The Mafia Don's Regret: She Is Gone Forever

I carried the first word I had spoken in ten years like a sacred offering, ready to surprise the man who had saved my life.

But through the crack in the study door, I heard Josiah tell his Underboss that I was nothing but a noose around his neck.

"Grace is a burden," he said, his voice cold. "I can't become Don while babysitting a mute ghost. Lexi brings power. Grace brings nothing but silence."

He chose to marry the Mafia Princess for her father's trade routes, dismissing me as wreckage.

But the true betrayal didn't happen in that office. It happened in the woods during an ambush.

With bullets flying and the mud sliding beneath us into a ravine, Josiah had to make a choice.

I was injured, trapped at the bottom. Lexi was screaming on the ridge.

He looked at me, mouthed "I'm sorry," and turned his back.

He hauled Lexi to safety to secure his alliance. He left me to die alone in the freezing mud.

I lay there in the dark, realizing the man who swore a blood oath to protect me had traded my life for a political seat.

He thought the silence would finally swallow me whole.

He was wrong.

I crawled out of that grave and vanished from his world completely.

Three years later, I returned to the city, not as his broken ward, but as a world-renowned artist.

When Josiah showed up at my gallery, looking shattered and begging for forgiveness, I didn't sign.

I looked him dead in the eye and spoke.

"The girl who loved you died in that ravine, Josiah."

Chapter 1

Grace POV

I carried the first word I had spoken in a decade on my tongue like a sacred offering.

It was fragile, ready to be gifted to the man who had saved my life.

But then, through the crack in the door, I heard him tell the Underboss that I was nothing but a noose around his neck.

The therapy room door was ajar, open just a fraction of an inch.

It was enough space for the truth to slip through and slit my throat.

Dr. Evans had just left through the back exit, his face beaming with professional pride because my vocal cords were finally obeying the commands of my brain.

He told me to go surprise Josiah.

He told me the Vitiello heir would be proud.

I had practiced the word for weeks.

*Josiah.*

Just his name.

I wanted it to be the first thing to break the silence that had imprisoned me since the car bomb took my parents and stole my voice when I was eight.

I stood in the hallway of the Vitiello estate, clutching the hem of my dress until my knuckles turned white.

My hands were shaking.

I crept closer to the sliver of light slicing through the gap.

Josiah was there.

He was sitting on the edge of the mahogany desk, stripping down a Glock 19 with the practiced, lethal grace of a man born into blood.

Mark, his second-in-command, was pouring whiskey.

"The Don is losing patience, Jo," Mark said, the glass clinking against the decanter. "He wants the territory expansion finalized, but he's worried about your... distractions."

I smiled.

I was the distraction.

I was the ward he had pulled from the burning wreckage.

I was the girl he swore a blood oath to protect.

I was about to push the door open.

"It's not a distraction, Mark. It's a burden," Josiah corrected, his voice flat.

My hand froze on the wood.

His voice didn't sound like the gentle rumble I heard when he read to me at night.

It was cold.

It was the voice of a Capo in waiting.

"Grace is a chain around my neck," Josiah continued, running an oil-slicked rag down the barrel of the gun. "I can't become a Made Man while I'm babysitting a ghost. The Don thinks I'm soft because I'm tethered to a mute who can't even scream for help."

The air in the hallway vanished.

My lungs pumped, but nothing went in.

"So cut her loose," Mark said, taking a slow sip. "Send her to a facility in Switzerland. Marry Lexi Moretti. Her father controls the ports."

I waited.

I waited for Josiah to punch him.

I waited for him to say that I was family.

Josiah reassembled the slide onto the frame.

*Click-clack.*

"I'm considering it," he said. "Lexi is a headache, but she brings power. Grace... Grace brings nothing but silence."

He laughed.

It was a short, dry sound.

"Sometimes I look at her and I just see the wreckage," he said, inspecting the sights. "I'm tired of looking at wreckage."

I stepped back.

My heels made no sound on the plush carpet.

I was the Ghost, after all.

I touched my throat.

The word *Josiah* was still there, sitting heavy and useless on my tongue.

I swallowed it.

It tasted like ash.

I turned around and walked down the long, empty corridor, passing beneath the portraits of dead men who had killed for loyalty.

I didn't cry.

The tears I had saved for my recovery dried up instantly.

I realized Dr. Evans was wrong.

I wasn't going to speak to Josiah today.

I wasn't going to speak to him ever again.

The Broken Bird he complained about was dead.

She died in that hallway.

And the woman who walked away was someone he had never met.

Grace POV

The Grand Hall smelled of expensive perfume and laundered money.

It was the annual Family Charity Gala.

A polite, glittering way for the Vitiello crime family to wash their blood money in public while the city's elite applauded the performance.

I stood next to my sculpture.

It was a four-foot phoenix rising from a bed of jagged steel shards.

I had spent six months welding it.

My hands were covered in tiny white burns from the torch, scars I refused to hide.

They were proof I was real in a room full of counterfeits.

"It's aggressive," a voice drawled behind me.

I didn't turn.

I recognized the cloying scent of Chanel No. 5 and entitlement immediately.

Alexandria "Lexi" Moretti walked into my line of sight.

She was wearing a red dress that cost more than my parents' life insurance payout.

She gripped her glass of champagne like a weapon.

"Grace," she said, her smile not reaching her eyes. "Still playing with scrap metal? It looks dangerous. Someone might get hurt."

She flicked the wing of my phoenix with a manicured nail.

"Careful," I signed, my movements sharp.

She laughed. "Oh, right. The hands. I forgot you don't use words."

Josiah walked up behind her.

He looked like a king tonight-or perhaps a sacrifice dressed in silk.

Tuxedo, slicked-back hair, the weight of the organization visible in the set of his shoulders.

He put a hand on the small of Lexi's back.

It was a possessive claim, a gesture of ownership.

He didn't look at me.

He looked at my art, and his eyes were flat, devoid of the warmth I used to find there.

"The judges are ready," Josiah said.

Madame Dubois, the French art dealer the Family used to move stolen masterpieces, walked over.

She adjusted her glasses, peering closely at my phoenix.

"Magnificent," she whispered. "The pain... it is palpable. It screams."

She turned to Lexi's entry.

It was a generic marble bust of a Roman soldier.

Technically proficient, but soulless. It looked like something you bought at a high-end furniture store to fill empty space.

"And this," Madame Dubois said politely. "Is very... traditional."

Capo Davies walked into the circle.

He was the judge.

He was also the man who ran the docks Lexi's father controlled.

Davies looked at Josiah.

Josiah looked at the floor, a muscle feathering in his jaw, before his gaze flickered to Lexi.

Lexi leaned into him, whispering something in his ear.

Probably a reminder of the trade routes.

"The winner of this year's grant," Davies announced, his voice booming through the hall, "is Alexandria Moretti. For capturing the strength of our heritage."

Applause rippled through the room.

It was polite, bought applause.

Madame Dubois looked shocked. She started to speak, but a sharp look from Davies silenced her.

Lexi squealed and kissed Josiah on the cheek.

He didn't pull away.

He smiled.

It was the cold, practiced smile of a man closing a deal.

Lexi turned to me, clutching her trophy.

"Maybe next year, sweetie," she said loud enough for the circle to hear. "Although, art really requires a voice to sell it. Broken dolls don't make good salesmen."

The room went quiet.

People watched.

They wanted to see the mute girl cry.

They wanted to see the charity case crumble.

I looked at Josiah.

I waited for the protector.

He took a sip of his drink and looked away.

He chose the trade routes.

He chose the politics.

Something hot and sharp snapped in my chest.

I stepped forward.

I invaded Lexi's personal space.

She flinched, stepping back against Josiah.

I looked her dead in the eye, then shifted my gaze to Josiah.

I didn't sign.

I opened my mouth.

My voice was raspy from disuse, low and rough like gravel grinding together.

"He chose business."

It wasn't a scream.

It was a verdict.

Josiah dropped his glass.

It shattered on the marble floor, champagne exploding like a small bomb.

The sound echoed in the silence of the hall.

I turned my back on them.

I walked out the double doors, leaving the shards of glass and the shards of my hero behind me.

Grace POV

The night air was bitter, slicing through the thin fabric of my dress to bite at my bare arms, but I didn't feel it.

I was burning from the inside out.

I strode toward the estate gardens, my heels sinking into the soft, damp grass with every furious step.

"Grace!"

Footsteps pounded behind me. Heavy. Urgent.

I didn't stop.

A hand clamped onto my elbow, spinning me around.

Josiah.

His face was pale, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and shock.

"You spoke," he breathed, his chest heaving. "Grace, you... you spoke."

I yanked my arm out of his grip with a sharp, violent motion.

I looked at him with the cold indifference of a stranger.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, his voice rising in panic. "Dr. Evans said it could be years. You said that in front of everyone. In front of the Capos."

I stared at him, studying the fear in his eyes.

He wasn't happy I had my voice back.

He wasn't looking at a miracle; he was looking at a liability.

He was worried about the protocol. He was worried I had embarrassed him.

"Say it again," he ordered, desperation leaking into his tone. "Talk to me."

I stayed silent.

My silence was no longer a disability.

It was a weapon.

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing in a tight circle like a caged animal.

"You don't understand the pressure I'm under," he said, turning back to me. "Davies controls the unions. Lexi's father controls the imports. I had to let her win. It's politics, Grace. It's for the Family."

*For the Family.*

The excuse for every sin.

"I did it for us," he said, stepping closer, his voice softening. "To secure my position so I can keep you safe."

I looked down at his wrist.

He was reaching for my hand.

The sleeve of his tuxedo jacket rode up.

He was wearing a Rolex.

Gold. Flashy. Brand new.

Last week, he had been wearing the braided leather bracelet I made him.

The one I had spent three days weaving until my fingers bled.

The one he swore he would never take off because it was his "armor."

It was gone.

Replaced by gold.

Replaced by Lexi.

I looked back up at his eyes.

He saw where I was looking.

He flinched, jerking his sleeve down quickly to hide the evidence.

"She gave it to me tonight," he muttered, unable to hold my gaze. "I couldn't refuse it. It would be an insult."

I took a slow step back.

The protector I loved didn't exist.

He was just a boy playing dress-up in a gangster's suit, terrified of losing his crown.

"We leave for the Summit on Friday," he said, his voice hardening, trying to regain the control he knew he was losing. "The hunting lodge. You're coming."

I shook my head.

"It's not a request," he snapped. "You are my ward. You go where I go. Especially now. I need to know what else you're hiding."

He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him.

His fingers were rough.

"You belong to me, Grace. Don't forget that."

I didn't blink.

I let him see the void in my eyes.

I would go to the Summit.

Not because he ordered me.

But because the hunting lodge was ten miles from the interstate.

It was the perfect place to vanish.

I pulled away from his touch and walked back toward the house.

I didn't look back.

I shed one single tear in the darkness.

It was the last thing he would ever get from me.