The Runaway Wife: Never Forgiving You

My husband, the Mad Prince of the underworld, once burned down a city block just because a rival looked at me wrong.

Now, he forces me to kneel in the freezing New York snow, clad only in thin silk.

In his hand, he holds a tablet controlling my comatose brother's life support, threatening to kill him unless I confess to bullying his new mistress.

To save my brother, I swallow my pride and confess to a crime I didn't commit.

But the stress is too much.

I miscarry our child right there, staining the pristine white snow crimson.

Dante doesn't even blink.

He steps over my bleeding body to comfort his crying mistress, leaving me to scream for our lost baby alone.

He thinks he taught me a lesson.

He forces me to apologize to the woman who mocked me, even as my stitches tear.

He doesn't know that while he was guarding the door to keep doctors out, my brother actually died.

He doesn't know I buried the only family I had left in a pauper's grave while he slept with the woman who framed me.

On our tenth anniversary, he fills the house with lilies, expecting reconciliation.

Instead, I leave the signed divorce papers on the bed, take a handful of grave soil, and vanish into the night.

By the time he realizes the truth, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

Chapter 1

My husband-the man who had once burned down an entire city block simply because a rival looked at me wrong-was now the one forcing me to my knees in the freezing snow, clad in nothing but my silk nightgown.

The New York winter bit into my skin like a thousand tiny needles.

My knees were numb, buried in the white drift of the Vitiello estate courtyard, but I did not shiver.

I dared not shiver.

Dante Vitiello stood above me.

He was the Don of the Vitiello Crime Family, known to the underworld as the Mad Prince for a reason.

He wore a wool coat that cost more than the house I grew up in, looking every inch the reaper the world feared.

He held a tablet in his gloved hand.

The screen glowed, casting a ghostly blue light on his sharp, cruel jawline.

On the screen was a live feed of a hospital room.

My brother, Luca, lay there, the ventilator's rhythmic hiss breathing for him.

A soldier's hand hovered over the power cord of Luca's life support.

"Tell me the truth, Elena," Dante said.

His voice was a low rumble, devoid of the warmth that used to make my blood sing.

"Did you threaten Sofia?"

I looked up at him.

Ten years ago, I had saved his life in an alleyway, fighting just like the rats I used to run with.

He had taken me in.

He had molded me.

He had crowned me his Queen.

Now, he looked at me like I was something he had stepped in.

"I did not touch her," I whispered, my teeth chattering against my will.

Dante tapped the screen.

The soldier on the video feed gripped the plug.

"I will not ask again," Dante said.

He checked his watch.

"Luca has about three minutes of residual oxygen if that plug is pulled."

"Please, Dante," I begged, my pride shattering.

I tried to reach for his leg, but he recoiled as if I were a disease.

"Don't touch me," he spat.

"Confess."

I thought about Sofia.

The woman he brought into our home.

The woman who mocked my street origins at the auction last week.

The woman who claimed I pushed her, when she had tripped over her own vanity.

But the truth did not matter to Dante anymore.

Only she mattered.

And Luca was going to die because of my pride.

"I did it," I lied, the words tasting like ash and bile.

"I bullied her. I threatened her. I wanted her gone."

Dante signaled the camera.

The soldier stepped away from the plug.

Dante looked down at me with pure disgust.

"You are a disappointment, Elena," he said.

And then, reality fractured.

A sharp, jagged cramp ripped through my lower abdomen.

It was a pain unlike anything I had ever felt.

I gasped, clutching my stomach.

A sudden, sickening warmth flooded between my legs, staining the pristine snow a horrifying crimson.

"Dante," I choked out.

He glanced at the blood.

His expression did not change.

He turned his back to me.

"Get her out of my sight," he ordered his guards.

"Lock her in the Penance Room."

"Dante, please, the baby!" I screamed, reaching for him.

He paused.

He looked over his shoulder, his eyes dead.

"Whatever is happening, you brought it on yourself."

He walked away toward the warmth of the house where his mistress waited.

The guards dragged me up.

I screamed his name until my throat bled, but the Mad Prince did not look back.

The clinic was blindingly white.

It smelled of antiseptic and cold money.

When I woke up, I knew immediately that I was hollow.

The connection was gone.

The little flutter I had felt for weeks was now silent.

The door opened.

Dante walked in.

He did not look like a grieving father.

He looked like a businessman dealing with a failed asset.

Sofia walked in behind him, clinging to his arm like a parasitic vine.

She wore a soft pink dress and looked perfectly fragile.

She squinted, playing up her fake partial blindness for his benefit.

"Elena," Sofia said, her voice trembling with false sympathy. "I heard what happened. I am so sorry."

I looked at Dante.

"Why?" I asked, my voice cracking. "Why did you let our child die?"

Dante adjusted his cufflinks, his expression bored.

"A disobedient wife earns no right to an heir," he said.

His words were simple.

They were facts to him.

My heart, which I thought had already broken in the snow, disintegrated into dust.

Sofia squeezed his arm.

"Dante," she whispered, glancing at me with feigned terror. "She threatened my parents too. I am scared of her."

Dante looked at me coldly.

"Apologize to her," he commanded.

I stared at him in disbelief.

"You want me to apologize to your whore after I just lost your child?"

Dante snapped his fingers.

Two soldiers detached themselves from the wall.

They seized my shoulders.

They forced my head down toward the bedsheet.

My stitches pulled violently, sending fire through my abdomen.

I cried out in pain, but they did not stop until my forehead touched the mattress.

"Say it," Dante said.

"I apologize," I sobbed into the sheets, humiliated. "I am sorry."

The soldiers released me.

Sofia smirked.

I saw it flash across her face before she buried her expression in Dante's chest.

Dante pulled a folder from his jacket.

The lawyer stepped forward.

"Sign these," Dante said.

Severance of Protection.

Divorce papers.

"One hundred million dollars," he said.

Hush money.

"Sign it, leave New York, and never come back."

He looked down at Sofia.

"Once you are gone, Sofia becomes the Vitiello Queen."

He paused, looking at my pale face.

"Maybe, if you learn your place, I will take you back as a mistress one day."

Something inside me snapped.

It was a loud, violent crack in my psyche.

I started to laugh.

It was a dry, raspy sound, devoid of humor.

Tears streamed down my face, but I laughed until my ribs hurt.

"Give me the pen," I said.

Dante narrowed his eyes.

He expected begging.

He expected me to fight for him.

I signed the paper.

I signed away ten years of my life.

I signed away the man I saved.

I signed away the man who killed my child.

I handed the paper back.

"Done," I said.

Dante looked at the signature, a flicker of confusion in his dark eyes.

He took Sofia's hand.

"Get out of my city, Elena."

He left.

I held the check.

It was just paper.

But it was enough to buy a ghost life.

I saw them on the news three days later.

Dante was parading Sofia at the Opera.

She wore the Vitiello diamonds, glittering cold and sharp against her skin.

The press had already christened her the new First Lady of the underworld.

They said Dante Vitiello had finally found a woman worthy of his fire.

I sat in Luca's hospital room, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.

He was still silent, still sleeping.

"We are leaving, Luca," I whispered to him, my hand resting over his.

I had already bribed a contact in the identity office.

Our names were being scrubbed from the database bit by bit.

We would be ghosts by the end of the week.

I went back to the Hilltop Estate one last time.

It was the house Dante had given me as a wedding gift.

I had sold it that morning to a shell company and transferred the liquid assets back to the Vitiello accounts.

I wanted nothing from him.

I gathered the photos of us.

The ones from the Bronx.

The ones where he actually smiled.

I threw them into the fireplace and struck a match.

I watched our memories curl into black ash and disappear up the chimney.

Suddenly, the front door slammed open.

Dante strode in, Sofia trailing smugly behind him.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice vibrating off the walls.

"Cleaning up," I said evenly.

Sofia saw the jewelry box on the table.

It was open.

Inside lay the Vitiello Heirloom Bracelet.

It was priceless.

"That belongs to the family," Sofia said.

She lunged for it.

She grabbed it, and with a clumsy, theatrical motion, she smashed it against the marble fireplace mantel.

The emeralds shattered across the stone.

She screamed and threw herself down the three steps into the sunken living room.

"My ankle!" she wailed, clutching her leg. "She pushed me!"

Dante looked at the broken bracelet.

He looked at Sofia sobbing on the floor.

He did not look at the security cameras that would have proven my innocence.

He looked at me.

"You break what is mine, I break you," he said, his eyes devoid of mercy.

"Enforcer," he called out.

The giant man entered from the shadows.

"The Lash," Dante ordered.

My blood ran cold.

"Dante, no," I whispered.

He turned away to comfort Sofia.

The Enforcer grabbed my wrists.

He tied them to the high banister so my feet barely touched the ground.

I bit my lip until I tasted copper.

\ The whip struck my back.

One.

Two.

Three.

I did not scream.

I would not give him the satisfaction.

My blood stained the white oak floor.

Dante did not turn around.

He held Sofia's hand while his wife bled out on the floor of the home he had built for her.