Chapter 1 Hope

The mansion had long fallen silent, its halls wrapped in the stillness of the night. After an exhausting day, Serena slept deeply, unaware of the passing hours.

Without warning, she felt the mattress dip beneath a sudden weight. Before she could react, a strong body pressed against hers, leaving her unable to move.

Her eyes flew open and the room was cloaked in darkness, but she could make out the silhouette hovering above her. A pair of piercing gray eyes met hers, unreadable yet impossible to ignore.

Her pulse quickened because even without the lights on, she knew exactly who it was.

Lorenzo Russo.

Her husband.

The man whose mere presence could silence an entire room now stood close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath. Frozen beneath his gaze, Serena searched his face, trying to understand why he had come to her room in the middle of the night.

“Why are you wearing clothes? Did you forget that I told you not to wear anything and to always be ready for me in our bed?” he growled in her ear with his voice low and dangerous, making Serena shiver with fear.

Serena's eyes widened in alarm. She had promised herself she would wait for Lorenzo before going to bed, but the moment her head touched the pillow, exhaustion had claimed her. For the past few days, her body had felt unusually weak. A constant wave of nausea and fatigue left her drained, making even the simplest tasks feel overwhelming.

She knew Lorenzo wouldn't care about any of that because excuses meant nothing to him.

Lorenzo Russo wasn't a man known for mercy or understanding. As the feared Mafia King of Eastern Italy, his name inspired fear across the underworld. Powerful politicians sought his favor, rival families dreaded his wrath, and those foolish enough to betray him rarely lived long enough to regret it. To the world, he was a ruthless ruler whose commands were absolute and to Serena...

He was the husband she feared more than anyone else.

Their marriage had never been born out of love. It was an arrangement forged by his grandfather's final wish, binding two people whose hearts had never belonged to each other.

Lorenzo had never wanted Serena as his wife. If the decision had been his alone, their paths would never have crossed.

Everything changed because of one man—Don Vittorio Russo, Lorenzo's grandfather and the legendary Mafia King who had built the Russo empire into one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Italy.

Years earlier, Serena, an orphan with no family or status, had risked her own life to save Don Vittorio during a deadly assassination attempt. Touched by her courage and selflessness, the old man took her under his protection and came to cherish her like the granddaughter he had never had.

As his health began to fail, Don Vittorio made one final decision. He wanted Serena to become part of the Russo family—not as a servant or a ward, but as Lorenzo's wife. Lorenzo rejected the idea without hesitation but Don Vittorio was a man whose word carried absolute authority.

He gave his grandson an ultimatum: marry Serena or walk away from everything bearing the Russo name. The Mafia throne, Russo Enterprises, and the vast fortune Lorenzo was destined to inherit would all pass to someone else.

Knowing better than to challenge his grandfather's final command, Lorenzo reluctantly agreed to the marriage.

Unfortunately, resentment took root from the very beginning. Instead of seeing Serena as the compassionate young woman his grandfather admired, Lorenzo convinced himself she had manipulated an old man into securing a life of luxury. In his eyes, she was nothing more than an ambitious opportunist who had stolen the future he wanted.

From the day they exchanged vows, he made sure she understood exactly how little she meant to him. Every cold glance, every cruel remark, and every act of indifference served as a reminder that, to Lorenzo Russo, she would never be anything more than a wife he had been forced to accept.

Lorenzo’s burning eyes bore into her. He was naked, lying above her, and her body reacted to his touch. She was startled and shrieked. He yanked her panties aside swiftly and thrust into her without warning, burying himself to the hilt in one hard stroke. Serena cried out in pain because she had not been prepared, and the last thing on her mind was sex tonight. Her pussy was dry and tight around his thick cock, the sudden stretch burning.

“What the hell?, you’re so dry,” Lorenzo grunted with disgust. “And how many times have I told you to take a bath and change your clothes before going to sleep? You smell so bad—all sweat and spices, like you’ve been surrounded by them the whole day,” he said with a scowl, still buried deep inside her, not moving yet.

Her breath hitched as she felt his tongue brush against her clit, moving in deliberate circles while his cock remained buried inside her. His wet, hot tongue traced along the silky skin of her throat, and she bit her lip hard to stifle the moans that threatened to escape. But the sensation was too intense—his thick cock stretching her, the slow drag of his tongue over her sensitive clit—causing her to utter his name.

“Ah, Lorenzo!”

Suddenly he stopped, lifting his head and fixing her with an intimidating glare.

“What did you just say?” he whispered, his voice slow and dangerously quiet, causing Serena to swallow hard.

“I… I’m sorry, Mr. Russo,” she stammered, the words tumbling out of her trembling lips.

She was not allowed to call him by his first name. Lorenzo had forbidden her from doing so, stating that only his family and friends could address him by his first name.

“That’s right. I’m only Mr. Russo to you,” he said coldly.

“Fuck, you taste so bad,” he taunted, sliding two fingers through the slickness coating her stretched pussy lips, then licking them clean. His gaze was icy as he looked at her but his words didn’t match his actions—he licked his fingers thoroughly as if she tasted delicious.

Serena’s heart sank as she felt the weight of his humiliation, her eyes glistening with the sting of his insults. He thought he could arouse her by making her feel undesirable, but all it did was fuel her anger.

Serena had stopped trying to understand him long ago.

If Lorenzo truly despised her, why did he always return to their room at the end of the day? His words pushed her away, yet his actions often left her questioning everything she thought she knew about him.

There were moments when she foolishly wondered if there was a hidden part of him that cared, but reality always shattered that fragile hope. Lorenzo Russo was feared throughout Italy for a reason. Mercy was a language he didn't speak, and compassion was an emotion he rarely showed. The walls around his heart were so high that no one had ever managed to climb them.

Even in the privacy of their marriage, he remained the same man the world feared—commanding, uncompromising, and impossible to read. Every encounter between them felt less like an expression of affection and more like another reminder that their relationship existed because of duty, not love.

. Serena was used to his roughness and aggression in bed, but today she feared getting hurt as Lorenzo increased his pace, slamming into her harder, his thick cock stretching her open with every brutal thrust.

“Wait, Mr. Russo!” she blurted out with a panicked voice.

“What is it?” he asked, his tone laced with irritation as he drove into her again, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the dark room.

“Please… be gentle tonight,” she whispered, her voice pleading.

“Why should I?” Lorenzo chuckled dryly, not slowing down. His hips kept pistoning, burying himself to the hilt over and over.

“I’m not feeling well,” Serena murmured, lowering her eyes but Lorenzo grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him.

Serena thought she saw a flicker of concern in those cold gray eyes, but the next moment it vanished, leaving her to believe it was just her imagination.

“What is this? A new trick of yours?” He narrowed his eyes on her.

Serena remained silent, refusing to respond while he grew impatient and determined to elicit a reaction from her, Lorenzo threw her legs over his shoulders, folding her nearly in half. He entered her even deeper and slowly rocked his hips, grinding against her cervix, causing her to gasp as the thick head of his cock pressed hard inside her.

“I enjoy seeing you in pain beneath me,” he admitted with a wicked smile, and that was precisely what Serena feared.

She wanted to push him away, to scream at him and demand why he couldn’t leave her alone and go fuck those women he used to have in his arms during those high-society parties. But she knew better than to challenge the devil himself.

She stared back into his eyes, expecting to see a grimace or hatred, but to her surprise they remained unreadable, glaring at her without blinking, as if she were the most beautiful thing in the world.

His fingers resumed flicking her swollen clit while he thrust his hips fiercely, driving back into her once more. Her slickness now enveloped him easily, her cunt gripping and fluttering around his thick length. His lips found hers, kissing her with such hunger as if they had been apart for years. Yet the reality was far from that—he had sex with her every night, regardless of her exhaustion or the disgust he always claimed to feel toward her.

But it seemed he was not in the mood to listen to her tonight. So she lay there like a lifeless body, letting him have his way with her. Surprisingly, Lorenzo was gentler than usual, trying everything to make her climax despite Serena’s refusal to respond, yet her traitorous body succumbed to her husband’s seduction, and she hated it.

After nearly ravaging her for two hours—fucking her through three intense orgasms that left her shaking and dripping—Lorenzo collapsed on top of her, exhausted and sleepy.

She gently touched his shoulder and rolled him to his side on the bed; he was too heavy for her to handle but another worry weighed heavily on her mind. For days she had been feeling sick and nauseous, her body betraying her in ways she couldn’t ignore and when she missed her periods, she knew she had to face the truth.

She had taken a test this morning. The little white stick confirming her fears—

She was pregnant.

Countless thoughts raced through her mind when she stared at the pregnancy test in her trembling hands.

She was going to be a mother.

The realization filled her heart with emotions she couldn't begin to untangle. Happiness, disbelief, anxiety, and fear all collided at once, leaving her overwhelmed.

But one thought rose above all the others.

How was she going to tell Lorenzo?

From the very start of their marriage, he had made one thing painfully clear—he never wanted to have children with her. He had even insisted she take contraceptives, unwilling to let their arranged marriage become anything more than an obligation.

Serena couldn't remember when she had missed a dose. Somewhere between caring for the Russo household and enduring the weight of her lonely marriage, she had forgotten... and now a tiny life was growing inside her.

Despite the fear tightening around her heart, she couldn't bring herself to regret it.

Perhaps this child would become the miracle their broken marriage desperately needed. Perhaps, when Lorenzo learned he was going to be a father, the hatred in his eyes would finally soften. Maybe this little life would give them the fresh start she had spent four years praying for.

Serena knew she might be hoping for too much.

Still...

Hope was the only thing she had left, and she wasn't ready to let it go.