He Married His Enemy’s Daughter, So I Left the Mafia Family Chapter 02
When I went back to the bedroom to pack, an old photograph slipped out of a drawer and fell to the floor.
It had been taken years ago, after we finished tactical training at the Moretti Family’s private training grounds.
My father stood in the middle, one arm around me and the other around Adrian.
Back then, Adrian Moretti didn’t yet have the kind of presence that could silence an entire room the moment he walked in.
He wore black training gear, his head tilted slightly toward me, and in the photo, his eyes were fixed entirely on me.
Adrian’s parents had died during a Family conflict.
The Don temporarily placed him in my father’s care.
My father brought him home, gave him a room, taught him how to shoot, fight, and follow Family rules, and put him through the same brutal training I went through.
Ever since we were teenagers, Adrian and I had said that once he officially became Don of the Moretti Family, we would get married.
Back then, I truly believed that as long as I had my father and Adrian, even if I was just an ordinary girl, I still had a family of my own.
Then my father died.
At his funeral, I cried so hard I could barely stand.
Adrian held me while his eyes burned red with grief and rage.
“Natalie, we’ll avenge Daniel. Together. He saved my life. He raised me. Even if it kills me, I’ll make the Rossis pay for what they did.”
We went to Detroit together.
To infiltrate the Rossi Family’s inner circle, I took on a new identity and stayed beside Adrian as we moved between dangerous neighborhoods and warehouses.
In the second year, Selena returned from Florence, where she’d been studying art.
That was when Adrian began to change.
Compared to a woman like me, who spent every day in tactical boots and always carried the smell of gun oil or blood, Selena seemed to belong to another world entirely.
She would crouch in the rain to rescue an injured bird, cry over a stray cat, or spend an entire afternoon staring at a single painting in an art museum.
Vittorio had protected her well.
She looked like someone who had no idea what her father had done to give her that life.
The night we finally got our hands on Vittorio’s master ledger, Adrian sat in front of a sunflower painting Selena had given him and stayed there until after midnight.
Then he suddenly asked me, “If we go through with this, we’ll ruin Selena’s life too, won’t we? She doesn’t know any of it.”
I asked him if he was having second thoughts.
For the first time, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
During the final six months of the operation, I covered for him while he got the intelligence out.
Their men chased me for two blocks.
A knife cut deep into my calf.
I couldn’t risk going to a hospital, so I hid in an abandoned drainage channel and spent the entire night there.
When Adrian found me the next morning, the first thing he said wasn’t about my injury.
His face was full of irritation.
“If you’re hurt, find somewhere safe and stay put. Do you have any idea how much attention we’ve drawn looking for you? What if Selena works out who we really are?”
I stared at him.
“Adrian, it hurts.”
Only then did he notice the blood running down my leg.
For a moment, he actually panicked.
He immediately turned, crouched down, and carried me away on his back.
I rested against his back and told myself the same thing over and over.
It’s fine.
He still cares about me.
But the next day, Selena cut the tip of her finger with a craft knife while she was painting.
It was barely more than a scratch.
Adrian canceled a meeting with an informant on the spot.
He disinfected the cut, bandaged her finger, and stayed beside her for the entire afternoon.
That was the day I finally understood that Adrian had never judged Selena and me by the same standard.
The night before the final operation, Adrian wrapped his arms around me from behind.
“When this is over, we’ll get married. Have whatever wedding you want. Then we’ll go to the cemetery together and show Daniel the rings.”
I believed him.
The very next day, he insisted on bringing Selena back to the Moretti compound in Lake Forest.
Several capos and Family elders didn’t even think the matter needed to be discussed.
“The Rossi Family may have fallen, but Selena is still a Don’s daughter.”
“You don’t just cast aside a woman with blood like hers as if she’s nobody.”
I asked, “Then what about me?”
One of the older capos glanced at me.
“Your father worked for the Family. Of course we’ll make sure you have somewhere to live.”
Somewhere to live.
Not a place in the Family.
Not respect.
And definitely not a home.
I lost control and pointed a gun at Selena.
Adrian took it away from me, then slipped a ring onto my finger.
“Just give me some time. Once Selena’s settled, we’ll make it official. Please.”
I treated those words like the one reason I still had to stay.
It took me years to understand that the ring had never been a promise.
It was just something Adrian used to keep me from leaving.
To give Selena a “safe life,” Adrian voluntarily stepped away from active Family operations and devoted more of his attention to Moretti Security, the Family’s legitimate security firm.
He forced me to step away too.
“You’re not a Moretti. There’s no reason for you to keep going out on jobs. A desk job at the company is enough for you.”
I refused to accept that.
Before my father died, he’d left behind too many names tied to the remaining Rossi loyalists.
So for the past five years, on the surface I had been nothing more than the lowest-ranking administrative employee at Moretti Security.
But behind the scenes, I had continued working for the Family consigliere, Victor Marino.
I secretly gathered intelligence on the remaining Rossi loyalists, tracked their money, and verified their interstate trade routes.
I did all of it in secret. To everyone else, I was just an ordinary office worker.
That was why no one saved me a seat at meetings.
At Family gatherings, I was told to use the side entrance.
Even newly hired guards felt comfortable tossing me their car keys and ordering me to park for them.
Whenever I refused, they laughed.
“Stop acting like you still matter around here, Carter.”
“Your father gave you some standing while he was alive. Now he’s gone, you’re nobody.”
Adrian had heard them before, and he had never stopped them.
Later, Selena provoked me until I lost control again, and I pressed a shard of broken glass against her throat.
Adrian twisted my wrist hard enough to sprain it.
Then he locked me inside a refrigerated storage room for the entire night so I could “remember who was welcome here and who was the problem.”
After that, we never talked about marriage again.
But every time Adrian hurt me because of Selena, he would come crashing through my bedroom door later that night smelling of alcohol.
As if staying tangled up with me meant he could pretend everything between us hadn’t completely fallen apart.
One year.
Three years.
Five years.
Today, I finally decided I wasn’t waiting for him anymore.
I tore the old photograph in half.
I placed the half with my father and me into my suitcase.
I tossed Adrian’s half back into the drawer.
As I pulled my hand away, my fingers brushed against the hard edge of a folder.
I frowned and pulled it out. The moment I saw what was inside, I froze.
