I Lost My Baby, So I Burned His Mafia Empire

My husband, Killian Vittorio, was willing to let my baby die—just so the next heir to the family could be born before mine.

That day, he locked me in a walk‑in freezer so cold it hit below fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. All because the Vittorio Family lived by a single iron rule:

The firstborn son inherits everything.

And my sister‑in‑law, Cora Andrews, happened to be pregnant at the same time as me.

To make sure his brother's child arrived first, Killian made a choice so cruel I still struggled to believe it.

"My brother's kid needs to be born first. This is what you owe them."

He ignored my pleading and injected me with something to delay my labor.

"Letting this child survive at all is the last kindness you'll ever get from me," he said, his voice edged with disgust.

I curled on the freezing concrete floor, my stomach twisting, a dull ache spreading through me as if the tiny life inside was growing weaker by the minute. Tears blurred my vision.

"I'm sorry, baby," I whispered, clutching my belly as another sharp pain stabbed through me.

I dragged myself toward Killian on trembling arms. "Take my life if you want, I don't care—just save our baby. Please!"

He bent down, picked up the syringe he hadn't finished using, and let his cold gray‑blue eyes drift over the trail of blood behind me.

"It's only a delaying drug. You really have to act like you're losing the baby?"

He pinned my shaking hands with ease, the faintest smirk lifting his mouth, icy and merciless.

"And tell me, what makes you think a life like yours can pay back anything?"

The next thing I felt was more cold liquid burning its way into my body.

My hand slipped from my stomach as the rhythm inside slowed, painfully distinct, as if that tiny heartbeat—one that had echoed alongside mine for nine months—was fading.

Almost stopping.

My hand slipped weakly. I looked at the blurring face before me and asked in despair,"I never wanted to fight for the position of heir, and how soon I have a child is not something I can decide."

"Killian, how could you be cruel enough to kill it just like that?"

Killian actually laughed. Then he lowered his head, brushing his thumb across my lips that had already started turning purple.

Suddenly, he reached out forcefully and grabbed my tongue.

"That night you pretended to be drunk and crawled into my bed—you seemed perfectly in control then, didn't you?"

I opened my mouth to explain yet again that it had been an accident—that I had stumbled into the wrong room after drinking something I shouldn't have, overheated and desperate for air.

He had been the one who closed the door behind us.

He had been the one who watched me struggle with my dress, skin flushed.

And he had been the one who crossed the room, pulled me into him, and pushed the night past all reason.

I had been breathless, overwhelmed, unable to think about anything except the way he held me, the way he made me feel. I had fallen for him that night—fallen for the second‑in‑command of the Vittorio empire, a man who should have been impossible to love.

I had even wanted this baby. And now he was letting it die inside me.

A phone rang.

Killian released me and wiped his hands several times before finally answering.

A weak but gentle female voice drifted through. "Killian, the baby came. Three pounds, two ounces. It's a boy."

The tension in his shoulders disappeared. His brows eased, his mouth softening into a smile I had never once seen directed at me.

A smile sharp enough to slice straight through my heart.

Cora continued, "How's your and Elise's baby?"

Hope—thin, desperate, ridiculous—sparked in my chest. I forced my frozen tongue to move.

"S‑save—"

Not even one full word came out.

Killian covered the phone and soothed her in a low voice. When he hung up, the warmth vanished from his expression.

His shoe struck my abdomen—not hard enough to cause new harm, but enough to make my breath seize.

"You scared them."

He crouched beside me again, brushing aside strands of my hair that had frozen stiff, his fingers gripping my cheeks with a bruising force.

"If anything else happens to them, not even your baby would be enough to bargain with."

"Elise," he murmured, voice eerily calm, "from the moment I saw you, I wanted to snap your neck and throw you into the ocean."

My heart clenched. "You weren't like this in the beginning."

"Oh, I know." His smile thinned, losing the last trace of gentleness, replaced by something fractured and cold.

"That morning, I was just as pleased with the night we shared. I was the one who told you to curl up for me. To take all of me."

His hand drifted down, resting on the curve of my swollen belly.

"I left plenty in you. All right here."

He lifted my leg slightly, echoing the position from that night. His breath grazed my ear.

"And right when I asked if you were close…"

He paused, his tone turning razor‑sharp.

"I got a call. The call I didn't hear for an entire night because of your moans."

"Who would believe you didn't do it on purpose? That you didn't crawl into my bed and distract me long enough for my brother—the first heir of the Vittorio Family—to die waiting for me?"

His assistant entered quietly, helping him remove his suit jacket that had been stained with my blood. "The Family has confirmed Cora's child as the first heir," the assistant reported. "And with the freezer and the medication, Mrs. Elise will give birth in three days."

Killian tossed his jacket over me like trash. He didn't speak.

But the hatred in his eyes said everything.

The freezer door slammed shut.

By the time I heard another voice, I was lying stiff on the ice, surrounded by frozen blood and silence.

It was Raven Vittorio—Killian's sister.

Another woman was devastated by how beautiful and powerful he was. Another woman who had fallen for him, just like I once had.