The Don's Regret: She Saved His Life

On our fifth anniversary, instead of a ring, I gave Elena a death sentence.

I believed her father killed mine. So, I spent five years making her fall in love with me just to break her.

I replaced her with Sofia, the woman I thought donated her kidney to save me.

I stripped Elena of her dignity, forced her to crawl over hot coals, and locked her in a freezing cellar until her artificial heart gave out.

She died alone in the mud, pulling the plug on her own life to escape me.

It was only when I saw her body on the autopsy table that I found the truth.

Sofia's skin was flawless. It was Elena who had the scar.

Elena gave me her kidney. Elena saved me while I destroyed her.

Broken by the truth, I drove a knife into my own chest to join her in hell.

But I didn't die. I woke up ten years in the past, back in high school.

I thought God gave me a second chance to fix it. I saved her father. I cleared the path for our love.

I walked toward her in the school courtyard, ready to be the hero she deserved.

But she didn't look at me with love.

She looked at me with absolute, freezing terror.

I wasn't the only one who remembered the previous life.

Chapter 1

I was smoothing the red silk of the dress Dante had bought me for our fifth anniversary when the door to my penthouse burst open.

The man I loved walked in, a gun pressed to my father's temple.

"Dante?" I whispered, the name dying in my throat.

Dante Vitiello, the Capo of the New York families, the man who ruled the underworld with an iron fist and a heart I foolishly thought belonged to me, didn't look at me.

His eyes, usually warm like melted whiskey, were now two chips of absolute zero. Dead. Empty.

"Happy anniversary, Elena," he said.

His voice was devoid of humanity.

He shoved my father, Dr. Antonio Rossi, onto the Persian rug. My father-a man who had spent his life saving others-was trembling, his hands zip-tied behind his back, his face a mask of abject terror.

"Please," my father sobbed, curling into himself. "Dante, don't do this. She knows nothing."

"That makes it better," Dante replied.

He uncocked the hammer of his pistol. The metallic *click* echoed like a thunderclap in the silent room.

"Ignorance is a luxury I'm taking away."

He strode over to me. I stood frozen, my hands hovering uselessly over the delicate fabric of my dress. He reached out, his large hand seizing the neckline.

*Riiip.*

The sound was violent, tearing through the air. The silk shredded from my collarbone to my waist, exposing my bra, exposing the jagged scars on my chest, and exposing the battery pack strapped to my side that kept my blood flowing.

"Dante!" I screamed, crossing my arms to cover myself.

"Look at him," Dante commanded. He grabbed my jaw, his fingers digging in like steel talons, forcing my face toward my father. "Look at the man who killed my father."

The world tilted on its axis. "What?"

"Ten years ago. The surgery," Dante spat the words, venom coating every syllable. "He let the Don die on the table. He broke Omertà. He took my father, and in return, I took five years of your life to make you fall in love with me, just so I could break you."

It wasn't a romance. It was a long con.

Every kiss, every touch, every whispered 'I love you' was a bullet he had been saving for this exact moment.

My mother wandered into the room then. Her mind, eaten away by dementia, left her smiling vacantly, clutching a stuffed rabbit. "Antonio? Is that you?"

"Open the balcony doors," Dante ordered his men.

"No!" I lunged for him, but a guard caught me by the arms, wrenching me back. "Dante, she's sick! She doesn't know what she's doing!"

Dante didn't move. He stood like a statue as the glass doors slid open, letting in the howling wind of the city night.

My mother, confused by the sudden roar of the wind and the lights below, walked toward the brightness of the street. She didn't see the danger. She walked past the threshold, disoriented by the gale.

She went right over the edge.

I didn't see her fall. I only heard the screech of tires and the sickening, wet thud of a delivery truck hitting a body three stories down.

"Maria!" my father screamed-a sound of pure, animal agony.

He looked at Dante, then at me. His eyes were shattered glass.

"I can't let you pay for my sins, Elena."

My father stood up. He ran. Not toward the door, but toward the open balcony.

"Dad, no!"

He didn't hesitate. He vaulted over the railing to join my mother.

I collapsed. My knees hit the floor, but I couldn't feel the impact. I couldn't feel anything except the mechanical *whir-click-whir* of the LVAD pump attached to my heart.

My artificial heart.

Dante stood over me, a titan of vengeance. He checked his watch, indifferent to the carnage.

"You have a defective heart, Elena," he said, looking down at me like I was a stain on his shoe. "My doctors tell me that without the transplant you were supposed to get, that machine will fail in seven days."

He crouched down. His cologne-sandalwood and gunpowder-filled my senses, choking me.

"Seven days," he whispered against my ear. "I intend to make every second feel like a century."

The door opened again.

A woman walked in. She was beautiful, glowing with health, holding onto Dante's arm as he stood up. Sofia Moretti.

"Is it done?" she asked, her voice like honey laced with arsenic.

Dante wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. "Yes. Elena, meet Sofia. My fiancée. And the woman who gave me her kidney when I was dying three years ago. The woman who actually saved me."

It was a lie.

I opened my mouth to scream the truth, to tell him *I* was the one who lay on that table, *I* was the one who ruined my heart to save his kidneys. But the grief choked me, sealing my lips.

"Welcome to hell, Elena," Dante said.

The Vitiello estate kitchen was a sprawling expanse of stainless steel and cold marble, a barren landscape that mirrored the man who owned it.

I wasn't the mistress of the house anymore. I was the help.

"Too hot," Sofia declared, pushing the bowl of soup away.

It skidded across the counter before tipping over the edge and shattering on the floor.

Scalding tomato bisque splattered onto my bare legs. The heat was searing, but I didn't flinch. Inside, I was too numb to care.

"Clean it up," Dante commanded. He sat at the head of the island, reading a newspaper, not even glancing at the burn turning my skin an angry, blistered red.

I got down on my knees.

My LVAD bag bumped against my hip, the heavy battery pack dragging down the waistband of the maid's uniform I had been forced into.

*Whir-click-whir.*

It was the only sound in the room besides the scraping of ceramic shards.

"You missed a spot," Sofia said.

She stood up, her high heel coming down hard on my hand.

I gasped, biting my lip until copper filled my mouth. She ground her heel into my knuckles, twisting it for maximum pain.

"Dante," she whined, turning to him with wide, innocent eyes. "She's looking at me like she wants to kill me."

Dante looked up sharply. He saw his fiancée-the woman he believed had saved his life-being glared at by the daughter of his father's murderer.

He rose, crossed the distance in two predatory strides, and drove his boot into my ribs.

The air left my lungs in a violent rush. I curled into a ball, clutching my side where the tube entered my abdomen. Agony exploded, white and blinding.

"Don't you ever look at her with disrespect," Dante growled.

He grabbed me by the hair, dragging me across the floor. "You need to cool off."

He dragged me through the hallways, past the judgmental stares of his ancestors' portraits, down into the basement. He kicked open the heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker-The Cooler.

He hurled me inside.

I skidded across the frosted metal floor, hitting a hanging carcass of beef. The cold hit me instantly. It wasn't just cold; it was a physical assault. My circulation was already poor because of the pump. Cold was dangerous. It thickened the blood. It made the machine work harder.

"Dante," I chattered, my teeth clashing together. "The battery... the cold drains it..."

"Good," he said, his hand on the door handle. "Think about your father while you freeze."

The door slammed shut. Darkness swallowed me.

I huddled in the corner, pulling my knees to my chest in a futile attempt to conserve heat. The cold bit into my bones.

As hypothermia set in, reality blurred. I saw Dante from three years ago, sitting by my hospital bed, holding my hand, promising me forever.

*"I'll burn the world for you, Elena."*

Now, he was the fire, and I was the witch burning at the stake.

Time lost its meaning. My fingers turned blue. The *whir-click-whir* of my heart pump began to slow, the rhythm struggling against the thickening blood.

*Beep. Beep. Beep.*

The low battery alarm.

I closed my eyes, welcoming the silence.

Abruptly, the door was wrenched open. Harsh light flooded in. A guard stood there, looking terrified.

"Boss says bring her up. Sofia cut her finger. She needs a bandage."

He dragged me out. I couldn't walk; my legs were blocks of ice. He dumped me in the hallway.

Dante was there, carefully wrapping a small band-aid around Sofia's index finger, then kissing the tip tenderly.

He looked over at me, shivering violently on the floor, my lips blue, my skin gray.

"She's alive?" he asked the guard, sounding disappointed.

"Barely, Boss."

Dante turned back to Sofia. "Let's go to the hospital just to be safe, *amore*. A cut can get infected."

He stepped over me.

I lay there on the cold tile, watching his back retreat. I pulled my phone from my pocket with stiff, trembling fingers. The screen lit up in the dim hallway.

Six days left.

The New York rain was a freezing slurry of ice and gray slush, a biting cold that soaked instantly through the thin fabric of my dress.

We were at the cemetery. Ahead, the Vitiello family mausoleum loomed against the slate sky, a dark palace for the dead.

"Get out," Dante ordered from the climate-controlled warmth of his armored SUV.

I stepped onto the wet asphalt, my legs trembling. My body was a tapestry of bruises from the kitchen, my lungs rattling with the fluid congestion of pneumonia earned in the walk-in cooler.

"Your father denied my father his life," Dante said, rolling down the window just an inch to let his voice carry over the wind. "You will pay respects."

He pointed to the path leading to the crypt. It wasn't paved. It was covered in crushed gravel and, for today, scattered with hot coals he had ordered his men to lay down. A 'Walk of Fire'-an old Sicilian penance.

"Crawl," he said.

I looked at him, panic seizing my chest. "Dante, please. My machine..."

"Crawl, or I turn off the battery right now."

He held up the remote.

I dropped to my knees. The sharp gravel sliced through my skin instantly, mingling with the biting cold of the rain. The heat from the coals radiated up, singeing the hem of my dress before I had even moved.

I began to move.

Every inch was agony. The stones gouged. The coals seared. I could smell the acrid scent of my own skin scorching. Blood mixed with the rain, leaving a diluted red trail behind me.

Dante drove the car slowly beside me, matching my torturous pace. Sofia was in the passenger seat, laughing at something on her phone. She held a cup of hot chocolate, the steam rising mockingly in the cold air.

"Look, Dante," she giggled, gesturing vaguely at me. "She looks like a dog."

Dante didn't laugh. He just watched, his face a mask of stone. "Dogs are loyal. She is the daughter of a traitor."

I kept crawling.

*Whir-click-whir.*

The machine embedded in my chest was my only companion. I focused on the mechanical rhythm. If it stopped, I stopped.

I reached the grave. My knees were shredded meat. My palms were blistered burns.

Dante got out of the car. He walked over to me, grabbed the back of my neck in a vice grip, and slammed my forehead against the cold marble of his father's tombstone.

*Crack.*

Warm blood trickled down my face, mixing with the rain and blinding one eye.

"Apologize," he hissed into my ear.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed into the stone. "I'm sorry."

"Louder."

"I'M SORRY!" I screamed, my voice tearing raw through my throat.

Dante released me. I slumped against the grave, a broken doll discarded in the mud.

"Get up," he said, wiping his hand on a silk handkerchief. "We have a party to plan."

I looked up at him through one swollen eye, vision blurring. "Party?"

"Sofia's birthday is coming up," he said, wrapping an arm around Sofia as she stepped out of the car, stepping delicately over my blood in her designer heels. "She wants a grand celebration. A wedding theme."

My heart-the metaphorical one, the soul I still possessed despite the plastic pump in my chest-shattered.

"But..." I whispered, my voice barely audible over the rain. "We were supposed to get married on her birthday."

"Exactly," Dante said, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "You already did the planning. The flowers, the venue, the music. It's all ready. We'll just change the name on the card."

He opened the car door for Sofia.

"You can walk back," he said.

They drove away, taillights fading into the mist. I lay on my parents' grave, the rain washing away my blood, realizing that my dream wedding was now the celebration of my torture.