No Tears For My Cold Mafia Husband

On our first wedding anniversary, my husband walked out the door.

Not for business. For her.

I left the divorce papers on the table, my wedding ring next to his untouched champagne, and I disappeared into the night.

For a year, I watched Dominic Rossi-the ruthless Underboss of the New York syndicate-drop everything the moment his phone buzzed with another crisis from Sophia. A panic attack. A sleepless night. A lie. I was his wife, the woman he'd promised to cherish, but I was never his priority.

So I chose myself.

Now he's tearing the city apart trying to find me. But I'm already gone-building a new life with a job that's mine, an apartment that's mine, and a name that doesn't belong to him. The girl who waited in that penthouse is dead. The woman who walked out isn't looking back.

When Dominic finally corners me, I see the cracks in his armor. He says he's sorry. He says he loves me. He says he finally understands.

But some words are too late, and some promises can't be fixed.

He made me guess for a year. Now it's his turn to wonder if I'll ever come back.

A heart-wrenching, standalone mafia romance about a woman who refused to be second choice, and the man who learned too late what he'd lost.

Chapter 1

Lillian's POV

On the night of our first wedding anniversary, my husband received a text and walked out the door.

I had spent three hours getting ready. The black dress he'd bought me in Milan. The pearl earrings his mother had passed down. The champagne chilling in the silver bucket. Dominic Rossi had booked the Avalon Theatre for a private screening-just the two of us, like he'd promised when he slid the ring onto my finger twelve months ago.

Then his second phone buzzed.

I knew that phone. Matte black, untraceable. It never rang with business. It only ever rang for one person.

He glanced at the screen, and I watched his face change. The hard lines of the Underboss-the man who commanded three hundred soldiers and controlled half the East Coast's underground trade-dissolved into something frantic.

"She's on the roof again," he said, already reaching for his jacket. "Her detail says she won't come down."

I didn't ask who. I knew.

Sophia.

"Is she threatening to jump?"

"She's having an episode." He wouldn't meet my eyes. "I need to go."

"Dominic." I stood. "It's our anniversary."

He crossed the room in three strides, cupped my face, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. The gesture was mechanical. Practiced.

"I'll make it right," he murmured. "Late supper at Vianello's. Wait for me."

Then he was gone. The heavy oak door clicked shut, and the silence that followed was louder than any gunshot.

I stood there for a long time, staring at the door.

Then I walked to the sideboard, pulled the divorce papers from my satchel, and placed them beside his untouched champagne flute.

My wedding ring followed. The diamond caught the candlelight, throwing small rainbows across the legal documents.

I'd had the papers drawn up three months ago. I'd been waiting. For a sign. A breaking point. A moment when I'd finally know it was time.

This was that moment.

I grabbed the suitcase I'd packed two weeks ago and walked out.

Four hours later, I was in a cheap hotel room in a part of the city Dominic Rossi wouldn't be caught dead in. The radiator clanked. The wallpaper peeled at the corners. It was perfect.

My phone lit up. Rachel-my best friend, the only person in the Rossi organization I trusted.

She'd sent a photo.

The image was grainy, taken through a restaurant window, but the subjects were unmistakable. Dominic at a candlelit table at Vianello's, the most exclusive Italian restaurant in the city. Across from him, laughing with her head thrown back, was Sophia.

He hadn't been rushing her to a clinic. He hadn't been talking her off a ledge.

He'd taken her to the exact anniversary dinner he'd promised me.

Rachel followed up with a text: *"I'm so sorry, Lil. I followed them. They've been there two hours."*

I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for a year.

*"It's fine,"* I typed back. *"I left."*

Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

*"What do you mean, you left?"*

*"Divorce papers are on the table. I'm at the Royalton on 47th."*

*"I'm coming over."*

I tossed the phone onto the sagging mattress and walked to the window. Outside, the city glittered-all those lights, all those lives, and none of them belonged to Dominic Rossi.

For the first time in a year, I could breathe.

Dominic's POV

The call came while Sophia was laughing at one of my jokes.

I hadn't wanted to take her to Vianello's. But after I'd talked her down from the roof-again-she'd been shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Her fingers were blue from the cold. The family doctor had sedated her last time, and she'd spent three days in a fog. I'd thought a

Lillian's POV

I met Dominic Rossi three years ago at a charity gala I had no business attending.

I was twenty-four, working as a junior curator at a small gallery in Brooklyn. My boss had scored two invitations to the Rossi Foundation's annual fundraiser and dragged me along because her husband had bailed at the last minute.

I'd known who Domini