One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.
I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.
Seven years later, I’m still waiting.
Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public, and he made her walk home alone. She fell again and again, and he never looked back. When she was four, she slipped in the middle of an amusement park, and he dropped her hand. She was lost in the crowd for hours. She was found shaking in the bushes.
Still, my little girl kept hoping. Every time he tossed her a crumb, she held on to it like treasure.
Then Jasmine Hale, his first love, came home with her daughter, and everything changed. Suddenly Rafael had time. He smiled. He picked Nina up. He even gave her a teddy bear, which, I found out, Jasmine’s daughter had thrown away.
That night, Nina gave him three last chances.
He missed the first when he looked straight past her and chose another woman’s child. He missed the second when he skipped her parent-teacher night to play blocks with Jasmine’s daughter. And the third? He finally showed up, only to stand by while Nina’s class monitor title was handed to someone else.
So I signed the divorce papers, sent them off from the airport, and took our daughter far away.