Too Late To Apologize, Mr. Billionaire

For seven years, I scrubbed floors, cooked books, and hid my identity as the Vitiello heiress just to test if Dante Moretti loved me for me, not my father's power.

But the massive digital billboard in Times Square froze the blood in my veins.

It wasn't my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen." It was a cocktail waitress named Lola.

When I walked into the lobby to confront him, Lola slapped me across the face and crushed my late mother's locket under her stiletto heel.

Dante didn't defend me. He didn't even look sorry.

"You're useful, like a stapler," he sneered, checking his watch.

"But a King needs a Queen, not a boring clerk. You can stay on as my mistress if you want to keep your job."

He thought I was a nobody. He thought he could use me to launder his money and then discard me like trash.

He didn't realize that the only reason he wasn't in federal prison was because I was protecting him.

I wiped the blood from my lip and pulled out a secure satellite phone.

Dante laughed. "Who are you calling? Your mommy?"

I stared him dead in the eyes as the line connected.

"The pact is void, Papa," I whispered. "Burn them all."

Ten minutes later, the glass doors shattered as my father's military helicopters descended onto the street.

Dante fell to his knees, realizing too late that he hadn't just lost a secretary.

He had just declared war on the Capo dei Capi.

Chapter 1

I had spent the entire ride rehearsing the smile I'd give my fiancé after seven years of hiding in the shadows for him. But the massive digital billboard in Times Square didn't just stop me cold-it froze the blood in my veins.

It wasn't my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen."

And if I didn't kill the man I loved right this second, my father would burn this entire city to the ground just to do it for me.

The taxi driver tapped the steering wheel, oblivious to the fact that his passenger was currently calculating the logistics of a homicide.

"Big night for the Moretti family, huh?" he said, gesturing vaguely to the screen that lit up the night sky. "Dante Moretti is finally settling down. That girl, Lola? She looks like a movie star."

I stared at the screen.

Dante Moretti.

The man for whom I had scrubbed floors.

The man for whom I had cooked books.

The man I had loved in silence for seven agonizing years.

He was kissing a woman who was definitely not me.

The caption scrolled in bold, electric blue letters: A Union of Power. The Future Don and his First Lady.

My phone vibrated in my hand. It was a text from Dante.

*Baby, I'm so sorry I can't pick you up. Family business is insane with the Gala prep. I'll see you tomorrow at the office. Love you.*

He attached a fake itinerary.

I looked back at the billboard. He wasn't busy with business. He was busy showing the world his new toy.

I didn't cry.

Tears were for civilians. Tears were for women who didn't have the blood of the Vitiello crime syndicate running through their veins.

My father, Don Salvatore Vitiello, the Capo dei Capi-the man who made the FBI tremble-had warned me.

*He is weak, Seraphina. A weak man will always seek the easiest path. Give him seven years. If he loves the clerk, he deserves the Queen. If he fails... we bury him.*

He had failed.

I opened a secure app on my phone. My fingers didn't shake. Trembling was for victims.

I typed a message to my father's Consigliere: Freeze the shadow accounts. Every cent we funnel into Moretti Holdings. Cut the line.

The reply was instantaneous: Done.

"Pull over," I told the driver.

"But miss, we're still a block away from-"

"Pull over."

I stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Moretti Holdings. The building loomed over me, a glass and steel monument to money that wasn't theirs.

It was money I had secured. It was safety I had guaranteed.

I walked through the revolving doors.

The lobby was a cavern of white marble and gold trim. It smelled of expensive lilies and arrogance.

And there she was.

Lola.

She was standing near the reception desk, surrounded by a gaggle of girls who looked like they were auditioning for a reality show about bad decisions.

Lola was wearing a white dress that cost more than my car. She was laughing, her head thrown back, exposing a throat that looked very fragile.

"Dante said the announcement is just the beginning," Lola proclaimed, her voice echoing off the hard surfaces. "Once we make it official to the Five Families, I'm going to clean house."

Her friends giggled.

"What about the staff?" one asked. "That Director of Operations... what's her name? The one who always wears the gray suits?"

"Seraphina?" Lola sneered. "Oh, she's gone. Dante promised. He's giving her office to Bella."

Bella, a girl with too much lip filler and not enough brain cells, squealed.

"Seriously? I get the corner office?"

"You get whatever you want," Lola said, checking her nails. "We are the royalty of New York now."

I walked forward. The clicking of my heels on the marble was a sharp, rhythmic warning they were too stupid to hear.

They turned.

Lola's eyes narrowed. She recognized me instantly. I was the "boring secretary" she had seen fetching Dante's coffee a dozen times.

"Well, speak of the devil," Lola said, her smile sharp enough to cut glass. "Here to collect your severance pay, Seraphina?"

I stopped three feet away from her.

"I'm here to collect a debt," I said calmly.

Bella stepped forward and shoved my shoulder. "You heard her. Get lost. This is a private event for the Family."

I didn't move. I didn't stumble.

I reached into my purse and pulled out my badge. It wasn't just an employee ID. It was the master key card for the entire building, a symbol of the control I exerted over every single operation in this company.

"I am the Head of Strategic Operations," I said. "And you are standing in my lobby."

Lola blinked, surprised for a microsecond. Then her face twisted into an ugly mask of rage.

"Not anymore," she hissed.

For a woman who looked like she'd never lifted anything heavier than a Centurion card, Lola moved with shocking speed.

The slap didn't just connect; the crack of her palm against my cheek echoed through the marble lobby like a gunshot.

My head snapped to the side. The impact was blinding, a sharp, burning heat instantly spreading across my skin.

Dead silence fell over the room.

The security guards near the elevators immediately found the floor tiles fascinating. They knew who Lola was sleeping with. They knew who signed their checks.

I tasted copper in my mouth.

"You civilian rat," Lola spat, her face twisted in ugly triumph.

"You think flashing a plastic badge scares me? You're a glorified maid who thinks she has a shot at the Prince."

She snatched out her phone.

"You want to see what Dante really thinks of you?" she asked, her voice rising to a piercing screech. "Hey! Everyone! Look at this!"

She waved her phone at the reception staff, at the security guards, at her friends.

"Look at what my fiancé says about his stalker!"

She shoved the screen inches from my nose.

It was a text thread with Dante.

*Dante: Ugh, I have to go into the office early tomorrow. Seraphina messed up the shipping logs again.*

*Lola: Why don't you just fire her, baby?*

*Dante: I can't yet. She's a workhorse. She does all the boring crap I don't want to deal with. She's useful, like a stapler. But god, she bores me to death. You're my true release, babe. The only woman who makes me feel alive.*

I stared at the words.

*Like a stapler.*

I had spent seven years scrubbing his sins.

I had rewritten ledgers to keep the RICO investigators blind. I had negotiated with corrupt unions to keep his trucks moving. I had stood between him and federal prison every single day.

And to him, I was office supplies.

Something inside my chest-that soft, hopeful creature I'd nurtured since university-didn't just break. It disintegrated.

It turned to cold, grey ash.

"See?" Lola laughed, pulling the phone back. "He keeps you around because you're a mule. But no one wants to marry the mule."

The receptionist, a girl I had helped get maternity leave for last year, covered her mouth to hide a giggle.

"She really thought she had a chance," Bella whispered, loud enough for the back row. "It's kind of sad. She doesn't get the aesthetic. She's not... Mob Wife material."

They were recording now. Three or four phones were pointed at me, capturing my humiliation for Instagram stories.

"Security!" Bella screamed, pointing a manicured finger at the door. "Throw this trash out! She's harassing the future Don's wife!"

Two guards stepped forward hesitantly.

"Miss Vitiello..." one started, using the fake last name I used at work. "Maybe you should go."

I touched my cheek. It was throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

I looked at Lola.

"Are you sure those texts are true, Lola?" I asked softly.

"Of course they're true!"

"Because seven years ago," I said, my voice dangerously steady, "Dante sat outside my dorm room for three weeks begging for a date. He chased me, Lola. I didn't chase him."

Lola rolled her eyes. "That was college. People experiment in college. He grew up. He realized he needed a Queen, not a clerk."

"A Queen," I repeated.

"Yes," Lola said, stepping into my personal space until I could smell her expensive perfume. "And you are trespassing in my kingdom."

"Your kingdom is built on sand," I told her, my voice steady despite the adrenaline spiking in my blood.

Lola's eyes widened, the whites showing all around. The veins in her neck strained against her expensive skin, ruining the facade of elegance she tried so hard to maintain.

"Get her!" she shrieked.

Bella lunged, her fingers digging into my bicep. Another girl clamped a fist into my hair.

I tried to twist away, my self-defense training kicking in automatically-shift weight, drop center of gravity. But I was outnumbered. Bella drove a boot into the back of my knee, and my leg buckled.

I went down, hitting the hard marble floor with a bone-jarring thud that rattled my teeth.

"Hold her down!" Lola commanded.

I felt hands pressing my shoulders into the cold stone, pinning me like a specimen. My blazer tore with a sharp *rip*.

Lola stood over me, looking like a vengeful deity in white chiffon.

"You need to learn your place," she said, breathing hard, her chest heaving. "You think you can just walk in here and disrespect me? I am going to be the First Lady of this family."

She leaned down and slapped me again.

Left cheek. Right cheek.

My head rang like a struck bell. The humiliation was worse than the pain. I was Seraphina Vitiello. My father cut the tongues out of men who spoke to me with the wrong tone. And here I was, being beaten by a cocktail waitress in a lobby I technically owned.

"I'm going to scar that boring little face of yours," Lola hissed, her spittle landing on my cheek. "Maybe then Dante will stop pitying you."

I looked up at her. My lip was split. I could feel blood trickling down my chin, hot and metallic.

"If you touch me again," I whispered, my voice a cold razor, "you will pray for death."

Lola threw her head back and laughed. It was a sharp, manic sound.

"Did you hear that? The stapler is threatening me!"

She raised her foot, aiming her sharp stiletto heel at my hand.

Then she stopped.

Her eyes caught the glint of silver at my throat.

It was an old locket. Tarnished silver, engraved with a simple butterfly. It wasn't flashy. It didn't have diamonds.

But it was the only thing my mother had left me before she died in a car bomb meant for my father.

"What is this garbage?" Lola sneered.

She reached down and yanked the chain.

"No!" I screamed, struggling against the hands holding me down, thrashing violently. "Don't touch that!"

The chain snapped with a sickening *pop*.

Lola held the locket up to the light, dangling it like a dead insect.

"So cheap," she said. "Dante buys me diamonds. And you wear... tin?"

"Give it back," I choked out. The air felt too thin, my lungs burning. That locket held my mother's picture. It was a sacred relic.

"It's ugly," Lola decided. "Just like you."

She dropped it on the floor.

Time seemed to slow down. I watched the silver heart hit the marble. It didn't break.

Then Lola lifted her foot.

She brought her heel down, hard, right in the center of the butterfly.

*Crunch.*

The sound of metal twisting and glass shattering was louder than any gunshot I had ever heard.

My heart stopped.

Lola ground her heel into the fragments, twisting back and forth, ensuring nothing remained but dust and scrap metal.

"Oops," she said, smiling down at me. "I guess I broke your toy. Now you have nothing."

I stopped struggling. The hands holding me felt distant. The pain in my face vanished.

A cold, dark void opened up in the center of my chest. It swallowed the love I had for Dante. It swallowed my patience. It swallowed the girl who wanted a normal life.

I looked at the crushed silver on the floor.

The Pact was over.

Omertà was broken.

War had begun.