The Don’s Double Standard: She Vanished with His Child Chapter 02

I froze.

If it had been any other voice in the world, I would’ve just looked up.

But this one had lived inside my nightmares for five years.

All those nights I couldn’t sleep without pills, his voice was the thing playing on repeat.

“Clara, you’re too pure. I’m going to ruin you.”

“Just one drag. Let me see you misbehave.”

And I let him pull me under, one soft word at a time.

I picked up smoking. Then drinking. All for him.

I knew who I was and who he was. The future Don of the Moretti family didn’t end up with girls like me, so I kept my distance.

But one night at a frat party, the tequila caught up with us.

We ended up in bed.

Just like that, we went from friends to something else. Not lovers. I was one of the girls he slept with.

Some nights stayed burned into my memory.

He’d just come back from dropping another woman off, pulling his sports car up to my curb.

He sat with a cigarette between his fingers, one arm draped out the window, eyes half-closed like he had nowhere to be.

Wind caught the ash and scattered it into the dark.

I pulled on a coat, went downstairs, and knocked on his window.

“I saw you with her,” I said. Hands in my pockets. Voice steady, as if it hadn’t gutted me.

“I think we should stop this.”

I waited.

Everything slowed. The wind, the night, the space between his breaths, like someone had hit pause on the whole world.

Part of me wanted him to say yes. I was so tired of being one of many, of the push and pull, of the endless rotation of other girls.

But the rest of me was begging him to say no. Because I was already in too deep.

Dante turned to look at me, lifting a cigarette to his lips. Those blue eyes, impossible to read, impossible to look away from.

Without thinking, I leaned in and took the cigarette straight from his fingers with my mouth. My lips brushed his hand. He didn’t pull away. He never did. That was our language, smoke and skin and pretending it meant nothing.

A slow, lazy smile spread across his face.

“Not such a good girl anymore, are you?”

“Relax. What we have isn’t casual.”

Back then, I was too lost in him to hear what he wasn’t saying.

I didn’t realize he’d never actually answered me at all.

Not until graduation night, when he took me to a hotel room for the last time.

Afterward, he passed me a cigarette like it was routine. Because it was.

“The woman who takes my name won’t be the type to smoke after sex.”

I swallowed the sob clawing up my throat and asked him why.

Dante smiled through the smoke, but his voice had an edge I’d never heard before.

“My wife has to be a good girl, Clara. The real kind.”

My eyes burned. The air just stopped reaching my lungs.

A good girl.

He wanted someone pure. Someone good.

Funny, because once upon a time, he told me I was too pure, too good, that he didn’t know how to get close to me without breaking something.

Now I got it.

The second I stopped being pure, I became fair game. Something to play with and throw away whenever he felt like it.

…

“Clara?”

I snapped back. Smoothed my face into something neutral.

Mira spun around, grabbed her bag, and started toward him, then stopped and looked back at me.

“Clara, don’t you still need to pick up Talia? Let us give you a ride.”

I opened my mouth to say no, but Dante was already crossing the room. He grabbed my bag off the desk and headed for the parking lot without a word.

No room to argue. No intention of letting me.

The car was dead silent except for Mira filling the gaps with small talk.

Dante drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, giving Mira half-answers, but I kept catching his eyes in the rearview mirror.

Mira must have sensed the tension, because she turned to me and started making conversation.

“Clara, you always stay so late at work. Does your husband usually handle school pickup?”

The word husband landed a beat too late. I blinked, caught off guard.

I shook my head. “He travels a lot. Doesn’t come home much.”

Her face lit up with an oh-that-makes-sense nod, and her eyes drifted to the ring on my finger, the twelve-dollar piece of junk I’d bought.

“Is that your wedding ring? It looks kind of… worn.”