Runaway Mistress: The Mafia Boss Begs On His Knees

The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in at four degrees below zero.

Ten minutes ago, I was the woman Dante Moretti promised to burn the world for.

Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir.

Dante didn't just lock me in. He looked at me with eyes devoid of warmth and said, "Evidence says otherwise."

He chose the lie of his arranged wife, Sofia, over my truth.

For months, I endured the price of loving the Underboss.

I watched him marry Sofia in a grand ceremony to secure a family alliance.

I let him force me onto a table to drain my blood to save her life when she was injured.

I took twenty lashes from his family's enforcers, all while he stood by and watched, claiming it was necessary to "protect" me.

He told me to wait. He told me the marriage was a sham.

But when I finally escaped and he came chasing after me, revealing that Sofia was a fraud and he wanted me back, I didn't feel relief.

I felt nothing.

Even after he threw his body over mine to save me from a collapsing building, taking a jagged shard of timber through his chest, I couldn't forgive him.

In the hospital, his mother handed me his journal.

It was filled with entries about his undying love for me, written on the very same days he allowed me to be tortured.

"Tell him the debt is paid," I told his mother as I handed the book back.

"He saved my life. I saved his child. We are even."

I turned my back on the ICU and walked out into the rain.

Dante Moretti might have been willing to die for me, but he never knew how to live for me.

Chapter 1

The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in with the hanging carcasses of cattle.

But the mechanical click of the lock hurt less than the look in Dante Moretti's eyes just before the darkness swallowed me.

Ten minutes ago, I was the woman he'd promised to burn the world for.

Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir.

My breath formed plumes of crystallized ice in the air, the temperature hovering dangerously at four degrees below zero.

I wrapped my arms around my shivering body, the thin silk dress I had worn for the christening offering no protection against the biting cold of the Moretti family's favorite torture chamber.

This was the price of loving the Underboss of the New York outfit.

Dante Moretti wasn't just a man.

He was a force of nature, a predator in a bespoke Italian suit who ruled the city's underworld with a blood-soaked fist.

Three years ago, he had knelt on cobblestones for three days, taking the Discipline from his father's enforcers just to keep me-a fishmonger's daughter-by his side.

He had sworn that the arranged marriage to Sofia Genovese was nothing but ink on paper, a strategic alliance to end a decade-long war.

He promised me her bed would remain cold.

He promised me he would never touch her.

But promises in this world are cheaper than the bullets they use to enforce them.

The heavy latch on the door groaned, and a sliver of harsh, artificial light cut through the dark.

Dante stepped in.

He didn't rush to warm me.

He didn't pull me into the chest that I used to fall asleep on.

He stood there, his face a mask of cold marble, looking at me like I was a stranger who had trespassed on holy ground.

"Did you touch him, Elena?"

His voice was devoid of the warmth that used to whisper my name in the dark. It was a flat line.

I shivered, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely form words.

"I would never hurt a child, Dante. You know me."

"Evidence says otherwise," he said, his tone lethal.

He stepped closer, looming over me, the scent of his expensive cologne mixing nauseatingly with the metallic smell of frozen blood.

"Sofia says you handed him the bottle. Now my son is heaving blood."

"Your son," I whispered, the words tasting like ash.

The son that wasn't supposed to exist.

The son born from the marriage that was supposed to be a sham.

He had broken every vow he made to me to create that child, and now he was breaking me to protect it.

"Tell me the truth," he demanded, grabbing my chin with a grip that bruised.

"The truth is that you are a liar," I said, staring into the dark eyes I once adored.

His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering dangerously in his cheek.

He released me with a shove that sent me stumbling back against a frozen side of beef.

"Stay here until you remember your place."

He turned his back on me.

The door slammed again.

I didn't scream this time.

I slid down the cold wall, the frost biting into my skin, and I realized that the Dante I loved had died the moment he signed that marriage contract.

I waited for an hour, or maybe a lifetime, until the door opened again.

It wasn't Dante.

It was Don Lorenzo's guards.

They dragged me out, my limbs stiff and unresponsive, and threw me onto the concrete floor of the warehouse office.

Don Lorenzo sat behind his desk, looking at me with the same disdain one would reserve for a stain on a rug.

"You are a distraction, Elena," the Don said, lighting a cigar.

"My son is weak when you are near."

I pulled myself up to my knees, my body screaming in pain.

"Then let me go," I said, my voice hoarse.

"Let me leave New York. Let me leave him."

The Don raised an eyebrow, surprised by my surrender.

He expected me to beg for Dante.

He didn't realize I was begging for myself.

"Two weeks," the Don said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

"We will arrange your exit. You will disappear, and Dante will forget he ever lowered himself to love a fish girl."

I nodded, accepting my exile.

I was walked back to the estate, not as a guest, but as a prisoner.

I entered the main living room and saw them.

Dante was sitting on the velvet sofa, holding his daughter, while Sofia leaned against his shoulder, looking at him with adoring eyes.

It was a picture of domestic perfection.

It was a picture that cut deeper than the cold in the freezer.

Sofia looked up and saw me, a smirk playing on her lips.

She stood up, handing the baby to a nanny, and walked over to me.

She raised her wrist, flaunting the emerald bracelet that had belonged to my mother.

Dante had given it to her.

He had given my mother's heirloom, the only thing I had left of her, to the woman he swore meant nothing.

"That is mine," I said, my voice trembling with rage.

Sofia laughed, a cruel, tinkling sound.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law, fish girl."

I reached for her wrist, desperate to reclaim the last piece of my dignity.

Sofia shrieked, stumbling back as if I had struck her.

Dante was there in an instant.

He didn't ask what happened.

He didn't look at the tears in my eyes.

He saw his wife stumbling, and he reacted.

He shoved me.

Hard.

I flew backward, my head cracking against the sharp edge of the marble fireplace.

Pain exploded in my skull, and the world tilted sideways.

Warm blood trickled down my neck.

Dante didn't check on me.

He scooped Sofia up in his arms, cooing at her, asking if she was hurt.

He walked out of the room, carrying her, stepping over my legs as if I were nothing more than debris.

I lay on the floor, watching his retreating back, and I knew the truth.

The man who promised to protect me from the world had just become the thing I needed protection from.

The overhead fluorescent strips hummed with a frequency that drilled straight into my temples, the light unflattering and harsh as I stared at my reflection in the grime-streaked mirror.

I held the needle steady, my hands trembling only slightly as I forced the tip through the skin of my own forehead.

I didn't have insurance.

And I couldn't use the Moretti family doctor.

That privilege was reserved for the family. Not the mistress.

So, I stitched the wound Dante gave me with a sewing kit I had purchased from a 24-hour pharmacy.

Each tug of the thread was a sharp, stinging reminder of who I was now.

I wasn't the cherished lover.

I was the collateral damage.

The metallic tang of blood in my mouth triggered a memory, pulling my mind back to the Fulton Fish Market, three years ago.

The air had smelled of brine and gutting knives back then, a stark contrast to the scent of Italian silk and gunpowder that always followed Dante Moretti.

He had walked through the blood and slime of the market floor in a three-thousand-dollar suit just to ask me my name.

He didn't care about the filth.

He only saw me.

I remembered the day the rival gang firebombed the stalls.

The explosion had thrown us to the ground, the world turning into fire and noise.

Dante had covered my body with his own, shielding me from the shrapnel and the heat.

His back had been burned, his suit ruined, but he had looked down at me with a smile that eclipsed the sun.

"A life for a life, Elena," he had whispered, wiping soot from my cheek. "You owe me. Forever."

I severed the thread with my teeth, the taste of iron coating my tongue.

The man who took a bomb for me was dead.

The man who had just shoved me into a marble fireplace was alive and well, probably holding Sofia's hand in the VIP suite upstairs.

I walked out of the bathroom, clutching my side where the cold from the industrial freezer still ached in my bones.

Dante was waiting in the corridor.

He looked impeccable, not a hair out of place, untouched by the chaos he had orchestrated.

He saw the fresh bandage on my head, and for a second, his mask slipped.

Regret flashed in his eyes, but he blinked it away instantly, replacing it with a wall of ice.

"You shouldn't have touched her," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

I laughed, a dry, humorless sound that scraped my throat.

"I touched her wrist, Dante. You cracked my skull."

"She is under a lot of stress," he said, stepping closer, closing the distance between us until I could smell his cologne.

"The stress affects the milk. It affects the heir. You know the rules."

"The Plan," I said, mocking the word he used to justify every betrayal.

"Is shoving me part of the Plan too?"

He grabbed my shoulders, his grip tight, possessive.

"Don't do this, Elena. Don't make me the villain."

"You are already the villain," I whispered.

He pulled me against him, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

"It's only you," he breathed against my skin. "It's always been you. Just wait a little longer."

I stood rigid in his arms.

His body heat used to be my sanctuary.

Now, it felt like a cage.

"Soon, it will just be us," he promised, pulling back to look me in the eyes.

He brushed his thumb over the bandage on my forehead, a tender gesture that felt like a lie.

"I have to go back to her. She's hysterical."

"Of course," I said, stepping out of his reach.

"Go to your wife."

He hesitated, looking at me as if he wanted to say more, as if words could fix the hole in my head or the hole in my heart.

"I'll send a guard to drive you home," he said finally.

He turned and walked away, heading toward the elevators that led to the VIP floor.

He didn't look back.

He never looked back anymore.

I watched him go, feeling the phantom weight of his body shielding me from a bomb, and realized that was the true tragedy.

He had saved my life back then only to destroy it slowly now.

"I don't believe in your code anymore, Dante," I whispered to the empty hallway.

I walked toward the exit, leaving the hospital-and the man who broke me-behind.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, vibrating against the dark wood like a warning signal.

I didn't need to look to know who it was.

Sofia.

Every morning at 9 AM, like clockwork, she sent a photo.

Dante pouring coffee. Dante tying his tie. Dante kissing the baby's forehead.

They were digital snapshots of the life I was denied-evidence of everything she had stolen.

Today, however, the photo was different.

It was a close-up of her wrist, adorned with my mother's emerald bracelet.

The caption read: Come get it if you want it.

I stared at the screen until my vision blurred and my grip on the phone turned my knuckles white.

I should have ignored it.

I should have stayed in my room and packed my bags for the exile the Don had promised me.

But that bracelet was the only thing my mother left me before cancer took her.

It was my history, my last tether to a world where I was loved, and Sofia was wearing it like a trophy of war.

I walked to the VIP suite in the main estate, my legs feeling heavy as lead.

The guards let me in without a word. They knew the hierarchy, and they knew I was at the bottom of it.

Sofia was sitting on the chaise lounge, looking like a queen holding court.

She smiled when she saw me, touching the bracelet with a perfectly manicured finger.

"Look at the stray dog, coming to beg at the table," she mocked.

"Give it back, Sofia," I said, my voice steady despite the violent pounding in my chest. "It doesn't belong to you."

She stood up, smoothing the front of her silk dress.

"Everything Dante touches belongs to me now. Including this."

She unclasped the bracelet and held it dangling over the marble floor.

"Kneel," she said.

I froze.

"Kneel and admit you are nothing, and I will give it to you."

I looked at the emeralds catching the light.

I thought of my mother's tired smile in her final days.

Slowly, painfully, I lowered myself to my knees.

I swallowed my pride, tasting bile at the back of my throat.

"Please," I whispered.

Sofia laughed, her eyes gleaming with pure malice.

"Oops."

She opened her hand.

The bracelet hit the floor.

The sound of gold snapping and emeralds shattering echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.

I stared at the ruins of my inheritance, paralyzed.

Before I could move, the heavy oak door opened.

Dante walked in, followed closely by his parents, Don Lorenzo and Isabella.

Sofia instantly dropped to the floor, bursting into theatrical tears.

She grabbed her own arm, where a fresh, angry bruise was forming-likely self-inflicted moments before.

"She hurt him!" she screamed, pointing a trembling finger at me.

"She tried to grab the baby! I tried to stop her and she twisted my arm!"

I looked up from the broken remains of my mother's bracelet, stunned.

I hadn't been within ten feet of the child.

Dante looked at Sofia, then at me.

He saw his wife crying. He saw the bruise.

Then, his gaze flickered down.

He saw the broken heirloom on the floor.

He recognized it. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes.

"Get her up," Don Lorenzo barked.

Two guards hauled me to my feet.

"I didn't do it," I said, locking eyes with Dante. "Dante, look at me. I didn't touch him. I came for the bracelet."

Dante looked away.

He stared at the wall, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would crack.

He knew.

Deep down, he had to know.

But admitting I was innocent meant admitting his wife was a monster, and that would destabilize the family alliance.

"The Whip," Isabella said, her voice cold and absolute.

"Twenty lashes. For harming the bloodline."

"No," I gasped, the air leaving my lungs. "Dante, please."

Dante closed his eyes.

He didn't step forward.

He didn't speak in my defense.

"Proceed," he said softly.

The word broke me more than the whip ever could.

He had sanctioned my torture.

I laughed then.

It bubbled up from my chest, a hysterical, broken sound.

I laughed at my own stupidity for believing that love mattered in a room full of monsters.

The guards dragged me out to the courtyard.

They tied my wrists to the iron post, stretching me taut.

I heard the crack of the leather slicing the air before I felt it.

The first lash tore through my shirt and bit into my skin like a branding iron.

I screamed.

I screamed Dante's name.

But as the second, third, and fourth lash fell, my screams turned to silence.

I didn't look for him anymore.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, praying that when I woke up, I wouldn't feel anything at all.