His Unwanted Wife, The Rival Don's Queen

The gunman pressed a Glock to my temple and gave my husband a choice.

"One walks out. One stays. Choose, Mr. Underboss."

I wasn't worried. I was Haven. I was his wife of ten years, his Consigliere, the woman who built his empire.

Beside me sobbed Gemma, a fragile twenty-two-year-old he had known for six months.

"Take Gemma! Leave Haven!" Connor screamed, his honor twisting into something unrecognizable.

He walked out of the warehouse with another woman in his arms, leaving me to be butchered.

I didn't wait for the bullet. I threw myself through a glass window into the freezing canal.

I survived the fall, but the life inside me didn't.

After five years of failed IVF, the miracle baby I hadn't even told Connor about was gone.

While I lay in a cold hospital room, bleeding out the remains of our child, my husband was buying diamond earrings for the woman who had set me up to die.

When the doctor tried to sedate me for the surgery, I grabbed his wrist.

"No anesthesia," I commanded.

"But the pain..."

"I want to feel it," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I want to feel every scrap of him leaving my body."

I burned that pain into my soul. Then, I went home, poured gasoline over our wedding bed, and lit a match.

Two years later, I returned to the city.

Connor thought I was dead.

But when he saw me on the arm of his mortal enemy, wearing the crown of a rival Queen, he realized his mistake.

He didn't just lose a wife. He started a war.

Chapter 1

Haven POV

It wasn't the cold steel of a Glock 19 pressed against my temple that killed me.

It was the name that left my husband's lips when the gunman gave him a choice between his wife and the other woman.

Ten years of marriage.

Ten years of building the Apex Crew from a scrappy street gang into a shipping empire that controlled the entire eastern seaboard.

I stood there, my wrists zip-tied behind my back, the acrid smell of rusted iron and stagnant canal water filling the abandoned warehouse.

Beside me, Gemma sobbed.

She was twenty-two, porcelain-fragile, with big doe eyes that seemed to constantly beg for protection.

She was the daughter of a soldier who died taking a bullet for Connor three years ago.

That was the debt.

The blood debt that hung over my marriage like a guillotine.

Connor was on his knees across from us.

His suit was torn, and blood trickled from a cut on his brow, but his eyes were frantic.

Not for me.

The masked man behind me cocked the hammer of the gun.

Time seemed to slow down, the dust motes dancing in the singular beam of light cutting through the gloom.

"Choose, Mr. Underboss," the gunman rasped, his voice distorted by a modulator. "One walks out. One stays. You have five seconds before I paint the walls with both of them."

Connor looked at me.

I held his gaze.

I was his Consigliere in all but name.

I was the one who laundered the money through the construction firms.

I was the one who strategized the takeover of the docks.

I was his wife.

Then, he looked at Gemma.

She let out a whimper, a high-pitched sound of pure terror.

"Please, Connor," she begged. "Please."

"Five," the gunman counted.

Connor struggled against his restraints.

"Four."

"Haven can handle herself!" Connor shouted, his voice cracking. "She is strong. She knows the protocol!"

"Three."

My heart stopped beating.

I knew what was coming before he said it.

I saw the shift in his eyes.

I watched the way his honor twisted into something unrecognizable.

"Two."

"Let Gemma go!" Connor screamed. "Take Gemma. Leave Haven."

The silence that followed was louder than any gunshot.

The gunman laughed, a dry, humorless sound.

He shoved me forward, causing me to stumble onto the concrete.

He cut Gemma's bonds.

Connor scrambled up as his own ties were slashed by the second enforcer.

He didn't run to me.

He ran to her.

He scooped Gemma into his arms, checking her for injuries I knew she didn't have.

"We have to go," the gunman said, pointing his weapon at me. "Deal is a deal. You walk. She pays the toll."

Connor looked back at me then.

His eyes were wide, filled with a panic that looked suspiciously like guilt.

"I will come back for you, Haven," he promised, his voice shaking. "I swear on my mother's grave. I just have to get her to safety. You are tough. You survive."

He turned his back.

He walked out the heavy steel doors with another woman in his arms.

The metal slammed shut, the echo vibrating through the floorboards and up into my bones.

I was alone with three men who wanted to send a message to the Apex Crew.

The leader holstered his gun and pulled a knife.

He stepped closer, grinning.

"Your husband has strange priorities, Mrs. Jones."

I didn't scream.

I didn't beg.

I looked at the shattered window twenty feet away, overlooking the freezing canal.

It was a suicide jump.

But staying here was a death sentence.

I ran.

I threw myself through the jagged glass before they could grab me.

The ice-cold water hit me like a sledgehammer, knocking the air from my lungs and the love from my heart.

Haven POV

The rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor was the first thing to pierce the darkness.

Then came the smell-sharp antiseptic and stale coffee.

My body felt shattered, as if I had been run over by a truck. Every inch of my skin throbbed or stung from the glass and the fall.

I opened my eyes.

Connor was sitting in the chair next to the bed, his head buried in his hands.

He looked wrecked.

Good.

He lifted his head and saw me awake.

"Haven," he breathed, reaching for my hand.

I pulled my hand away.

It was a small movement, but he flinched as if I had slapped him.

"Thank God," he whispered, ignoring the rejection. "I went back. I swear to you, Haven. I went back with the whole crew ten minutes later. You were gone. We found blood on the glass. I thought..."

"You thought I was dead," I rasped. My throat felt like I had swallowed razor blades.

"I had to get her out, Haven," he said, his voice taking on that pleading tone I used to find endearing. "It was a blood debt. Her father died for me. If I let her die, I lose the respect of the Old Guard. You know the rules."

I stared at the ceiling.

The rules never stated that a husband leaves his wife to be raped and butchered to save a girl he has known for six months.

"I am thirsty," I said.

He scrambled to get a plastic cup of water with a bendy straw.

He held it to my lips.

I took a sip, watching him.

He was the Underboss of the city, a man who commanded fear, yet here he was, shaking.

A nurse bustled into the room.

"Mr. Jones," she said, her voice urgent. "It is Ms. Chan. She is hyperventilating again. She is asking for you."

Connor froze.

He looked at me, then at the door.

"She is in shock," he explained to me, standing up. "She has never seen a gun before."

"Go," I said.

My voice was flat.

He hesitated.

"I will be right back," he promised. "Just let me calm her down."

He left the room.

I waited ten seconds.

Then I ripped the IV from my arm.

Blood welled up, dripping onto the pristine white sheets, but I didn't feel it.

I slid my legs off the bed.

The room spun.

I gripped the IV pole for support and shuffled to the door.

The hallway was quiet, the night shift in full swing.

I heard sobbing coming from a room three doors down.

I walked toward it, my hospital gown gaping at the back, my bare feet cold on the linoleum.

The door was ajar.

I saw them.

Gemma was sitting up in bed, looking perfectly fine, not a scratch on her.

Connor was sitting on the edge of her mattress.

He was stroking her hair.

She leaned into him, burying her face in his neck.

He kissed her forehead.

It wasn't a comforting peck.

It was slow.

It was tender.

It was the way he used to kiss me after a long day.

One of the nurses at the station whispered to another, unaware I was standing there.

"That's the third night he has slept in her room. Poor wife doesn't even know."

I turned around.

I walked back to my room, found my ruined clothes in a plastic bag, and dressed with shaking hands.

I walked out of the Family-controlled hospital and hailed a cab.

"Take me to the St. Jude's Clinic," I told the driver.

I needed a doctor who wasn't on my husband's payroll.

Haven POV

Dr. Evans, the physician at the private clinic, was a small woman with eyes like flint and hands that wasted no movement.

She stitched the laceration on my thigh with efficient, unsentimental tugs before checking my ribs for fractures.

Then, she ran the blood work.

I sat on the edge of the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath me, staring blankly at a colorful poster about nutrition. I felt absolutely nothing. Just a hollow, ringing silence.

Dr. Evans returned a few minutes later, a clipboard tucked against her chest.

"Mrs. Jones," she said, her tone professional but guarded. "You are aware that you are pregnant?"

The air left the room. The world didn't just tilt; it stopped.

I gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white.

"What?"

"Six weeks," she stated, flipping a page. "It is a miracle the fall didn't cause a detachment. But the heartbeat is strong."

Trembling, I pressed a hand to my stomach.

We had tried for five years.

Years of failed IVF cycles. Endless rounds of hormone injections that bruised my skin and battered my soul.

Nothing had worked.

And now, when my marriage was a rotting corpse festering in the sun, life had finally taken root.

This was the heir.

This was the future of the Apex Crew.

This changed everything.

I thanked the doctor, my voice distant to my own ears, and left.

I returned to the penthouse.

The apartment was a mausoleum of white marble and glass-cold, modern, and utterly empty.

Connor came home two hours later.

As soon as he walked in, the scent hit me. He smelled like her perfume.

Vanilla and deceit.

He froze when he saw me sitting on the white leather sofa, waiting.

"Haven," he breathed, visible relief washing over his features. "The hospital said you checked out against medical advice. I was worried sick."

"Sit down, Connor."

He perched on the coffee table in front of me, reaching out to take my hands. His palms were damp.

I didn't let him touch me.

"I have two things to tell you," I said, my voice razor-flat.

He nodded quickly, looking like a puppy who knew he had soiled the rug but hoped for a treat anyway.

"First, I am pregnant."

His eyes went wide.

His mouth fell open, a silent gasp of shock.

"You... you're sure?"

"Dr. Evans confirmed it."

A smile broke across his face, genuine and blindingly bright. It was the smile of the man I used to love.

"An heir," he whispered, reverence in his tone. "We finally did it. Haven, this fixes everything. This is a new start for us."

"Second," I said, slicing through his joy like a guillotine. "Gemma leaves."

His smile faltered, then vanished.

"What?"

"She leaves the city," I commanded. "Tonight. You cut all ties. You never speak to her again."

"Haven, be reasonable," he said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. "She has nowhere to go. She is traumatized. I can't just throw her out on the street like garbage."

"She is a mole, Connor."

He stopped pacing and looked at me as if I were the one who had lost my mind.

"She is a kid," he scoffed, shaking his head. "She barely knows how to use a phone. You are being paranoid. You are jealous."

"I am your wife," I said, my voice rising, vibrating with the force of my ultimatum. "I am the mother of your child. Choose. Right now. Her, or us."

The silence stretched, taut as a wire.

Then, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

It was her.

I could see the name lighting up the dim room, a beacon of my destruction.

Connor looked at me, then down at the phone. Conflict warred in his eyes.

"I have to take this," he said, his voice dropping. "It might be an emergency regarding the ambush."

He answered the phone.

"I am coming," he said into the receiver.

He hung up and looked at me with apologetic, cowardly eyes.

"I have to go," he said, backing toward the door. "Just for an hour. We will talk when I get back."

He grabbed his keys.

He walked out the door.

He chose.

I sat there for a moment, the silence of the penthouse settling around me like a shroud. Then, I picked up my phone.

I dialed the number of the private investigator I had kept on retainer for strict business background checks.

"I want everything on Gemma Chan," I said into the line, my voice devoid of mercy.

"Dig until you hit hell."