Chapter 1

My husband looked at the toxicology report proving the daughter of the Chicago Capo had poisoned my mother.

Then, without missing a beat, he looked me in the eye and asked if I wanted to discuss the dinner menu for the gala.

That was the moment I realized Dante Vitiello wasn't my savior; he was the devil in a bespoke suit.

To protect his precious alliance with Chicago, he buried the truth.

When my mother died from the arsenic, he didn't offer comfort. Instead, he forced me to sign annulment papers, claiming I was mentally unstable.

He stripped me of my title, my home, and my dignity to marry Sofia Moretti-the very woman who killed my mother-all because she claimed to be pregnant with his heir.

I stood in the freezing rain, watching a giant screen in Times Square as he proposed to her.

He told the press that Sofia was his hero, the one who saved his life during the ambush in Chicago.

He lied.

Under my soaked hoodie, the jagged scar on my arm throbbed. I was the one who took that bullet for him. I was the one who stitched myself up in silence so he wouldn't feel indebted to me.

He erased my sacrifice to build a throne for his mistress.

He thought he had broken me. He thought Elena Vitiello would fade away in a crumbling apartment in Queens.

But he forgot one thing: I was the one who built his encrypted laundering network. I held the keys to his entire empire.

I threw my wedding ring into the trash can and lit a match.

Elena Vitiello died that night.

And the woman who rose from the ashes didn't want his love anymore.

She wanted his ruin.

Chapter 1

My husband looked at the toxicology report proving the daughter of the Chicago Capo had poisoned my mother. Then, without missing a beat, he looked me in the eye and asked if I wanted to discuss the dinner menu for the gala.

That was the moment the bullet didn't hit my chest, but the shrapnel of his indifference shredded my lungs.

I stood in the center of the Vitiello penthouse, a glass cage floating high above the indifferent sprawl of the New York skyline.

Dante Vitiello sat behind his massive mahogany desk.

He was the Underboss of the New York Camorra, a man who had painted the streets of Brooklyn red to secure his family's throne. He looked like a dark god carved from marble and sin-beautiful, cold, and utterly untouchable.

"Dante," I whispered. My voice shook not from fear, but from the sheer weight of the betrayal pressing against my throat. "She killed her. The arsenic levels... the witness testimony from the kitchen staff. It's all there."

Dante didn't even glance at the papers I had slammed onto his desk.

He adjusted the cuffs of his bespoke suit, his movements precise, lethal, and terrifyingly calm.

"Elena," he said, his voice a low rumble that used to make my toes curl but now made my stomach turn. "Sofia Moretti is a guest of this family. Her father controls the weapon supply lines from the Midwest. Accusations like this... they are dangerous. For you."

"Accusations?" I choked out a laugh that sounded like glass breaking. "It is a fact. My mother is dead because Sofia wanted to send a message to me. Because she thinks I took her place at your side."

Dante stood up.

The room seemed to shrink.

He walked around the desk, his dark presence consuming the air.

He stopped inches from me.

I smelled his cologne-sandalwood and gunpowder. The scent of my destruction.

"Your mother had a weak heart," Dante said smoothly. "It was a tragedy. But we do not start wars over tragedies involving civilians. We maintain the peace. That is the *Omertà*."

"She wasn't a civilian. She was my mother."

"And you are a Vitiello," he countered, his eyes cold, devoid of the warmth he used to fake so well during our courtship. "You will act like one. You will be silent. You will smile. And you will never mention this again."

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

I saw the man I had worshipped. The man I thought was my savior from the poverty of the Bronx.

I realized he was just a prettier version of the devil.

"And if I don't?" I asked, my chin lifting. "If I go to the police? If I tell the Commission?"

Dante's hand shot out.

He didn't strike me.

Instead, he seized my jaw, his fingers digging into my skin, tilting my head back until I was forced to meet his gaze.

"Then I will have you committed," he said softly. "Grief makes people do crazy things, Elena. A mental breakdown after a parent's death is quite common. The family sanatorium in Upstate is very... quiet. You wouldn't like it."

He released me as if I were something dirty.

"I am doing this to protect you," he added, turning his back to me. "To protect our future. Now, go to your room. You look tired."

I didn't move.

My feet were lead, but my mind was racing.

"Protect me," I repeated to his back.

"Go, Elena."

I turned and walked out.

I didn't go to our bedroom.

I went to the guest wing, the furthest point from him.

For the next three weeks, I became a ghost in my own home.

The penthouse was a gilded cage.

Guards stood at the elevator. Guards stood at the stairwell.

I watched the sun rise and set over the city that was moving on without me.

I stopped eating.

My reflection in the mirror became gaunt.

My eyes, once bright with naive hope, turned into dark pools of nothingness.

Dante came and went.

I saw him on the news, shaking hands with politicians, looking devastatingly handsome.

He looked like a king.

I looked like a corpse.

He didn't care.

One evening, he forced me to sit at the dinner table.

The clinking of silverware against china was deafening in the silence.

"You need to eat," Dante said, cutting into his steak. "You're looking skeletal. It reflects poorly on me."

"Is that all that matters?" I asked, pushing a pea around my plate. "How I reflect on you?"

"We are a unit, Elena. Sacrifice is part of the deal. I sacrifice my desires for the family every day."

"You sacrificed my mother for a shipping route," I said.

He dropped his fork.

"I saved the family from a bloodbath," he snapped. "Sofia... she is complicated. But I owe her. Years ago, in Chicago, she took a bullet meant for me. A life debt is not unpaid lightly."

"So my mother pays it?"

"Enough."

I looked at him, and I felt it.

The snap.

It wasn't loud. It was the sound of a thread finally breaking under too much tension.

My love for him didn't fade away; it was murdered, right there over a plate of cold steak.

"Okay," I said.

Dante blinked, surprised by my sudden surrender.

"Okay?"

"I understand," I lied. My voice was flat. Dead. "I will be the good wife."

He relaxed, a smug smile touching his lips. "Good. I knew you were sensible. Next week, we have a dinner with the Morettis. Sofia will be there. You will be gracious."

"I will be gracious," I echoed.

I wasn't looking at him anymore. I was looking through him.

The next day, the house staff whispered.

I sat in the library, pretending to read, but listening.

"She's broken," a maid whispered to a guard. "Just a pretty ornament now. Dante doesn't even look at her."

"Sofia is the real power," the guard chuckled. "Did you see how she looked at him last time? This one... she's just a placeholder."

I turned the page of my book.

My hand didn't shake.

Two days later, my mother was buried.

I stood by the open grave in the pouring rain.

I was alone.

Dante had sent a text. *Business. Urgent. My condolences.*

He wasn't there.

As the earth hit the coffin, the last piece of Elena Vitiello died with her.

I returned to the penthouse, soaking wet.

I walked past the living room.

Two guards were laughing, watching a game on their phones.

"Boss is smart," one said. "Sofia is crazy, but she's got the connections. Selling out the wife is just good business. Besides, Sofia would have skinned him alive if he sided with Elena."

"Yeah, Sofia's vicious. Remember what she did to that maid in Chicago? Skinned her hand for spilling coffee."

My blood ran cold.

Then it ran hot.

I went to my room and locked the door.

I sat on the floor, shivering.

Then I saw it.

A small piece of paper slid under my door.

I crawled over to it.

There was no name on the envelope.

Inside, just a sequence of numbers and a name written in elegant, sharp script.

*Matteo Falcone. The Ghost.*

I knew the name.

He was a myth. An exile. A man the Vitiello family had tried to kill three times and failed.

He was the enemy of my enemy.

I stared at the paper.

This was treason. This was death if Dante found it.

I walked to the bathroom.

I lit a match and held it to the corner of the paper.

I watched it burn until it scorched my fingertips.

But the numbers were already burned into my mind.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

The girl who wanted love was gone.

The woman staring back wanted blood.