Shattered Vows: The Mob Wife's Revenge

My husband was the Don of New York, and for ten years, I was his perfect trophy wife. I designed his buildings, kept his secrets, and stood by his side as the envy of the city.

But the moment his mistress marched into my casino with a secret son, my decade of loyalty meant nothing.

The boy demanded my grandmother's bracelet-which was dangling from his wrist. When I reached to take back what was mine, Emilio didn't defend me.

He shoved me.

Hard.

I crashed backward into a wall of shattered glass. While I lay bleeding on the marble floor I had hand-picked, losing our unborn child, he didn't even look at me.

He was on his knees, wrapping his suit jacket around another woman's son to shield him from the debris.

In the hospital, the cruelty only worsened.

"It was an accident, Elana. Leo was scared."

He dismissed the death of our baby as collateral damage. He had given my family heirloom to his bastard child and chose them over me without hesitation.

I realized then that the Omertà-our sacred code of silence-was a lie. He had built a warm, loving shadow family while I was just a useful decoration waiting in a cold mansion.

He wanted to bury me in that life forever. So, I decided to give him a funeral.

I staged my suicide off the cliffs of the estate, letting the freezing ocean swallow Elana Thomas.

Now, everyone thinks the Don's wife is dead.

But in Zurich, a new woman named Elena is very much alive, and she's coming back to burn his empire to the ground.

Chapter 1

Elana POV:

The moment my husband shoved me into a wall of shattered glass to save another woman's child, I didn't just lose my baby.

I lost the decade of silence I'd sold my soul for.

There was no warning.

One second, I was the envy of New York, standing in the center of the Crimson Lotus Casino.

The next, I was bleeding out on the marble floor I had hand-picked in Italy, watching the man I worshipped turn his back on me.

It had started as the perfect night.

The kind of night that usually ends with champagne and sex, not ambulances and divorce lawyers.

I stood beneath the crystal chandelier, smoothing the silk of my emerald gown.

This building was my design.

Every arch, every pillar, every hidden exit had been drawn by my hand.

It was the ultimate legitimate facade for the Thomas crime family.

And I was the ultimate legitimate wife.

Emilio Thomas stood across the room.

He was conversing with a senator, but his dark eyes remained fixed on me.

He looked every inch a king.

He was the Capo dei Capi. The Boss of Bosses.

He had killed men with his bare hands for simply looking at me the wrong way.

Or so I thought.

The air shifted.

The heavy oak doors swung open-not for a guest, but for an intruder.

Hayden Cleveland walked in.

She wasn't wearing emerald silk.

She was wearing a dress that screamed for attention, towing a small boy by the hand.

The room went silent.

In our world, you don't interrupt the Don.

Hayden didn't care.

She marched straight up to Emilio.

She thrust the boy, Leo, toward him.

Then she whispered something in Emilio's ear.

I saw Emilio's face change.

The mask of the cold, calculated Don slipped.

He looked... panicked.

Then the boy shouted.

His voice was high and clear, cutting through the jazz music like a knife.

"Why did she steal my daddy?"

He pointed a small finger right at me.

The crowd gasped.

I froze.

My eyes traveled from his angry little face to his wrist.

There was a diamond bracelet dangling from his arm.

It was too big for him.

It was a custom piece.

The links were shaped like laurel leaves.

It was the twin to the necklace currently resting against my throat.

Emilio had told me the bracelet was lost in transit from the jeweler.

He lied.

He had given my family heirloom to a mistress's child.

The betrayal hit me harder than a bullet.

I didn't think.

I just moved.

I walked toward the boy.

I needed that bracelet.

It was mine. It belonged to my grandmother.

"Give that to me," I whispered, reaching out.

My hand was shaking.

The boy flinched.

Emilio reacted on instinct.

His instinct was to protect his blood.

He shoved me.

Hard.

He didn't check what was behind me.

I stumbled back in my heels.

My spine collided with the massive glass sculpture I had commissioned for the opening.

The crash was deafening.

Glass rained down like jagged hail.

I hit the floor.

Pain exploded in my lower back, but then a sharper, deeper cramp seized my abdomen.

I gasped, trying to breathe, but the air was thick with dust and shock.

I looked up.

Emilio wasn't looking at me.

He was on his knees, wrapping his suit jacket around the boy, shielding him from the debris.

"Leo, are you okay?" he asked frantically.

He didn't ask me.

He didn't look at the blood spreading across the white marble beneath my hips.

"Emilio," I choked out.

He didn't hear me.

Or he chose not to.

The guests were screaming now.

Someone shouted for a doctor.

I felt a warm, sticky wetness soaking my thighs.

I knew what it was.

I looked at the ceiling I had designed.

I realized then that Omertà-our sacred code of silence-was nothing but a joke.

He promised to protect me.

He promised I was the only one.

As the darkness crept in at the edges of my vision, I saw Hayden smiling.

Emilio was holding her son.

And I was dying on the floor, alone.

Elana POV:

The ceiling of the hospital room was stark, unforgiving white.

Not the expensive, creamy white of the casino marble I was used to.

It was the sterile, cheap white of a place where people come to die.

I tried to sit up.

Agony ripped through my core, forcing a ragged gasp from my dry throat.

My hand drifted instinctively to my stomach.

It was flat.

Hollow.

The doctor had already told me.

"Spontaneous abortion due to trauma," he had said.

Trauma.

That was a polite word for "your husband chose his bastard son over you."

The door clicked opened.

Emilio walked in.

He looked exhausted. His tie was loose, his hair in disarray.

Usually, this disheveled look made my heart race.

Now, it just made me feel cold.

He stopped at the foot of the bed.

He didn't come to the side to hold my hand.

"Elana," he said, his voice rough with fatigue.

I just stared at him.

"It was an accident," he said.

He wasn't apologizing. He was explaining.

"Leo was scared. I reacted. I didn't mean for you to fall."

"I didn't fall, Emilio. You pushed me."

He flinched visibly.

"I will make it up to you," he said, shifting his weight uncomfortably. "We can try again. When you're healed."

Healed.

As if this were simply a broken bone.

He checked his watch.

"Who is he?" I asked. My voice was raspy, foreign to my own ears.

"Nobody," Emilio said quickly. Too quickly. "Just... a mistake from the past. I'm handling it."

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out.

His face softened.

I knew that look.

It was the look he used to give me when we were dating.

"I have to take this," he said. "Family business."

"I am your family," I whispered.

He didn't hear me. He was already walking out the door.

He left me alone in the silence.

I didn't cry.

I think I had bled all my emotions out on the casino floor.

An hour later, Ayla came in.

Ayla Guy was the only person in this criminal world I trusted.

She was carrying a massive vase of red roses.

"From him," she said, her lip curling in disgust. "And some herbal soup his mother sent."

"Take them away," I said.

"The soup?"

"The flowers. Throw them in the trash."

Ayla smiled. It was a grim, sharp smile.

She dumped the expensive bouquet into the waste bin with a satisfying thud.

"Good girl," she said.

I looked out the window.

The sun was shining. It felt insulting.

"He's with her, isn't he?" I asked.

Ayla didn't lie to me.

"He installed them in the penthouse downtown. The one you decorated last year."

I closed my eyes.

The penthouse.

I had picked out the curtains. I had chosen the crib for the nursery we were supposed to use.

Now, his bastard son was sleeping in it.

I started to plan.

Not for revenge. Not yet.

Just for survival.

Emilio came back the next day.

He tried to touch my shoulder.

I flinched away.

"Don't," I said.

"Elana, stop being dramatic," he sighed. "I said I was sorry about the baby."

"It wasn't a baby to you," I said. "It was just a potential heir. And you already have one, don't you?"

He stiffened.

"Leo is handled. He won't be a problem."

"He's wearing my grandmother's bracelet, Emilio."

"I bought him a new one. I'll get yours back."

"Keep it," I said. "It's tainted."

He looked at me like he didn't know me.

Maybe he didn't.

I was the perfect Mob Wife.

I smiled for the cameras. I ignored the lipstick on his collar. I designed his money-laundering fronts.

But the glass had cut deeper than skin.

It had cut the strings that made me his puppet.

"I want to go home," I said.

"Good," he nodded. "The estate is ready."

"No," I said. "Not the estate. The lake house."

"That's too far," he frowned. "I can't protect you there."

"You did a great job protecting me at the casino," I said flatly.

He clenched his jaw.

He didn't argue.

He walked out again.

He left his jacket on the chair.

I saw a drawing sticking out of the pocket.

It was a stick figure drawing of a man and a boy holding hands.

It was signed in shaky crayon: 'Leo'.

I stared at it until my vision blurred.

I didn't rip it up.

I just lay back on the pillows and waited for the darkness to take me.

Elana POV

Recovery is a slow, boring hell.

I was stuck in the hospital bed, my fingers trembling as I scrolled through a phone Ayla had smuggled in for me. My official phone was monitored by Emilio's men, tapped and tracked to ensure I remained the perfect, oblivious wife.

But this one was a burner. Untraceable.

I typed in the name Ayla had whispered to me earlier.

Hayden Cleveland.

Her profile was public. Of course it was. She wanted to be seen.

The first photo was from yesterday. It was a picture of a man's hand holding a child's hand.

I knew that hand.

I knew the jagged white scar on the thumb from a knife fight in 2018. I knew the heavy gold Rolex; I had bought it for him for our second anniversary.

The caption read: Finally whole. FamilyFirst.

Bile rose in my throat, but I forced myself to keep looking. I scrolled down. There were photos going back five years.

Vacations in Aspen. Weekends in Miami. Dates stamped on the photos like evidence in a crime scene.

I opened my calendar app, cross-referencing the dates with a sickening precision.

January 14th, 2020. Aspen. Emilio had told me he was in a sit-down with the Russian mob in Chicago.

August 5th, 2021. Miami. He said he was handling a shipment at the docks.

He wasn't working. He was playing house.

He was building a shadow family while I sat alone in our empty mansion, waiting for him to come home so I could warm his dinner.

Then I saw it. In a photo dated three years ago, wrapped around her wrist.

The Thomas family filigree bracelet. The one meant for the Don's wife. The one he claimed was being "cleaned" at the jeweler's.

Ayla sat in the chair next to me, pretending to read a magazine, but her eyes were fixed on my face.

"Did you know?" I asked.

Ayla looked up. She saw the screen, and her expression tightened.

"I heard rumors," she said softly. "About a mistress. Not about the kid. Not until the gala."

"He told me it was too dangerous to have children," I said, my voice sounding hollow, like it belonged to a ghost. "He said his enemies would use them against him."

"He lied," Ayla said.

"He protected Leo," I whispered, the realization settling over me like a shroud. "He kept them hidden. He kept them safe."

"And he put you on display," Ayla finished.

I was the facade. The beautiful, talented wife to show the world that Emilio Thomas was a legitimate businessman. I was the shield.

Hayden and Leo were the heart.

Rage is usually hot. But this wasn't rage. This was ice. It was a cold, numbing realization that my entire adult life was a fiction.

The door opened.

Emilio walked in, looking every bit the doting husband. He was holding a box of chocolates.

"I thought you might want something sweet," he said.

He looked guilty. Or perhaps just inconveniently burdened.

Good.

"When did you give her the bracelet?" I asked.

I didn't look at the chocolates. I kept my eyes locked on his tie.

Emilio froze. "Elana, please. Not now."

"When?"

"Three years ago," he muttered, avoiding my gaze. "It was her birthday. I didn't have anything else prepared."

He gave my heritage away because he was too lazy to shop for his mistress.

"Get out," I said.

"Elana, I'm your husband. I'm the Don. You don't order me-"

"I said get out!" I screamed.

I grabbed the heavy crystal water pitcher from the bedside table and threw it with every ounce of strength I had left.

It smashed against the wall next to his head, showering him in glass and water.

Emilio looked shocked, flinching back as if I had pulled a gun.

I never raised my voice. I never threw things. I was the calm one. The Omertà.

"We are done, Emilio," I said, my chest heaving. "I am not your wife anymore. I am just a liability."

He stepped forward, his shock hardening into arrogance. "You are mine. You will always be mine. You don't get to leave the family."

"Watch me," I hissed.

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he straightened his wet jacket, regaining his composure.

"You're hysterical," he said coldly. "Hormones. We will discuss this when you are rational."

He walked out.

He thought he still controlled me. He thought I was still the girl who abandoned her architecture scholarship in Zurich to marry the bad boy.

He was wrong.

That girl died on the casino floor.

I looked at the trash can where the roses were rotting. I picked up the box of chocolates and dropped them into the bin with a dull thud.

Then I looked at Ayla.

"I need to die," I said.

Ayla didn't blink. She didn't ask why. She didn't try to talk me out of it.

"Okay," she said, closing her magazine. "How do we do it?"