Too Late, I Married The Mafia King

For six years, I endured my fiancé Silas's calculated cruelty, believing it was the only way to pay for my dying father's black-market lung medication.

Then, I overheard him talking to his secret lover-his late brother's widow.

"Once the old man suffocates, I'll put Aria in a fortified apartment as my personal whore, and you will wear the Capo's ring."

At the syndicate's annual Feast, Silas put his ruthless plan into motion.

He publicly humiliated me, tearing my dress open from collarbone to shoulder in front of hundreds of leering mobsters.

He deliberately scattered my father's bloody medical money across the dirt and forced me to draw the White Carnation, making me the ultimate laughingstock of the Family.

My frail father coughed up blood trying to protect me, while Silas and his lover sneered at my absolute ruin.

For six years, I swallowed my pride, thinking I was making a noble sacrifice to keep my father breathing.

I never realized I was just a disposable pawn in his sick game, kept on a leash only until my father was in the ground.

But Silas didn't know that the night before, I had taken the last of my money to buy a silver Vendetta Rosary.

I had ventured into the shadows and pledged myself to Dante, the terrifying, newly ascended Don of the entire syndicate.

As I sobbed on the cold wooden floor, the courtyard fell dead silent, and a pair of large, scarred hands reached into my vision holding a flawless Crimson Rose. And in the heavy silence that followed, I understood: either salvation or damnation had come for me, and I was no longer the one choosing.

Chapter 1

Aria POV

My feet seemed nailed to the heavy oak threshold, my calves aching from a prolonged tension. The sharp edge of an overdue medical bill pressed a white line into the side of my index finger, the paper emitting a faint, brittle sound. That brittle sheaf of paper was the only partition between my father and the grave.

I had come seeking salvation; instead, I had raised my hand to knock on Silas's study door when the sound of my own name froze me in place. I arrived just in time to hear the man I was supposed to marry planning the architecture of my own ruin.

He was describing to his secret lover exactly how many days they had to wait for my father to finally suffocate on his own blighted lungs.

Once the old man was gone, Silas would finally make her his official Capo's wife-and consign me to a fortified apartment across town as his personal whore.

Silas laughed. It was a low, proprietary sound that I had spent six years contorting my own soul to please.

"You just have to be patient, Bianca," Silas murmured, his voice low and thick with a desire that curdled the air.

"Arthur is coughing up blood every morning. The syndicate doctors give him two months, maybe three."

"Once the old man is in the ground, Aria will have no one."

"I will put her in that fortified apartment across town. She will be a quiet, obedient little secret, and you will wear the Capo's ring on your finger."

Bianca let out a soft, satisfied sigh.

She was the widow of his late brother, the former Underboss, a fact which made her betrayal a particularly venomous vintage.

"I want the Crimson Rose again this year, Silas," she whispered.

"If I draw it six times in a row, the Family laws say my status is elevated. I can marry above my station. I can marry you."

"You will get it, my love," Silas promised, a smirk I could hear in the very cadence of his words.

"I have paid the Estate Matriarch to swap Aria's token every single year."

"My pathetic fiancée will draw the White Carnation again tomorrow. She will be the laughingstock of the Feast, and no other Made Man will ever look at her. She belongs to me."

A surge of bile, hot and acidic, clawed its way up my throat.

Just three hours ago, I had begged the Estate Matriarch to make sure a Crimson Rose was placed in my drawing box for the annual Feast of the Patron Saint.

The old woman had simply wept.

Her gnarled hands had trembled so badly the teacup rattled in its saucer as she confessed that my tokens had been secretly swapped for five years.

She had been paralyzed with terror, unable to tell me who did it.

Now, the pieces of the last six years clicked into place, forming a picture of devastating clarity.

I looked down at the creased medical bills in my hand, its tremor a visible sign of my life's foundation crumbling to dust.

For six years, Silas had used the exorbitant cost of my father's black-market lung medication as a leash. He had delayed our wedding with an endless procession of fabricated excuses. I had swallowed my pride. I had endured his calculated coldness. I thought I was forging a noble sacrifice to keep my father breathing.

In truth, I was nothing but a pawn, to be discarded in his sick, protracted game.

I turned around and walked away from the heavy oak door.

My footsteps made no sound on the thick pile of the expensive carpet, the silence of my escape absolute.

I left the gilded cage of the mansion and walked straight into the gritty, indifferent streets of Little Italy.

The raw cold wind scraped at my face, but a cold numbness had already settled deep in my marrow, a void where grief should have been.

I returned to my rundown apartment and retrieved the last roll of cash I had hidden under my mattress.

It had been set aside for groceries, but a different kind of survival now demanded its own currency.

I walked into a pawn shop lit by a single, fly-specked bulb at the edge of the territory.

I bought a silver Vendetta Rosary.

In the narrow alleys of Little Italy, where even the sunlight struggled to penetrate, it was the final currency of the desperate.

A woman in the syndicate's underworld wore it to pledge herself to a new protector, a public appeal for salvation from a cruel master.

But I could not wait for salvation to find me. That night, beneath a sliver of moon, I took the silver beads and ventured into the heart of the Boss's territory. I stood before the wrought-iron gates of Dante's estate, the newly ascended Don, and demanded an audience. When I was finally brought to his shadowy, imposing study, I offered him the rosary. I begged him to claim me at the Feast tomorrow-to put on an act of taking me as his own, just long enough to break Silas's hold and secure my father's safety. Dante had stared at me, his pupils two pools of darkness that swallowed the lamplight, for what felt like an eternity before giving a single, curt nod. The pact was sealed in the silence between our heartbeats. But as I slipped out of his estate, I could not shake the feeling that I had just made a deal with a predator far more dangerous than the one I was fleeing.

Aria POV

The next morning, the grand courtyard of the Family Estate was overflowing with Made Men, their Soldiers, and their bejeweled wives.

The annual Feast of the Patron Saint was the most important, and most treacherous, day of the year.

I stood on the fringes of the lavish estate, my arm a brace for my father's frail form.

Arthur's breathing was a harsh, wet rattle that sounded like the tearing of cloth.

His former Soldier's pride was the only thing keeping him upright in his faded, poorly-fitting suit.

Across the courtyard, awash in sunlight, Silas stood by the massive stone fountain, his posture a study in proprietary arrogance.

He was smiling-the same dark, possessive smile.

In full view of the assembled families, he reached out and intimately pinned a glittering diamond brooch onto Bianca's expensive silk dress.

A contagion of whispers spread among the lower-ranking Associates around us.

They aimed pitying glances at me and laughed behind their hands.

I reached into the pocket of my cheap, worn dress and my fingers brushed the cold, solid silver beads of the Vendetta Rosary.

Drawing a breath that did little to calm me, I pulled it out just far enough for the silver cross to flare in the brilliant sunlight.

Bianca's sharp, watchful eyes locked onto the glint of metal almost immediately.

She nudged Silas and pointed a single, manicured finger at me, her scarlet lips curling into a wicked, assured smirk.

Silas turned his head with an air of theatrical boredom.

But the moment his dark eyes landed on the silver chain laced through my fingers, the smug smile vanished from his face.

In its place, a storm of lethal rage gathered as he shouldered his way through the crowd, marching directly toward me.

"Put that away," Silas ordered, his voice a low rumble of contained violence.

He stopped so close I could feel the heat of his body. His expensive cologne-a cloying blend of bergamot and the cigars he favored-masked the scent of tobacco, but it could not hide the innate cruelty that seemed to emanate from his very pores.

I kept the silver rosary wrapped around my knuckles, the metal links digging into my skin.

"I am drawing the Crimson Rose today, Silas," I said. My voice was unnaturally steady.

Silas let out a harsh, mocking breath.

"You wasted your money on a beggar's trinket?" he sneered, his gaze sweeping over me with disdain. "You cannot even afford a decent dress for this Feast, yet you buy a Vendetta Rosary? You are irresponsible and unfit for the duties of this Family."

He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a venomous whisper meant only for me.

"A woman of your station should be on her knees, grateful that I am willing to keep you. Do you think any other Made Man would touch you? You are a charity case, Aria."

My father's body was seized by a coughing fit that tore through the charged air.

He doubled over, clutching his chest as though to hold his own ribs together. His face turned an alarming shade of purple as he struggled to pull oxygen into his ruined lungs.

I grabbed his arm, my heart hammering against my ribs like a frantic, caged thing.

Silas did not even flinch. He looked at my dying father as if he were an unsightly stain on the manicured view.

"Throw the rosary away, Aria," Silas commanded, his voice devoid of all empathy.

He reached into the inside pocket of his bespoke suit jacket and pulled out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. There were dark, dried stains blooming on the edges of the paper-a grim testament to the currency of his trade.

He held the money out to me.

"This will pay for Arthur's medication for the next month," Silas said. "But you only get it if you drop that silver trash on the ground and submit."

As if summoned by the sound of my father's suffering, Bianca materialized beside him. The diamond pin on her chest caught the sun, a flash of light that momentarily blinded me.

"Take the money, Aria," Bianca cooed, her voice dripping with a counterfeit, sugary sweetness that made my stomach clench. "Don't be stubborn. Your poor father is dying. You should be grateful Silas is so generous to a family that offers him nothing in return."

I stared at the blood-stained cash, my jaw set.

I remembered the three days my father went without oxygen last winter, his lips turning blue. I remembered kneeling on the freezing pavement outside Silas's car, begging him for an advance on the medical money while he rolled up the tinted window in my face.

I reached out, the joints in my arm stiff as rusted iron, preparing to swallow my pride one last time for my father's sake.

Silas smirked, a triumphant gleam in his dark eyes.

But the second my fingertips brushed the paper, he deliberately opened his hand. The entire stack of bills caught the breeze, fluttering away into the dirt.

"Pick it up," Silas sneered.

The money had scattered across the cobblestones like dead leaves.

My jaw ached from the pressure of my teeth. I slowly knelt, the rough stone biting into my knees, and gathered the stained bills with fingers that shook not with fear, but with a cold, contained fury. I clutched them to my chest. But as I stood, I refused to let him see me broken.

I turned my gaze, now burning, to Bianca.

"You'll be buying your own favors soon, Bianca," I said, my voice carrying above the faint music of the courtyard. "And you will have to spend a fortune to convince anyone in this Family that you are a legitimate wife."

Bianca gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in a pantomime of horror.

Silas's face turned a deadly, blotchy crimson.

The veins in his neck bulged against his starched collar. He stepped forward, his chest bumping against mine in a crude display to physically intimidate me.

"You ungrateful bitch," he snarled, spittle flying from his lips. "You are ruining Bianca's reputation."

He turned his head and signaled to his massive bodyguards who had been observing from a distance.

"Let Bianca draw her token first!" Silas shouted to the now-silent crowd. "And make sure my fiancée stands right here to watch how a real woman is honored." A cruel smile twisted his lips, and in his eyes, I saw the promise of my complete annihilation. I did not yet understand how thoroughly he intended to deliver on that promise.

Aria POV

The crowd parted as Bianca walked toward the token pavilion with the practiced grace of a monarch.

She reached into the velvet box and pulled out a small, sealed envelope. With a grand, theatrical motion, she tore it open and held up the pristine, velvet-petaled Crimson Rose for everyone to see.

A roar of approval went up from Silas's loyal Soldiers.

Bianca walked back toward us, pressing the bloom to her nose.

"It smells like victory," she whispered as she passed me. She paused right at the edge of the deep, stone fountain behind me.

She looked at my cheap dress, then at the silver rosary still wrapped around my hand.

Then, her eyes glinting with a sharp, calculated malice, she took a deliberate step backward.

Her heel caught the lip of the stone basin.

Before I could even blink, Bianca threw her arms in the air and launched herself backward into the freezing water of the fountain.

"Help!" she screamed, thrashing in the water. "She pushed me! Aria pushed me!"

A few onlookers exchanged uncertain glances; I heard a young soldier behind me mutter, "But I saw her jump-" before his companion elbowed him sharply into silence. Truth was irrelevant when power demanded otherwise.

The music died with a screech. The courtyard erupted into chaos.

I stood, staring at the splashing water in disbelief.

The air behind me was torn apart. Before I could place the familiar scent of his cigar, a hand seized my shoulder, the pressure threatening to crush the bone, and spun me around.

Silas's palm cracked across my cheek with a force that rattled my teeth.

The impact threw me to the ground. The hard ground scraped the skin from my knees, but the true devastation was the sound of the Vendetta Rosary striking the stone. The silver chain snapped, and the beads scattered like fallen tears across the unforgiving ground.

"Are you out of your mind?" Silas roared.

He reached down and gripped my wrist, hauling me back to my feet. His fingers dug into my flesh, leaving bruises that would bloom by nightfall.

"You jealous, psychotic bitch!" he yelled, making sure every single person in the syndicate could hear him. "Are you really that desperate? You try to drown my sister-in-law because you know you are nothing to me?"

My father, Arthur, let out a raw, broken shout. He tried to lunge at Silas to protect me, but the sudden movement caused him to hack violently. Bright red blood splattered onto his chin.

Silas ignored him.

"I am going to tame you right here," Silas snarled.

He grabbed the collar of my dress.

And he pulled downward with all his brutal strength.

The cheap fabric ripped with a loud, sickening sound. The tear went from my collarbone all the way down to my shoulder, exposing my bare skin and the plain strap of my undergarment to the cold air.

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd.

It was swiftly followed by the low, leering laughter of the Soldiers standing around us. The sound made my skin crawl.

"Please, Silas, stop," I begged, my voice trembling as I tried to pull the torn fabric up to cover myself.

Silas laughed. He let go of me and stepped back, looking at my exposed shoulder with disgust.

"You act so tough, but you break over a torn piece of cloth," he mocked. "Go get your token, Aria. Show everyone what you really are."

Arthur dragged himself upright, blood still dripping from his chin, and fixed Silas with a glare. "You forget, Silas," he wheezed, "that I taught half these Soldiers how to shoot. Touch her again, and I will remind them who their real teacher was."

Arthur collapsed onto his knees, his breathing a ragged, painful sound.

"Aria, just come home," my father wheezed, tears streaming down his weathered face. "Leave the drawing. I will protect you. I will protect you as long as I breathe."

I looked at my dying father. Then, I looked at the hundreds of ruthless mobsters laughing at my humiliation.

I wrapped my arms around my chest, holding my torn dress together, and walked with measured steps up to the pavilion.

I reached into the velvet-lined box.

I pulled out the last remaining envelope.

I opened it, and a crushed, wilted White Carnation fell into my palm.

My legs gave out. I hit the wooden floor of the pavilion, buried my face in my hands, and finally broke down into loud, desperate sobs. The sound was swallowed by a new, absolute silence that fell like a blade-a silence I recognized only when a shadow blocked the sun above me.