Unmasking My Mafia Fiancé

My fiancé, a mafia Capo, promised the painkillers would help after the "car crash." It was a lie. The real accident was his temper, and I was his favorite punching bag.

In a medicated haze, I overheard the truth. He was on the phone with his consigliere, boasting about stealing my billion-dollar casino blueprint. He was going to use it to become Underboss.

He planned to propose, then use our world's code of silence to legally gag me from ever claiming my own work. His mistress, Olivia, would be the public face of the project.

The worst part was the truth about my miscarriage. It wasn't an accident. He and Olivia had orchestrated it, calling our baby a "complication" that would kill his ambition.

At a party, he proved it all. After shoving me to the ground in front of everyone, he walked away with her, leaving me in a heap of humiliation.

The love I had for him didn't just die; it turned into a cold, hard certainty. He had taken my work, my child, and my dignity.

So I sent him one last email: a file containing proof of every lie, every betrayal, and a video of his abuse. The subject line read: "My Wedding Gift." Then I boarded a one-way flight to New York to partner with the one man he truly feared. This wasn't a breakup. It was war.

Chapter 1

The doctor promised the painkillers would erase the pain of the crash. He never said they'd force me to overhear the truth that would shatter my life.

I lay on the sofa, a dull throb behind my eyes matching the ache in my bruised knee. The official story was a car accident. A fender bender. A lie. The truth was my fiancé, Ethan Cole, a Capo in the Marchetti Family, with a temper that ran hotter than his ambition.

In the hazy limbo between sleep and waking, his voice drifted from the hallway. It was low and confident, the sound I used to find so reassuring. Now, it was a razor blade, slicing through the fog in my head. He was on the phone with Noah, his Consigliere.

"It's a billion-dollar blueprint, Noah. A billion. 'City of Echoes' will put me on the map. The Don will have no choice but to make me Underboss."

My blood ran cold. My blueprint-three years of my life, my intellect, my secret passion, distilled into a revolutionary casino-resort design. "City of Echoes." He said the name like he'd birthed it himself.

"And Olivia?" Noah's voice was a tinny murmur through the phone, but his disapproval cut through the static.

"Olivia is the face," Ethan boasted. "Her celebrity gets us the mainstream attention we need. She's on board. We present it together. A power couple."

Bile rose in my throat, a sickness worse than anything the medication could induce.

"And what about Fina?" Noah asked.

Ethan laughed, a short, dismissive sound. "I'll propose after the Don greenlights the project. We'll have a big wedding. Once she's my wife, Omertà keeps her quiet. She can't claim a damn thing. It's perfect."

The code of silence. He planned to use our world's most sacred law to gag me, to chain me to his theft.

"This is without honor, Ethan," Noah said, his voice firm now. "Have you forgotten the heist? When your mistake nearly got you killed and she told your Capo the plan was flawed? She sacrificed her own name to save yours."

I squeezed my eyes shut, the memory a fresh wound. I had buried it, taken the blame, letting them think my strategic mind had a fatal flaw, all to protect Ethan's ascent.

"And the baby?" Noah's voice dropped, and my heart stopped. "It was Olivia who put that poison in your ear, wasn't it? That a child would make you look soft. That it would kill your ambition."

The air left my lungs in a silent gasp. The manufactured arguments. The stress he'd deliberately created. The public altercation where he'd shoved me, the fall... the miscarriage I had blamed on my own weakness. It wasn't an accident. It was a strategy.

"Olivia is my future," Ethan declared, his voice cold and final. "Fina is... convenient. She's loyal. That's her value."

Convenient.

Loyal.

My heart didn't break. It shattered into a million icy fragments. The love I had felt for him, the future I had built in my mind, all of it incinerated. In the ashes, something new and hard began to form.

I lay perfectly still, my breathing even, feigning the deep sleep of the drugged and broken. I waited until I heard the front door click shut.

Then, I reached for my phone. My fingers trembled, but my mind was a shard of ice. I opened an encrypted messaging app and found a name I hadn't contacted in years. A name Ethan feared.

Liam Sterling. The Don of the city's most powerful Family. Years ago, at a charity gala, he'd called my unsolicited analysis of a rival's finances the most brilliant "short story" he'd ever heard.

My message was five words.

"I have a business proposal."