypted line as the last vestige of my affection for him turns to ash.

"Understood," I say, my voice a strange, calm instrument. "I will not wait up."

I lower the phone from my ear and hang up.

Serena POV

Julian returns to the penthouse as a pale, watery dawn seeps through the windows.

I am already sitting on the edge of our bed, wide awake and feeling a profound, internal stillness.

He walks straight past me without a glance, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, and proceeds directly into the nursery down the hall.

I follow him, my bare feet making no sound on the floorboards, and pause in the doorway.

He is already rummaging through the closet, his large hands displacing the luxury baby items I had so meticulously arranged.

He shoves the custom-woven cashmere blankets and the hand-blown glass bottles into a black nylon duffel bag.

"What are you doing?" I ask, my voice a monotone.

Julian does not pause in his packing.

"A soldier's wife just gave birth," he says, his back to me. "They have nothing. I am gifting these supplies. I will purchase new ones when you are due."

I stare blankly at the rigid set of his broad shoulders.

My hand instinctively moves to rest on my still-flat stomach.

I am haunted by the acute knowledge that the child now resting inside me will never draw a single breath.

Julian at last turns around and notices my distant, vacant demeanor.

His face darkens immediately.

A brief flicker of guilt flashes in his obsidian eyes, but it is quickly masked by an arrogant annoyance that is the birthright of a Mafia Capo.

"Do not look at me so, Serena," he snaps. "Cease this possessiveness over material things. It is merely baby gear."

I force a hollow, brittle smile onto my face.

"Of course. As you say."

Julian is momentarily stunned into silence by my acquiescence.

He drops the bag to the floor, where it lands with a muffled thump.

He had clearly anticipated a fight.

I have been emotional and volatile since the pregnancy began, a creature fighting for his attention every single day.

But this morning, I have absolutely no fight left in me.

My thoughts drift to our anniversary just last month.

Julian had produced a breathtaking, custom diamond necklace.

I thought it was for me, but it had vanished the following day.

He had berated me, called me crazy and hormonal when I wept over its loss.

Yet, as I stood over the operating table last night, my scalpel parting the flesh of his mistress to deliver their child, I saw that exact diamond necklace resting in the hollow of Lyla's collarbone.

I internally mock my own wretched blindness.

I am consumed by a cold disgust for myself, that I could not see the brazen intimacy passing between Julian and his mistress before my very eyes.

Ignorant of my thoughts, Julian walks over and pulls me into a rigid, possessive embrace.

He places a dry, obligatory kiss on my forehead.

"I have a three-day sit-down with the Bosses out of state," he murmurs, his lips against my skin. "I require you to stay guarded at home. Do not leave the penthouse."

I lift my chin, looking directly into his dark, false eyes.

"Are you truly leaving on syndicate business during the holidays?" I ask softly.

Julian's jaw tightens imperceptibly.

He pinches my cheek, a gesture meant as affection but delivered as a warning.

"Always for the Family, my dear," he lies, his voice like oil. "I will be back before you know it."