Marrying The Ex-Fiancé's Ruthless Mafia Brother

At our wedding, my fiancé left me standing alone at the altar and ran to another woman.

He openly betrayed our union, lifting his mistress from the floor in his arms.

I walked straight to the head table, to the most feared man in the city-his older brother. The Godfather.

"The Woodward family owes me a husband," I said calmly.

An hour later, I married the Godfather.

But my ex-fiancé refused to accept it.

He went insane. He kidnapped me, just to harvest my blood for his mistress.

But they underestimated the Godfather's loyalty to me.

He came for me. Even if he had to tear the whole city apart, he would find me.

Chapter 1

Eloise's Perspective

My fiancé didn't just humiliate me at our wedding; he single-handedly destroyed his own future.

He left me, a daughter of the Bowles family, standing alone at the altar while he rushed to the side of a woman whose only real illness was a desperate need for attention.

My hands didn't tremble.

In the world of Chicago's underworld, emotion is a weakness.

Softness gets you killed.

I watched my fiancé, Holden, lift a woman off the floor.

Jaidyn, Holden's first love. Her dramatic collapse came at the perfect moment, just as we were raising our glasses to celebrate our union.

Her pale blue dress pooled around her like a martyr's shroud, her eyelashes fluttering delicately against her cheeks. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar.

"She can't breathe!" Holden shouted, his voice cracking.

He looked pathetic. A boy playing dress-up in a man's tailored suit.

"I have to get her to the car. The wedding... we'll have to wait. I can't just watch her die, Eloise."

Three hundred guests filled the ballroom, including the heads of the Five Families. They watched me.

They waited for me to cry.

They waited for the Mafia princess to crumble, to destroy my father's reputation once and for all.

I took a slow, deliberate sip of my champagne.

The bubbles burned my throat, but the cold liquid steadied me.

"Go," I said.

Holden looked at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of relief and guilt.

He thought I was giving him permission.

He didn't realize it was a goodbye.

"I'm sorry, El," he said, lifting Jaidyn.

She let out a soft, pitiful whimper.

"I'll call you from the ER."

He pushed through the double doors, leaving a scandal in his wake.

My father stood to my left, his face mottled with rage, looking ready to draw his gun.

This wasn't just a breakup. It was a breach of contract.

A violation of the peace treaty between the Bowles family and the Woodward family.

I set my glass down on the table. In the silence of the room, the sound of crystal meeting linen was deafening.

I turned my gaze to the head table.

Alphonse Woodward sat there.

The Godfather. The boss of bosses.

Holden's older brother.

He was completely still.

He leaned back in his chair, a glass of whiskey resting on his knee, his broad shoulders straining the seams of his tuxedo like armor. His dark, deep-set eyes were fixed directly on me.

They were cold, merciless. Assessing the damage like a general surveying a battlefield.

He was the most feared man in this city.

I didn't run after my fiancé.

I walked straight to the head table.

His guards tensed, hands instinctively moving towards their jackets, but Alphonse raised a single finger.

They froze.

I stopped in front of him.

"Your brother made a mistake," I said.

Alphonse swirled his whiskey.

"That he did."

"He disgraced my family. He broke the covenant."

"He's emotional," Alphonse said, his voice a low rumble. "He believes he's saving a life."

"He's saving a parasite," I corrected. "And in doing so, he's left the seat next to me empty. A seat crucial for solidifying the alliance between our territories."

Alphonse took a slow sip, his eyes never leaving mine.

"What are you suggesting, Eloise?"

I didn't even blink.

"I'm suggesting the Woodwards owe me a husband. And since Holden is clearly unfit to lead this family, I expect the man in charge to clean up the mess."

The air vanished from the room. Eyes widened as everyone realized what I'd just done. I had just proposed to the devil.

Alphonse stood.

He towered over me, a dark, imposing wall.

He reached out, his rough fingers brushing a stray piece of hair from my cheek. The touch was possessive, terrifying, and electric.

"One hour," he announced, his voice carrying through the room. "Have the pen ready for the marriage contract."

He drained the rest of his glass, set it down, and walked out, not even glancing at the door his brother had escaped through.

I turned to face the crowd.

I lifted my chin.

The wedding was still on.

The groom had just been replaced.

Eloise's POV

The City Hall clerk's office.

It was a stark contrast to the gilded ballroom I had just left, but the air in here felt cleaner.

Less suffocating.

Alphonse stood beside me, his heavy, steady hand signing the marriage certificate.

He slashed his name in black ink-a sharp, jagged signature that looked less like letters and more like a scar.

"Sign," he said, sliding the paper toward me.

I picked up the pen. My hand hovered over the paper for a split second.

This wasn't a fairy tale. It was a corporate merger. A hostile takeover. I was handing my freedom over to a man rumored to have cut out a capo's tongue just for interrupting him at the dinner table.

But the alternative was being Holden's pathetic ex-fiancée. The girl who wasn't sick enough to make him stay.

I signed. Eloise Bowers.

The clerk stamped the document with a heavy thud.

"Done," Alphonse stated.

He didn't smile, and he didn't kiss me.

He took the certificate, folded it, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat, right next to where I knew he kept his gun. "You are under my protection now. Go to my estate; my guards will pack your things."

"I need to go home first," I said. "I need to face him when he gets back."

Alphonse glanced at me. For a fleeting second, I caught a glint in his abyssal eyes.

Was it approval? Or just dark amusement at watching a bug try to fight a hurricane?

"One hour," he said. "If you don't walk out, I'm coming in. And if I come in, I'm burning the house down."

I took an Uber back to the estate I shared with Holden.

It was a sprawling mansion in Lake Forest, paid for with Woodward blood money.

I was packing my jewelry into a velvet box when the front door banged open.

"Eloise!"

Holden.

He stormed into the bedroom, his tie loosened and his hair disheveled. He looked panicked, bordering on frantic.

He reeked of harsh hospital antiseptics.

"Where have you been?" he demanded, pacing the room. "I called you ten times. Jaidyn... thank God, it was a false alarm. Just severe stress. Her heart is fragile, El. You know that."

I didn't look up, my eyes fixed on my jewelry box as I snapped the lid shut.

"I'm glad she's okay," I said. My voice was completely flat, utterly lifeless.

"Why are you packing?" he stopped in his tracks, staring at the suitcase on the bed.

Suddenly, a high, strained laugh escaped his throat. "You're overreacting. It was an emergency. I couldn't just watch her die on the floor. You're being jealous."

He actually looked a little smug.

"Jealousy implies I want what someone else has," I said, turning to face him. "I don't want you anymore, Holden. Not even a little bit."

He flinched. "You're angry, I get it. We'll reschedule the wedding. Next month, once Jaidyn's condition stabilizes."

"There is no wedding next month," I said. "I'm already married."

Holden froze. He went as pale as a wax figure.

"What?"

"I fixed your mistake for you," I said, walking past him toward the door. "I secured the alliance. I married the Don."

Holden grabbed my arm. His grip was harsh, bruising. It was the first time he had ever touched me in anger.

"You're lying," he hissed. "Alphonse wouldn't do that. He knows you're mine."

"I was never yours," I said, looking pointedly down at his hand on my arm until he let go, stung by my icy demeanor. "I was your responsibility. And you failed me."

"You're just doing this to hurt me!" he yelled, following me into the hallway. "This joke needs to stop!"

"I did this to survive," I said. I pulled the front door open.

Outside, a line of black SUVs idled in the driveway. Alphonse was leaning against the hood of the lead car, smoking a cigarette.

Holden saw him and stopped dead in the doorway.

"He's my brother," Holden whispered, his voice trembling with real fear.

"He's your boss," I corrected.

I walked down the steps. The night air was biting, but as I approached Alphonse, I felt a strange, radiating heat. He tossed his cigarette onto the pavement and crushed it under his boot.

He opened the car door for me.

"Did he touch you?" Alphonse asked. He wasn't looking at me; his eyes were fixed on Holden cowering in the doorway.

"No," I lied.

I didn't want to see blood on my wedding night. At least, not yet.

Alphonse nodded. "Get in."

I slid onto the leather seat. As the car pulled away, I watched Holden in the rearview mirror. He looked so small, so utterly insignificant.

But right before we turned the corner, I caught the look in his eyes. It wasn't just heartbreak.

It was sheer, unadulterated madness.

Eloise's POV

The first two weeks of being married to Alphonse Woodward felt less like a honeymoon and more like taking up residence inside the crater of a dormant volcano.

He was perfectly polite, but ice-cold. He slept in the room next to mine, separated by a wall of drywall and courteous formalities.

We ate breakfast in silence-he with his head buried in intel files on extortion rings, me buried in art history journals.

He draped me in emeralds that matched my eyes and surrounded me with a security detail that rivaled the President's.

But I knew it was just the calm before the storm.

Holden had vanished without a trace. He had been stripped of his rank, his assets frozen by Alphonse.

And Jaidyn was the wildcard.

I was pruning white roses in the greenhouse of the Woodward estate. The thorns were sharp, snagging against my leather gloves.

"You grip those shears way too hard."

I spun around. Jaidyn was standing in the doorway of the glass structure.

She shouldn't be here. This estate was built like a fortress.

"How did you get in?" I asked, tightening my grip on the shears.

She smiled. Her face was pale, her skin practically translucent. She wore a white sundress that made her look deceptively innocent.

"Holden still has loyal men on the inside," she said softly, taking a step closer. "I just wanted to talk, Eloise. Woman to woman."

"We aren't the same species," I snapped back. "Leave before I call the guards."

"You stole him," she said, her facade of sweetness dropping in an instant. "Alphonse. You know I was working on him before Holden. You know I needed protection."

"Jaidyn, you need a psychiatrist, not a mafia boss."

And then, she lunged.

It happened so suddenly, so clumsily. She threw herself at me-not to hit me, but to grab the shears. We wrestled for a brief moment. For a girl who claimed to be dying of heart failure, she was shockingly strong.

"Let go!" I yelled, shoving her away.

She stumbled and fell backward onto the grass.

Then, she screamed.

It was a bloodcurdling shriek, as if she were being gutted alive.

"My heart! Oh my God, you hit me! You hit me in the chest!"

Before I could even process the absolute absurdity of the situation, the greenhouse door shattered open.

Holden was there.

His eyes were bloodshot, his expression utterly deranged. He didn't even look at me; his eyes were glued to Jaidyn, curled up on the ground.

"She tried to kill me!" Jaidyn sobbed, pointing a trembling finger at me. "She knows about my condition! She punched me right in the heart!"

"No," I said, taking a step back. "Holden, look at her. She's faking it."

Holden didn't look at her. He turned to me with a look of pure, searing hatred.

"You monster!" he spat.

"Holden, this is suicide," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady despite the trembling in my hands. "You are on Alphonse's territory. If you lay a hand on me..."

"Alphonse stole you," Holden said, stalking toward me. "He stole my life, he stole my position. And now you're trying to kill the only thing I have left?"

Two masked men filed in behind him. Rogue soldiers. Traitors who had chosen loyalty to the Don's brother over the Godfather himself.

"Grab her," Holden ordered.

I raised the shears. "Back off."

Holden walked right up to me, ignoring the makeshift weapon in my hand, and backhanded me across the face.

The metallic taste of copper flooded my mouth. I dropped to my knees, the shears clattering onto the walkway.

"You're going to save her, Eloise," Holden whispered, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back. "You want to kill her? Fine. You can give her your life instead."

He dragged me out of the greenhouse. I kicked, I screamed, but the sedative needle one of his men plunged into my neck worked fast.

The last thing I saw was Jaidyn standing up, brushing herself off, and watching me with a twisted smirk.