The Don's Forgotten Bride

The night I lost the baby and the blood wouldn't stop, my parents drove through a downpour to reach the territory the Family used for clean work. They never made it. A car came out of the rain and took them on the bridge.

I lay on the table while the man they called The Surgeon's people worked over me, and I signed the consent for my parents' surgery with hands still slick with my own blood.

I couldn't save the baby. I couldn't save my parents either.

The man I'd called seventy-six times without an answer had posted a celebration for the whole circle to see.