The Mafia Don's Regret: She Is Gone Forever

I carried the first word I had spoken in ten years like a sacred offering, ready to surprise the man who had saved my life.

But through the crack in the study door, I heard Josiah tell his Underboss that I was nothing but a noose around his neck.

"Grace is a burden," he said, his voice cold. "I can't become Don while babysitting a mute ghost. Lexi brings power. Grace brings nothing but silence."

He chose to marry the Mafia Princess for her father's trade routes, dismissing me as wreckage.

But the true betrayal didn't happen in that office. It happened in the woods during an ambush.

With bullets flying and the mud sliding beneath us into a ravine, Josiah had to make a choice.

I was injured, trapped at the bottom. Lexi was screaming on the ridge.

He looked at me, mouthed "I'm sorry," and turned his back.

He hauled Lexi to safety to secure his alliance. He left me to die alone in the freezing mud.

I lay there in the dark, realizing the man who swore a blood oath to protect me had traded my life for a political seat.

He thought the silence would finally swallow me whole.

He was wrong.

I crawled out of that grave and vanished from his world completely.

Three years later, I returned to the city, not as his broken ward, but as a world-renowned artist.

When Josiah showed up at my gallery, looking shattered and begging for forgiveness, I didn't sign.

I looked him dead in the eye and spoke.

"The girl who loved you died in that ravine, Josiah."

Chapter 1

Grace POV

I carried the first word I had spoken in a decade on my tongue like a sacred offering.

It was fragile, ready to be gifted to the man who had saved my life.

But then, through the crack in the door, I heard him tell the Underboss that I was nothing but a noose around his neck.

The therapy room door was ajar, open just a fraction of an inch.

It was enough space for the truth to slip through and slit my throat.

Dr. Evans had just left through the back exit, his face beaming with professional pride because my vocal cords were finally obeying the commands of my brain.

He told me to go surprise Josiah.

He told me the Vitiello heir would be proud.

I had practiced the word for weeks.

*Josiah.*

Just his name.

I wanted it to be the first thing to break the silence that had imprisoned me since the car bomb took my parents and stole my voice when I was eight.

I stood in the hallway of the Vitiello estate, clutching the hem of my dress until my knuckles turned white.

My hands were shaking.

I crept closer to the sliver of light slicing through the gap.

Josiah was there.

He was sitting on the edge of the mahogany desk, stripping down a Glock 19 with the practiced, lethal grace of a man born into blood.

Mark, his second-in-command, was pouring whiskey.

"The Don is losing patience, Jo," Mark said, the glass clinking against the decanter. "He wants the territory expansion finalized, but he's worried about your... distractions."

I smiled.

I was the distraction.

I was the ward he had pulled from the burning wreckage.

I was the girl he swore a blood oath to protect.

I was about to push the door open.

"It's not a distraction, Mark. It's a burden," Josiah corrected, his voice flat.

My hand froze on the wood.

His voice didn't sound like the gentle rumble I heard when he read to me at night.

It was cold.

It was the voice of a Capo in waiting.

"Grace is a chain around my neck," Josiah continued, running an oil-slicked rag down the barrel of the gun. "I can't become a Made Man while I'm babysitting a ghost. The Don thinks I'm soft because I'm tethered to a mute who can't even scream for help."

The air in the hallway vanished.

My lungs pumped, but nothing went in.

"So cut her loose," Mark said, taking a slow sip. "Send her to a facility in Switzerland. Marry Lexi Moretti. Her father controls the ports."

I waited.

I waited for Josiah to punch him.

I waited for him to say that I was family.

Josiah reassembled the slide onto the frame.

*Click-clack.*

"I'm considering it," he said. "Lexi is a headache, but she brings power. Grace... Grace brings nothing but silence."

He laughed.

It was a short, dry sound.

"Sometimes I look at her and I just see the wreckage," he said, inspecting the sights. "I'm tired of looking at wreckage."

I stepped back.

My heels made no sound on the plush carpet.

I was the Ghost, after all.

I touched my throat.

The word *Josiah* was still there, sitting heavy and useless on my tongue.

I swallowed it.

It tasted like ash.

I turned around and walked down the long, empty corridor, passing beneath the portraits of dead men who had killed for loyalty.

I didn't cry.

The tears I had saved for my recovery dried up instantly.

I realized Dr. Evans was wrong.

I wasn't going to speak to Josiah today.

I wasn't going to speak to him ever again.

The Broken Bird he complained about was dead.

She died in that hallway.

And the woman who walked away was someone he had never met.