The Mafia Boss Told His Pregnant Wife to Take Any Child Who Wanted Her, Then All Four of His Heirs Stood Up at Once

At 9:12 on the morning of Helena Northcott’s funeral, Damon Northcott offered his pregnant wife the cruelest choice he had ever given anyone.

“Take any child who wants you.”

Then he leaned back behind his dead mother’s desk, certain not one of his four children would stand.

He was wrong.

All four did.

Eliza Northcott felt the first chair scrape against the hardwood floor before she understood what was happening.

Wyatt, twenty-four and normally as controlled as his father, rose from beside the library door.

Then Delaney stood.

Micah pushed away from the wall.

Phoebe, eighteen and trembling so badly she had to steady herself against Helena’s favorite armchair, was last.

One by one, all four crossed the library and stopped behind Eliza.

For the first time in thirteen years, Eliza saw genuine shock on Damon Northcott’s face.

Outside the tall windows of the Northcott estate in Westchester County, cold November rain hammered the glass. Across the courtyard, Helena’s sealed coffin waited inside the private family chapel.

Inside the library, three things lay between Damon and Eliza.

A toxicology report.

Divorce papers.

And a silver pen.

Eliza rested one hand beneath the curve of her seven-month pregnant belly.

Damon looked at his children.

“What are you doing?”

Wyatt answered him.

“Choosing the only person in this house who didn’t ask one of us to take the blame.”

Damon’s face hardened.

His mother had died six nights earlier after taking her evening heart medication. Toxicology showed a lethal interaction with a controlled drug that had never been prescribed to her.

The hospice authorization had been issued using Eliza’s credentials.

Four children had entered Helena’s private wing that night.

Eliza had refused to identify which one might have altered the medication.

Damon had interpreted that refusal as betrayal.

So that morning, before his mother’s funeral, the most feared man in the Northcott organization had placed divorce papers in front of the woman carrying his unborn son.

Then he had turned to his children.

Helena’s will protected each of them financially as long as they remained under the Northcott family structure.

Walking away with Eliza meant losing those protections.

Perhaps permanently.

Damon had assumed fear would do what loyalty could not.

Instead, all four children abandoned the money.

Phoebe slipped her hand into Eliza’s.

Her palm was freezing.

Then she whispered, “Grandmother planned the poisoning.”

Eliza turned sharply.

“What?”

Phoebe’s face had gone white.

“She planned it. But someone changed the antidote.”

Damon stood.

“Phoebe. Come here.”

The girl moved closer to Eliza.

That tiny movement hurt Damon more than any insult could have.

Eliza stepped between them.

“She’ll speak when she’s ready.”

“My mother is dead.”

“And frightening your daughter won’t bring her back.”

For thirteen years, Eliza had helped raise Damon’s children.

Their biological mother, Celeste, had disappeared when Phoebe was four.

Damon said Celeste had betrayed the family and abandoned them.

Eliza had never tried to replace her.

She attended school meetings. Sat in emergency rooms. Stayed awake through fevers. Taught Delaney how to drive. Helped Wyatt through college applications. Took Micah to physical therapy after a football injury.

She never asked them to call her Mom.

She simply stayed.

Now they were staying for her.

Damon looked from one child to another.

“You understand what you are giving up?”

Micah laughed bitterly.

“You mean the money?”

“The protection.”

“So we’re free to leave as long as we don’t mind being hunted by everyone who hates our last name?”

“That is not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant,” Eliza replied.

Damon’s eyes dropped briefly to her belly.

For one second, the anger disappeared.

Fear replaced it.

Their son moved beneath Eliza’s hand.

Before Helena’s death, Damon had attended every prenatal appointment. He had assembled the crib himself, badly enough that Eliza had laughed until she cried.

That man felt very far away now.

The library doors opened.

Dr. Quentin Rusk entered in a charcoal overcoat.

At sixty-one, Rusk had been Helena’s private physician for more than a decade. He had also chaired the medical board of Helena Care Foundation, the family’s hospice charity.

He looked around the room.

“What happened?”