Don't Cry Now, My Heartless Ex-Husband

The smell of leaking gasoline burned my nostrils, but the cold look in my husband's eyes hurt worse.

Trapped in the overturned car, I watched Jacob reach in. He didn't reach for me, his wife. He unbuckled his mistress, Cassandra, shielding her head with a tenderness he never showed me.

He walked away, leaving me to burn.

I survived, but at a brutal cost. My right hand-the hand that played Chopin-was crushed into a useless claw.

Jacob didn't apologize. Instead, he moved Cassandra into our home. He let her wear my diamonds, mock my injuries, and burn my sheet music.

When I tried to expose her embezzlement, he called me unstable. To punish me for "betraying the family," he dug up my mother's grave and threw her ashes into the sea.

That was the moment the wife died, and something else was born. He thought he had buried me under the weight of his cruelty. He didn't realize he had planted a seed.

I staged my death and vanished into the snowy streets of Vienna.

Five years later, I am a world-renowned composer, and Jacob is a ruined man in a wheelchair, begging for a forgiveness I no longer have the energy to give.

Chapter 1

Alexia POV

The world was inverted, and the smell of leaking gasoline burned my nostrils as my husband looked me in the eye and chose to save his mistress, leaving me to burn.

They say pain is loud, a screaming thing demanding attention. But right now, it was silent. The only sound was the rhythmic dripping of fuel and the ragged breathing of the woman in the passenger seat next to me.

Cassandra.

She was whimpering, a high-pitched sound that grated against the groaning metal encasing us.

My right arm was pinned. I couldn't feel my fingers. I couldn't feel the hand that had played Chopin just hours ago at Jacob's command.

"Jacob!" Cassandra screamed.

The door on her side was wrenched open.

Jacob stood there. The Don of the Cummings Syndicate. My husband.

He looked impeccable, even in the chaos of the ambush. His suit was dark, his eyes darker. He didn't look at me. Not once. He reached in, his hands gentle-so incredibly, sickeningly gentle-as he unbuckled Cassandra.

"I've got you," he murmured. His voice was low, a rumble that used to make my stomach flip. Now, it just made me cold.

"My arm," I whispered. It took everything I had to force the air from my lungs. "Jacob, my arm is stuck."

He paused. For a second, his eyes met mine. They were blue ice. There was no panic in them. No fear for his wife. Just cold calculation.

"Get Cassandra to the second car," he ordered his son, Anton, who was standing behind him.

Anton looked at me. He was my son, too. Not by blood, but I had raised him since he was four. I had bandaged his knees. I had taught him to tie his shoes.

Anton looked at me, trapped in the wreckage, and then he looked away. Shame flickered across his face before he reached for Cassandra.

"Strategic value," Jacob said. He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to his men. "Secure the asset."

He pulled Cassandra free.

The metal groaned again. Sparks flew from a severed wire near my head.

"Jacob!" I screamed this time. The silence of the pain shattered.

"I can't move!"

He stopped. He held Cassandra against his chest, shielding her from the dust. He looked back at the overturned car.

"Wait for the fire crew," he said.

Then he turned his back.

He walked away.

He walked away with her in his arms, leaving me in a metal coffin that smelled like death.

I watched them go through the shattered windshield. I watched the way he smoothed her hair. I watched Anton open the door for them.

Something inside me snapped. It wasn't my bone. That had already happened. It was something deeper.

The fire started a moment later.

I didn't scream. I just watched the flames lick the hood of the car, and I realized that the Alexia who played piano for them, the Alexia who tried to be the perfect mafia wife, was burning with it.

I closed my eyes and waited for the end, clutching the only thing I had left-my mother's brooch, digging into my palm.

But death didn't come. Only the darkness did.

Alexia POV

The doctor pronounced the death of my career with clinical detachment.

He weaponized words like *nerve damage* and *crushed metacarpals*, laying them out between us like surgical tools. He pointed to the light box, showing me X-rays where the delicate architecture of my bones looked like nothing more than crushed gravel.

I didn't cry. Tears were a luxury I couldn't afford. I simply sat on the edge of the hospital bed and stared at the sterile white wall, listening to the silence where the music used to be.

Jacob arrived later.

He swept into the room smelling of expensive cologne, crisp linen, and the cloying sweetness of Cassandra's perfume.

"It's for the best," he said.

He didn't ask how I was. He stood by the window, checking his watch as if my trauma were merely a scheduling conflict.

"The family needs stability right now. Cassandra was... shaken. She has important connections with the suppliers. It was a strategic decision."

"Strategic," I repeated. My voice sounded rusty, like a hinge that hadn't been oiled in years.

"You understand," he said. It wasn't a question; it was a verdict. "You are the Don's wife. You make sacrifices."

Sacrifices.

I looked down at my right hand. It was encased in a heavy cast-a useless, plaster lump.

"We are going home," he said.

Home.

The fortress. The cage.

Weeks blurred into a gray haze. When the cast finally came off, it revealed a scarred, twisted claw where my hand used to be. I practiced with my left hand in the dead of night, the music coming out clumsy and angry. It was the only way I could breathe.

Tonight was the gala. A celebration of a new smuggling route disguised as high society.

I wore black-mourning clothes for a life not yet dead. I ghosted through the periphery of the ballroom, holding a glass of water I had no intention of drinking.

Jacob commanded the center of the room. Cassandra was draped on his arm, wearing a red dress that looked like spilled blood. She was laughing, her head thrown back, exposing the long, elegant line of her throat.

She was wearing a diamond necklace that cost more than my mother's entire estate.

"She looks radiant, doesn't she?"

I turned. A cousin of the Bell family-my own blood-stood there. He didn't look at me with pity. He looked at me with the embarrassment one feels for a failed investment, a broken tool.

"Yes," I said, my voice hollow.

Jacob waved me over. The summons was subtle-a slight tilt of the head-but absolute. I walked towards them, and the crowd parted. They looked at my twisted hand. They looked at Cassandra's flawless diamonds.

"Alexia," Jacob said. He smiled, but the expression didn't reach his eyes; it stopped at his teeth. "Cassandra was just telling us about her ordeal during the ambush."

"It was terrifying," Cassandra said, clinging to Jacob's bicep as if she were fragile. "I thought we were going to die. Thank god Jacob was there."

She looked at me then. Her eyes were bright with a predatory gleam.

"Oh, Alexia," she cooed. "I've been meaning to ask. That brooch you always wear. The old silver one."

My hand flew to my chest instinctively. It was pinned there, hidden under a fold of my dress.

"What about it?" I asked.

"I think it would go perfectly with this dress," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Jacob promised me a gift for... surviving. I want that."

The room went quiet. The air grew thin. This wasn't about jewelry. This was a public execution.

Jacob looked at me. "Give it to her, Alexia."

He said it casually. Like he was asking for the salt.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. This brooch was the last thing my mother gave me before she died-before the Bell family sold me to the Cummings to settle a debt.

"No," I said.

The silence stretched. It became heavy, suffocating.

"Excuse me?" Cassandra laughed, a nervous, tinkling sound that shattered the tension.

"It belonged to my mother," I said, my voice frighteningly steady. "It is not family property. It is mine."

Cassandra's lip trembled. She looked up at Jacob, playing the victim perfectly. She whispered something in Italian-a dialect I wasn't supposed to understand.

*"She is useless now, Jacob. Why do you let her insult me?"*

Jacob's jaw tightened. He looked at me with cold, profound disappointment.

"We will discuss this later," he announced to the room. "Alexia is tired. She is still recovering."

He was dismissing me. Sending the child to her room.

"I am tired," I said, holding his gaze. "I'm going to the monastery tomorrow. For a retreat."

Jacob didn't even look at me. He was already pouring champagne for Cassandra.

"Go," he said, turning his back. "Pray for the family."

I walked away. I felt their eyes on my back. I felt the searing heat of their judgment.

I went to my room and packed a small bag. I took the brooch off my dress and pinned it to the inside of my coat, close to my heart.

I looked at the calendar on the wall.

Today was our anniversary.

Ten years.

And he hadn't even remembered.

Alexia POV

The monastery was a tomb of cold air. It smelled faintly of beeswax and ancient, damp stone.

I scrubbed the limestone floors until my knees bruised. I peeled mountains of potatoes. With my left hand, I played simple hymns on the chapel organ.

The nuns didn't ask questions. They knew who my husband was. In this part of Italy, everyone knew the Cummings family.

My right hand ached constantly, a dull, throbbing reminder of what I had lost. I had no pain medication. Jacob controlled the accounts, and I had left with nothing but the clothes on my back and a few euros.

I was hungry. Not the kind of hungry you feel when you skip lunch. It was the kind of hungry that hollows you out from the inside.

I remembered my mother. She used to skip meals so I could have piano lessons. She believed art would save me.

She was wrong. Power saves you. Money saves you. Art just makes you feel the pain more acutely.

It was raining the night he came.

I saw the headlights first, slicing through the gloom. A convoy of black SUVs cutting through the darkness like sharks in deep water. They stopped at the iron gates.

Jacob got out. He held a large black umbrella, shielding himself from the downpour while I stood exposed. He strode toward the main building with the air of a man who believed he owned God himself.

I met him in the courtyard. I didn't want him inside. I didn't want him tainting this place.

"You look thin," he observed, his voice devoid of warmth.

He handed me a box wrapped in crushed velvet.

"It's cold," he said. "Put this on."

I opened it. It was a shawl. Cashmere. Embroidered with a single red rose.

A memory flashed behind my eyes. Years ago, before the bitterness rotted us, he had brought me a rose from the garden. He had smiled then. A real smile.

"Thank you," I said, my voice stiff. I didn't put it on.

"Are you ready to come home?" he asked. "Anton misses you."

"Does he?" I asked. "Or does he miss having someone to do his laundry?"

Jacob sighed, the sound impatient. "Don't be difficult, Alexia. I have news. I pulled some strings. There is a position at the Vienna Royal Academy. A guest professorship. You can go. You can teach."

My breath hitched. Vienna.

"You remember," he said, stepping closer, invading my space. "You told me once. You wanted to play in the Golden Hall."

He was rewriting history.

"I told you I wanted to find my sister in Vienna," I said, the old wound tearing open. "I wanted to play so she might hear me. She was taken when I was six."

Jacob blinked. The romantic mask slipped for a fraction of a second.

"Right," he said, recovering quickly. "Well. The position is yours. If you come back. If you sign the papers."

Papers. There was always a contract.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

The sound shattered the rhythm of the rain. He pulled it out. His face changed instantly. The boredom vanished. Panic replaced it.

"Cassandra?" he barked into the phone. "Slow down. Where are you?"

He listened, and his knuckles turned white around the device.

"I'm coming," he said. "I'm coming now."

He hung up. He looked at me, but he didn't truly see me.

"She's been taken," he said. "The rival family. They have her."

He turned and ran. He sprinted back to the car. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't mention Vienna. He left the cashmere shawl falling into the mud, a discarded peace offering.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A burner phone I had bought with my potato-peeling money.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Did you enjoy the show?" a distorted voice asked.

"Who is this?"

"Jacob is chasing a ghost," the voice said, cold and metallic. "Cassandra isn't kidnapped. But you are about to be."

"What?"

"Look behind you."

I turned. Two men in masks were standing by the chapel door.

"You are the bait, Mrs. Cummings," the voice said. "Let's see who he chooses when the timer starts. You are in a warehouse. There is a bomb. Cassandra is 'missing'. It's the ultimate loyalty test."

I didn't fight as rough hands grabbed me.

I knew the answer to the test.

I knew who he would choose.