Escaping The Cage: I Married His Worst Enemy

My husband, the Capo of New York, gripped my hand as we walked into the soundproofed room.

He wasn't there to save me.

He was there to watch the family doctor carve out my mind.

A stranger named Sofia claimed I had sold her to a brothel twelve years ago.

It was a lie.

But Dante looked at me with cold marble eyes, believing the woman sobbing in his arms over the wife he had vowed to protect.

"Sit, Elena," he ordered.

He strapped me into the chair. He watched as they injected liquid fire into my veins to force a confession.

He dragged me to the kennels, forcing me to feed the dogs I was terrified of, and watched as they tore into my flesh.

He even locked me in a freezer to "cool off" my jealousy.

The final straw wasn't the pain.

It was hearing him plan a Vow Renewal with Sofia, intending to parade me as her Maid of Honor to teach me humility.

I realized then that Elena Moretti had to die.

So, I set the hospital room on fire.

I left my wedding ring in the ashes and vanished into the night.

Six months later, Dante found me in Paris.

He fell to his knees, begging for forgiveness.

I looked at him with dead eyes and handed him a knife.

"Kill yourself," I said.

"That is the only way I will believe you are sorry."

Chapter 1

My husband, the Capo dei Capi of the New York mafia, gripped my hand as I walked into the soundproofed room. It was a touch I once craved, but he wasn't there to save me.

He was there to watch the family doctor carve out my mind.

According to the woman sobbing in the shadows, I had sold her to a brothel twelve years ago. A lie. It had to be.

I looked at the chair in the center of the room. Heavy oak. Restraints made of thick, worn leather.

Then I looked at Dante.

His face was a mask of cold marble, void of the warmth that had greeted me at the altar only two years ago. The man who looked back at me now was a stranger wearing my husband's skin.

"Sit, Elena," he said.

His voice was low, vibrating with the same lethal authority that commanded legions of soldiers and made rival Dons in Chicago and Las Vegas tremble. It wasn't a request. It was a verdict.

"Dante, please," I whispered, my legs turning to water beneath me. "She is lying. I don't know her. My sister died in the fire. We saw the body."

"That body was a decoy," the woman named Sofia choked out. She was curled in the armchair, wrapped in a blanket-my blanket, I realized with a sick jolt. She looked up, her eyes red and swollen. "You knew, Elena. You watched them drag me away. You wanted to be the only one. You wanted the Moretti fortune for yourself."

She let the blanket slip.

The evidence was mapped across her skin. The scars on her back were visible-branding marks, cigarette burns, a roadmap of hell etched into flesh.

Dante's jaw tightened. A dangerous vein pulsed in his temple.

He walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. The gentleness of the gesture made bile rise in my throat. He had sworn to protect me. He had sworn to burn the world for me.

Now he was handing the match to a stranger.

"The evidence is irrefutable, Elena," Dante said, refusing to meet my gaze. "Her DNA matches. Her testimony matches the timeline. And you... you have been unstable since the miscarriage."

"I am not unstable!" I screamed.

Two guards stepped forward, their movements synchronized and brutal. They grabbed my arms.

I thrashed, kicking out. I wasn't a soldier like them, but I was a survivor. I had clawed my way out of the gutter before the Morettis ever found me.

"Dante! Look at me!" I begged as they forced me into the chair. The leather straps bit into my wrists, cold and unforgiving. "I am your wife! I am your Elena!"

He finally looked at me.

There was no love in his abyss-black eyes. Only a twisted, dark sense of duty. He looked at me like a judge sentencing a criminal he once pitied.

"My Elena would never sell her own blood," he said softly. "You are sick, *tesoro*. The guilt has twisted your mind. You have repressed the truth to live with yourself."

He nodded to Dr. Ricci.

The doctor approached with a syringe. The liquid inside was a pale, sickly yellow that seemed to glow under the harsh lights.

"It is a combination of scopolamine and a new compound," the doctor murmured, tapping the glass to remove an air bubble. "It will help her access the repressed memories. It will break down the walls of denial. It will be... unpleasant."

"Do it," Dante said.

He turned his back on me. He went to Sofia and pulled her into his arms, shielding her eyes so she wouldn't have to witness my undoing.

The needle pierced my skin.

Fire.

Liquid fire raced up my veins, searing through my blood. It hit my brain like a sledgehammer.

I gasped, my back arching off the chair against the restraints. The room began to spin. Colors bled into each other, melting the world into a nightmare. The face of my husband dissolved into a monster.

"Dante," I croaked.

"Shh," I heard him say to Sofia. "I've got you, Giulia. You're safe now. Justice is being served."

My memories began to tear.

The nightlight he made for me when I was twelve. Gone. Replaced by a memory of me laughing while a girl screamed in a van.

The origami cranes I folded for him. Gone. Replaced by me counting money in a dark alley.

"No," I sobbed, the taste of metallic blood flooding my mouth. "That's not real. That's not real!"

"Accept the truth, Elena," Dante's voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere, a god of judgment in my crumbling mind.

The pain was absolute. It wasn't just physical. It was the sensation of my soul being surgically removed without anesthesia.

I looked at him one last time through the haze. He was stroking her hair. He was whispering comforts to the liar while I burned alive.

And in that moment, the love I had held for Dante Moretti for ten years didn't just break.

It died.

I let the darkness take me.

I woke up in a room that wasn't mine.

The walls were painted a pale, suffocating beige that seemed to close in on me. My vanity, usually cluttered with crystal perfume bottles and silver-handled brushes, was stripped bare. The wedding photo that always sat on the nightstand-Dante lifting my veil with a look of reverence-was gone.

In its place was a framed picture of Dante and Sofia. They were sitting on a garden bench, smiling. It looked old. It looked terrifyingly real.

My head throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache. My mind felt like shattered glass that had been glued back together in the wrong order, reflecting a distorted reality I couldn't recognize.

The door clicked opened.

Dante walked in. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, impeccable, dangerous. He smelled of dark espresso and raw, unchecked power.

"You're awake," he stated, his voice devoid of warmth.

I sat up, clutching the sheets to my chest. I didn't know how to look at him. My brain told me he was my husband, but my gut screamed that he was my torturer.

"Where are my things?" I asked. My voice was raspy, scraped raw from silence.

"Sofia is fragile," Dante said, adjusting his cufflinks with precise, deliberate movements. "Seeing your belongings... it triggers her PTSD. She remembers you packing her bags the night she was taken. She needs to feel at home here. This was her home first, Elena."

"I didn't pack her bags," I whispered, the memory hazy but the conviction strong. "I was six years old."

Dante sighed. It was a sound of clinical impatience. "The therapy takes time. Your denial is deep-rooted."

He walked to the bed and towered over me. He didn't touch me. He looked at me like a problem to be solved, a calculation that hadn't balanced out.

"Get dressed," he ordered. "You have chores."

"Chores?"

"You need to learn humility. You need to reconnect with the reality of your actions. You will tend to the kennels today."

The air left my lungs.

Dante knew. He knew better than anyone. When I was eight, a rival family's guard dog had torn my calf open. I still had the jagged, silvery scars. I couldn't be near big dogs without my throat closing up.

"Dante, no," I pleaded, my hands shaking violently. "Please. Anything else. I'll scrub the floors. I'll clean the kitchens until my hands bleed. Don't make me go near them."

"Fear is a lack of discipline," he said coldly. "The Cane Corsos are family. You will learn to respect them, just as you will learn to respect your sister."

He grabbed my wrist with a grip like iron and pulled me out of bed.

Ten minutes later, I was standing in the gravel run of the estate's kennels. The smell of musk and raw meat hung heavy in the damp air.

Three massive Cane Corsos paced the fence. They were muscle and teeth, bred to kill on command.

Sofia was there. She was wearing a white sundress, looking like an angel descended into hell. She stood safely behind the gate.

"They're hungry, Elena," she chirped, her voice sickeningly sweet. She held out a bucket of raw meat. "Dante says you have to feed them by hand."

Dante stood on the porch, watching. His arms were crossed. He was the judge, and this was my sentence.

I took the bucket. My hands were trembling so hard the handle rattled against the plastic.

I stepped into the enclosure.

The alpha male, Brutus, growled. It was a low, rumbling sound that vibrated deep in my chest.

"Good boy," I whispered, tears blurring my vision. "Good boy."

"He smells your fear," Sofia called out. "Stop being such a coward. It's embarrassing."

She picked up a stone from the path.

Before I could react, she hurled it. It hit Brutus square on the flank with a sickening thud.

The dog snapped.

He didn't look at Sofia. He looked at the trembling prey in front of him.

He lunged.

I screamed, throwing my arms up to protect my face. Jaws clamped onto my forearm. Teeth sank into flesh. The pain was white-hot and immediate, searing through my nerves.

"Help!" I shrieked. "Dante!"

I fell backward into the dirt. The dog was shaking me, tearing at the muscle.

A gunshot rang out.

The dog released me and scrambled back, whining. Dante hadn't shot the dog; he had fired into the air.

He vaulted the fence, but he didn't run to me. He ran to check the dog.

"Brutus, down!" he commanded.

I lay in the dirt, clutching my bleeding arm. Blood soaked my shirt, turning the fabric dark and heavy.

Sofia was screaming. "She provoked him! I saw it! She tried to hit him with the bucket!"

Dante turned to me. His eyes were abysses.

"Get up," he hissed.

"He bit me," I sobbed, shock making my words slur. "She threw a stone..."

"Liar," Dante spat. "Sofia loves these animals. You hate them. You hate everything that I love."

He hauled me up by my uninjured arm. He dragged me out of the enclosure like a sack of refuse.

"Go to the infirmary," he said. "Get it stitched. And then get out of my sight."

The nightmare didn't end there.

Later that evening, Brutus was found dead. Foaming at the mouth. Rat poison.

Dante stormed into my room. He threw a packet of poison onto my bed. It had been found in my drawer.

"I didn't do it," I said, numb. My arm was bandaged, throbbing in time with my heart.

"You killed a loyal soldier because you are weak," Dante said. His voice was terrifyingly quiet. "You disrespected the Family."

He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me downstairs. He threw open the heavy oak doors to the courtyard.

It was November. A freezing rain was falling, turning the cobblestones into slick grey ice.

"Kneel," he ordered.

"Dante, please. It's freezing."

"Kneel!" he roared.

I fell to my knees on the stones. The cold soaked through my thin pants instantly, biting into my skin like needles.

"You stay here until you understand loyalty," he said.

He slammed the doors shut. I heard the heavy lock click.

I knelt there for hours. The rain turned to sleet. My body started to shake violently, then it stopped shaking, which was worse.

I looked up at the window of the warm, golden living room.

I saw Dante. He was sitting by the fire. Sofia was on the floor, her head resting on his knee. He was stroking her hair, staring into the flames.

He looked like a king on his throne.

And I was just a peasant dying at his gates.

Three days passed in the sterile white of the hospital room, a blur of hypothermia and pneumonia.

Dante visited exactly once.

He stood at the foot of the bed, checked his watch, and told me that the Commission was gathering on the yacht this weekend. He said my absence would look suspicious.

He didn't ask how I felt. He didn't touch me.

So, on Saturday, I encased myself in a long-sleeved gown to hide the bandages and the fading bruises.

The yacht, *The Vengeance*, was a floating palace. Champagne flowed in endless, golden streams. Men in tuxedos discussed territory and shipments while their wives compared diamonds sharp enough to cut glass.

I stood by the railing, holding a tray of crystal flutes like a servant.

"Elena," a voice purred.

I turned. Sofia was wearing a dress that cost more than the house I grew up in. It was red. Blood red.

"You look pale," she said, smiling over the rim of her glass. "Dante wants you to serve the Don of the Chicago Outfit. He's thirsty."

"I am his wife," I said, my voice steady despite the tremor of fear in my chest. "I am not a waitress."

"You are whatever Dante says you are," she whispered, leaning in until I could smell her expensive perfume. "And right now, you're an embarrassment."

She snatched a glass from my tray and shoved it into my hand. "Drink. To my health. To the sister you sold."

"I can't," I said stiffly. "I'm allergic to the sulfites in this vintage. You know that."

"Drink it, or I start screaming that you pinched me."

I looked across the deck. Dante was deep in conversation with Julian, a rival boss from the West Coast. Julian was looking at me, his gaze intense and assessing. Dante wasn't looking at me at all.

I drank the champagne.

My throat began to itch immediately. Hives broke out on my neck, hidden by the high collar, but the heat was undeniable. My chest tightened.

Sofia laughed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the stern, away from the crowd.

"Look at you," she sneered. "Pathetic. Do you know why he keeps you? Because of the contract. He can't divorce you without losing the port territories. But accidents... accidents happen."

The wind whipped her hair across her face.

"I want to be the Queen," she said simply. "And there is only one throne."

She looked over her shoulder. The deck was empty.

Without warning, she threw herself backward against the railing. She screamed, a blood-curdling sound. "Help! She's pushing me!"

Dante materialized instantly. He moved with the speed of a predator.

He saw Sofia clinging to the rail. He saw me standing there, gasping for air, my face flushed from the allergic reaction.

"Elena!" he roared.

He didn't ask. He didn't hesitate.

He shoved me.

It was a hard, brutal shove meant to tear me away from her.

I hit the railing. My balance was gone. I tipped over the edge.

The water hit me with the density of concrete.

Cold. Dark. Salty.

I sank. The heavy gown pulled me down like an anchor. My lungs burned. I kicked, fighting the surface, fighting the ocean.

I broke the surface for a fraction of a second. I saw the lights of the yacht. I saw Dante leaning over the rail.

He was reaching down.

But he wasn't reaching for me.

He was pulling Sofia up, wrapping her in his jacket, checking her face for scratches.

I screamed his name, but the water filled my mouth.

He didn't look down. He turned his back and walked away with her, leaving me to the black waves.