His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck.

"Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety."

He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her.

I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper.

When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect.

He raised the whip.

"Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach.

"Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down.

I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner.

He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden.

I finally fled, vanishing into the night.

It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted.

He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man.

The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently.

"Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even."

I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt.

"You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."

Chapter 1

Ella Farmer POV

My fiancé, the ruthless Underboss of the Mckay Crime Family, tore my dead mother's emerald necklace from my throat, the gold chain snapping with a sickening pop that signaled the end of my life.

He didn't look at me with the eyes of the man who had once defied his grandfather, Don Cornelius, to put a ring on my finger three years ago.

He looked at me like I was a stranger.

Arthur Mckay was the most feared man in New York, a man who had survived a leukemia diagnosis that should have buried him, a man whose hands were stained with the blood of anyone who dared look at me wrong.

But the man standing in our penthouse living room wasn't Arthur.

He was a vessel corrupted by a stranger's blood.

"Diana needs it," he said, his voice devoid of the warmth that used to bring me to my knees.

"She feels a connection to the stone. It calms her anxiety."

I stood frozen, my hand flying to my bare neck, the skin stinging where the metal had cut me.

Diana Hess sat on the velvet sofa, her legs tucked under her, watching us with wide, teary eyes that held a glint of absolute malice.

She was the ex-girlfriend of the man whose bone marrow now flowed through Arthur's veins.

She had walked into the hospital recovery wing two weeks ago, bypassing security that would shoot a senator on sight, claiming she just wanted to hear her dead lover's heartbeat one last time.

Arthur had let her in.

And she had never left.

Arthur walked over to her, dangling my mother's heirloom-my dowry, the last shred of my family's dignity-before gently fastening it around Diana's throat.

"It's just a necklace, Ella," Arthur said, turning his back on me to adjust the clasp for her.

"You have access to the family vaults. Buy another one."

He didn't understand.

It wasn't about the emeralds.

It was about the promise he made when I nursed him through the chemo, when I held a bucket for him to vomit in, when I burned my hands putting out a kitchen fire just to make him broth.

He had promised I was his queen.

Now, he was crowning a usurper.

"The cellular memory," Diana whispered, touching Arthur's hand.

"Your blood remembers loving me, Arthur. That's why you want me to have it."

Arthur looked down at her, his expression softening in a way that made my stomach turn.

He was high on the anti-rejection meds and the subtle poison of her words.

I felt the air leave the room.

I didn't scream.

I didn't cry.

I was a mafia wife in training, and I knew the code of silence better than anyone.

I walked to the door, my heels clicking sharply on the marble floor.

"Where are you going?" Arthur asked, his tone sharp, the command of the Underboss slipping back into place.

"To pack," I said quietly.

"You aren't going anywhere," he growled.

"Diana needs stability. We are staying here."

He didn't say I need you.

He said we.

He and the woman who was wearing my mother's soul around her neck.

I looked at him one last time, memorizing the sharp jawline and the cold blue eyes I used to adore.

I wasn't just leaving the apartment.

I was leaving us.

Ella Farmer POV

The sound of tearing paper screamed through the silence of the guest room.

I shredded the sketchbook in half, destroying the charcoal portrait of Arthur I had spent months perfecting.

His eyes in the drawing were full of love-a lie I could no longer stand to witness.

I threw the pieces into the fireplace and watched the flames lick the edges of his face, curling the paper into black flakes before turning him to ash.

Just like he had done to me.

The door opened without a knock.

Arthur stood there, dressed in a tuxedo that cost more than my father made in a year.

He looked impeccable, the lethal prince of the city, but the soul was missing from his gaze. His eyes were glassy, vacant.

"Stop being dramatic, Ella," he said, his voice flat as he adjusted his cufflinks.

"Grandfather is expecting us. It's his seventy-fifth birthday."

"I'm not going," I said, refusing to look away from the fire.

"You are going." He stepped into the room, his presence sucking the oxygen right out of the air.

"You are my fiancée. You will stand by my side."

Diana walked in behind him, wearing a couture red gown that I knew Arthur had paid for.

It was backless, daring, and around her throat, she wore my mother's necklace.

It rested against her skin like a trophy of war.

"Arthur wants me to come too," Diana said, her voice saccharine and poisonous.

"He thinks it's important for the Family to see that he honors the donor's memory."

Arthur nodded, as if this insanity made perfect sense.

We arrived at the Plaza Hotel an hour later.

The ballroom was filled with the city's elite-judges, politicians, and the Capos who ran the underworld.

Don Cornelius sat at the head table, looking frail but sharp as a hawk.

I took my seat next to Arthur, keeping my head high, my face a mask of porcelain indifference.

Diana sat on his other side.

The whispers started immediately.

Arthur stood up to make a toast, tapping his glass with a silver knife.

The room went silent.

"To family," he said, raising his glass.

"And to new beginnings."

He looked down at Diana, smiling a hollow, rehearsed smile.

"To the woman who gave me a second chance at life by connecting me to the man who saved me."

He didn't mention me.

He didn't mention the nights I slept in a chair next to his hospital bed, holding his hand while he screamed in pain.

He forced me to raise my glass.

"To Diana," he commanded, looking directly at me.

My hand trembled.

I drank the champagne, and it tasted like vinegar and ash.

A sharp pain ripped through my stomach, my stress-induced ulcers flaring up violently.

I excused myself, rushing to the restroom, coughing blood into the sink.

When I wiped my mouth and stepped out onto the balcony for air, I heard voices.

"She's still wearing your ring, Arthur," Diana's voice drifted through the open doors.

"It confuses the blood. My lover... the donor... he hates that you're bound to her."

I froze in the shadows.

I saw Arthur leaning against the stone railing, looking confused, heavily sedated.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Prove it," she said.

"Prove that the new blood is stronger than the old promises."

She pointed to his chest, right over his heart, where he had tattooed my initial, 'E', three years ago.

"Remove it."

Arthur hesitated for only a second.

He grabbed a champagne flute from a passing waiter's tray and smashed it against the railing.

The glass shattered into a jagged, lethal shard.

"Arthur, no," I whispered, but the wind carried my voice away.

He unbuttoned his shirt, exposing the tattoo.

With a grimace of pain that looked disturbingly like pleasure, he drove the glass into his own skin.

Blood welled up, dark and thick, running down his chest ruining the pristine white shirt.

He carved the skin away, slicing through the ink, slicing through my name.

Diana watched, breathless, her hand clutching my mother's necklace in ecstasy.

"There," Arthur panted, dropping the bloody glass.

"It's gone."

He looked at the bloody mess on his chest and smiled at her.

I backed away, stumbling into the darkness.

The man I loved didn't just die in that hospital bed.

He had been replaced by a monster.

Ella Farmer POV

I didn't just leave; I fled.

I had violated every protocol of a Mafia fiancée by leaving the Don's party without permission, but I didn't care. Fear was a far more potent motivator than tradition.

I took a taxi back to the penthouse, my hands shaking so hard I couldn't even steady the key to unlock the door. It took three tries before the tumbler finally clicked.

When I finally got inside, I went straight to the guest room where I had been sleeping. I didn't want to be here, but I had no choice.

I needed my passport.

I needed to leave New York tonight.

But the hallway was wrong. The silence was wrong. The door to the guest room was open.

Diana was there.

She was wearing my silk robe, the one Arthur had given me for our anniversary. It hung loosely on her frame, a ghost of the life I was trying to escape.

She was rummaging through my drawers, yanking out handfuls of silk and cotton and flinging my clothes onto the floor.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of my exhaustion.

"Making space," she said, not even looking at me. She tossed a blouse aside like it was a rag.

"Arthur said I could have this room. The energy is better here."

"Get out," I whispered.

She turned, smiling. It was a cold, predatory expression.

"You don't get to give orders anymore, Ella. You're just a placeholder until the old man dies."

She stepped toward me, her eyes gleaming with malice, then suddenly threw herself backward, crashing into the nightstand.

The sound of wood splintering was sickening. She knocked a lamp over, shattering it into a thousand ceramic shards.

"Help!" she screamed, her voice piercing the silence. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar.

"Arthur! She's hurting me!"

I stood there, paralyzed by the sheer audacity of the lie. My brain couldn't process the speed of her betrayal.

Arthur burst into the room a moment later, his shirt still stained with his own blood from the balcony. The metallic scent of violence clung to him.

He saw Diana on the floor, sobbing, and me standing over her.

He didn't ask what happened.

He didn't look for the truth.

He grabbed my arm, his grip bruising, his fingers digging into my flesh like iron claws.

"I told you to be nice to her!" he roared.

"Arthur, she threw herself-" I tried to explain, panic rising in my throat.

He dragged me out of the room, through the living room, and to the front door of the penthouse. I stumbled, unable to find my footing against his rage.

He opened it and shoved me into the hallway.

"You need to cool off," he spat, his eyes devoid of any recognition, any love.

"Don't come back inside until you learn your place."

He slammed the door in my face.

The lock clicked. A sound of finality.

I was locked out of my own home, in the hallway, wearing a gala dress, with no phone and no money.

The pain in my stomach returned, sharper this time, like a knife twisting in my gut. It radiated outward, stealing my breath.

I slid down the wall, clutching my abdomen. The cold plaster offered no comfort.

The world started to spin. The floor tilted.

Black spots danced in my vision, swallowing the light.

I passed out on the cold marble floor of the corridor.

I woke up under harsh fluorescent lights. The smell of antiseptic stung my nose.

A doctor was standing over me, looking concerned.

"Mrs. Mckay?" he asked, assuming I was already married. The name felt like a slap.

"Miss Farmer," I corrected, my voice a dry rasp.

"You collapsed from stress and dehydration," he said, checking my chart. His tone was clinical, but his eyes held pity.

"But your baby is fine."

The room went silent. The hum of the machines seemed to vanish.

"My what?" I whispered.

"You're eight weeks pregnant, Miss Farmer."

I stared at the ceiling, tears finally leaking from my eyes, hot tracks against my cold skin.

I was carrying the heir to the Mckay crime family.

I was carrying the child of a man who had just locked me out in the hallway like a dog.

I borrowed a nurse's phone to call Arthur.

He needed to know.

Maybe this would break the spell. Maybe the blood tie would mean more than Diana's lies.

He answered on the second ring.

"Arthur, I'm in the hospital," I said, my voice trembling.

"I'm busy, Ella," he said coldly. Ice dripped from every syllable.

"Diana is having a panic attack because of you. Don't call again."

The line went dead.

A moment later, a notification popped up on the nurse's phone.

Diana had posted a photo on Instagram.

It was a selfie of her and Arthur in our bed. In my bed.

She was wearing my necklace.

The caption read: Healing old wounds with new love.

Then a text message came through to my old number, forwarded to the nurse's phone because of the family cloud account.

It was from Diana.

Stay away from him. Or the next time you cough blood, it won't be from an ulcer.

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the hospital air.

I handed the phone back to the nurse.

My grandmother, Hertha, was the only family I had left.

I needed to get to her.

I needed to run.