Too Late To Beg: The Don's Regret

I was still bleeding into the mesh underwear the hospital gave me when the photos hit the internet: my husband, the Don, forcing his tongue down his mistress's throat.

Three days ago, that very mistress had shoved me off a yacht.

I lost the baby. I lost my uterus. I was left completely barren.

Yet, when my husband finally called, it wasn't to ask if I was alive.

"The press is eating us alive," Dante barked through the phone. "Send a gift basket to Sofia. Fix this mess."

To make matters worse, his grandmother stood at the foot of my bed, holding the hand of the daughter they had stolen from me at birth.

"Mommy looks like a ghost," my daughter said, her voice devoid of love.

That was the moment the last ember of affection died. I realized I wasn't a wife to them; I was just a broken vessel.

So, when they sneered that I was useless, I didn't cry.

I pulled a black USB drive from under my pillow and threw it on the bed.

"Divorce papers," I said calmly. "And the complete security blueprints of the Moretti Fortress. Every blind spot. Every tunnel I designed."

"Sign the papers and let me go, or I sell this drive to your enemies for one dollar."

I left the country with nothing but the clothes on my back, vanishing into a freezing attic in Paris.

I thought I was finally free.

But three weeks later, Dante kicked down my door, looking at my poverty with horror.

"Come home," he begged, tossing a box of diamonds onto my drafting table. "We can be a family."

I looked at the man who had destroyed me and opened the window.

"You're looking for the girl who loved you," I whispered, throwing the diamonds into the trash alley below.

"But you killed her."

Chapter 1

Elena POV

I was still bleeding into the mesh underwear the hospital had given me when the tabloid photos hit the internet: my husband, forcing his tongue down his mistress's throat.

The caption screamed in bold font: "The Don and his Muse."

I perched precariously on the edge of the massive four-poster bed in the Moretti estate's guest wing, the light of my phone screen cutting through the room's oppressive darkness.

My abdomen throbbed-a relentless, hot pulse where they had cut me open only three days ago to remove the remains of my unborn child and my uterus.

I was empty. A hollowed-out husk, left to rot on the porch.

Downstairs, the distinct crash of shattering porcelain echoed.

Nonna Rosa was awake. And she was furious.

Not because her grandson's mistress had shoved me off a yacht into the freezing Atlantic on New Year's Eve. Not because the heir to the Moretti throne had been washed away in a tide of blood and brine.

She was furious because Dante had been sloppy enough to get caught kissing Sofia Rossi while his wife was in surgery.

The door to my room didn't just open; it flew inward.

Marco, the Consigliere-a man who had watched me grow up and then watched me wither-stood in the frame. He looked at the floor, unable to meet my eyes.

"You are summoned to the Inner Sanctum, Elena."

I didn't move. The fresh stitches in my belly pulled tight, a searing reminder of the price I had paid for this moment.

"Tell Nonna Rosa that if she wants to speak to me, she can drag her old legs up these stairs."

Marco's head snapped up. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. In the Moretti family, you did not summon the Matriarch. You crawled to her.

"I said, tell her to come to me. Or I press send on the email."

He didn't ask what email. He saw the dead look in my eyes and turned around.

Ten minutes later, the hallway filled with the ominous click-clack of sensible heels and the heavy thud of a cane. Nonna Rosa swept into the room, a vision in black lace and ancient malice.

And she brought Mia.

My heart-or the stone that had replaced it-gave a single, agonizing thump. Mia wore a velvet dress that cost more than my father made in a lifetime. She looked at me with the same cold, assessing stare as her great-grandmother.

"Look at her, Mia," Nonna Rosa hissed, pointing her cane at me like a weapon. "Look at the weak thing your father married. A civilian. A broken vessel."

Mia looked at me.

"Mommy looks tired," she said, her voice devoid of affection. "Sofia says she looks like a ghost."

The mention of the woman who tried to kill me, falling so easily from my own daughter's lips, should have broken me. But I was already shattered.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was Dante.

I picked it up, putting it on speaker.

"Elena." His voice was a deep baritone, rough with whiskey and arrogance. "I need you to handle Nonna. The press is eating us alive. Send a basket to Sofia's penthouse. Something expensive. Chocolate. And tell the security team to double the guard there."

I looked at Nonna Rosa. Her face was a mask of disgust, not at him, but at the inconvenience of it all.

"Is that all, Dante?" I asked.

"Don't use that tone with me. You fell. You were clumsy. Now fix the mess."

The line went dead.

Nonna Rosa stepped forward. "You heard him. You are the Don's wife. Your job is to eat shit and smile so the world thinks it's chocolate."

I stood up.

The pain was blinding, white-hot needles stabbing my core, but I forced myself upright.

"No."

Nonna Rosa's eyes widened. She stepped into my personal space, the scent of lavender and rot surrounding her. She raised her hand and brought it down across my face.

The slap echoed in the silence. My head snapped to the side. I tasted copper.

But I didn't cry. I didn't cower.

My hand shot out, snatching her wrist.

Her skin felt papery and thin under my grip. I squeezed, watching her shock curdle into outrage.

"If you ever touch me again," I said, my voice barely a whisper, "I will burn this house to the ground."

I released her and reached under my pillow, pulling out a manila envelope and a black USB drive.

I threw them on the bed.

"Divorce papers," I said. "And the complete security blueprints of the Moretti Fortress. Every blind spot. Every sensor code. Every tunnel."

Nonna Rosa looked at the drive, then at me. Her face paled.

"I designed this place, Nonna. I built your cage. And if you don't sign those papers and give me safe passage out of Italy tonight, I will sell this drive to the Russo family for one dollar."

She stared at me, calculating. She looked at my flat stomach. She knew what the doctors had done. She knew I could never give Dante another heir.

I was depreciated stock. Useless.

"You are barren," she spat the word like a curse. "You are of no use to the bloodline."

"Then let me go."

She snatched the papers. "Marco will process this. You will leave with nothing. No money. No jewelry. No clothes. You leave as the beggar you were when we found you."

"Fine," I said.

"And you never see Mia again."

I looked at my daughter. She was playing with the fringe of the curtain, ignoring us completely. She didn't know me. She had been stolen from my arms ten minutes after birth and raised by wolves.

"She is already yours," I said, the words tearing my throat apart. "Keep her."

Nonna Rosa sneered. "Get out of my sight."

Elena POV

Nonna flicked the signed papers toward my face. They fluttered down like dead leaves, settling silently on the expensive Persian rug.

I knelt to pick them up. My hands weren't shaking. For the first time in seven years, I took a breath that didn't feel like I was inhaling broken glass.

I had nothing. No money. No womb. No child.

But I had this piece of paper.

I was zipping the single duffel bag I had brought from the hospital-just a change of clothes and my sketchbook-when the door slammed open again.

This time, it was the devil himself.

Dante Moretti filled the doorway. He was six-foot-four of pure, unadulterated violence wrapped in a bespoke suit. He smelled of rain, sandalwood, and another woman's perfume.

He saw the bag. He saw the papers in my hand.

He closed the distance in two strides and snatched the papers from me. He didn't even read them. He just crumpled them in his fist.

"Going somewhere, wife?"

His voice was a low rumble that used to make my toes curl. Now, it just made me tired.

"I'm leaving, Dante. Nonna signed them. It's over."

He laughed. It was a dark, humorless sound. "Over? Nothing is over until I say it is."

He tossed the crumpled ball of paper into the fireplace, where a low fire was burning. I watched my freedom turn to ash, but I didn't panic. I had copies. I had digital backups sent to a lawyer in Zurich.

Sofia appeared in the doorway behind him. She was wearing a silk robe that I recognized. It was mine.

"Oh, let her go, Dante," she purred, leaning against the doorframe. "She's expired goods anyway. You need a real woman now. A Queen."

Dante didn't look at her. His eyes were locked on me, burning with a mix of confusion and rage.

"You think because you lost the baby, you get to walk away?" he sneered. "You think that makes you special? Women lose babies every day, Elena."

The cruelty of it took my breath away. He spoke about his own child like it was a set of lost car keys.

I looked at him. Really studied him. The sharp jawline I used to trace with my fingers. The dark eyes that once looked at me with adoration.

"I'm not leaving because I lost the baby, Dante. I'm leaving because I lost you. Years ago."

He stepped closer, invading my space. He grabbed my chin, his fingers digging into my jaw.

"You belong to me," he hissed. "You are the Don's wife. You wear my ring. You live in my house. You don't get to quit."

I didn't pull away. I just stared up at him.

"Are you going to make Sofia the new Queen?" I asked softly.

He stiffened. Sofia let out a little gasp of excitement behind him.

Dante's grip on my face tightened. "I don't care about her," he said, loud enough for Sofia to hear. "She is a distraction. You are my property."

I saw Sofia flinch, but I felt nothing.

I reached up and took his hand, prying it from my face. His skin was warm. Mine was ice.

"You can keep the title, Dante. You can keep the house. You can keep the mistress."

I stepped back.

"But you can't keep me. Because there is nothing left of me to keep."

He looked at me, searching for the anger, the tears, the fire that usually lit up my eyes when we fought.

He found nothing.

"I'm not angry, Dante," I said, my voice flat.

His brow furrowed. "What?"

"I stopped loving you a long time ago."

Elena POV

The memory slammed into me like a physical blow.

Three years ago. That was the first time the scent of her had clung to his skin.

I had been pregnant then, too. Eight months heavy with Mia.

I had waited up for him in the library, desperate for him to come home, to touch my belly, to be the man who had promised to protect me.

When he finally walked in, lipstick smeared like a bruise on his collar, I had screamed. I had cried. I had begged him to tell me why I wasn't enough.

He had tossed a scrap of black lace at me. Panties. Sofia's.

"Put them on," he had said, his eyes glazed with vodka and hate. "Maybe then you'll look like something I want to fuck."

I had turned and run. I had run for the stairs, blinded by tears. And I had fallen.

I remembered the sensation of tumbling, the hard marble striking my spine, the sickening crunch as I landed at the bottom. I remembered lying in a pool of my own blood, screaming his name.

He hadn't come. He had stepped over me, walked out the front door, and driven back to her.

I nearly died that night. They cut Mia out of me while I flatlined. And when I woke up, she was gone.

Nonna had taken her to the nursery in the East Wing, and I was told I was too weak, too unstable to be a mother.

Dante never visited me in the ICU. Not once.

Reality crashed back in as Dante shoved me against the wall. His forearm crushed against my throat, cutting off my air.

"Stop lying!" he roared.

The pressure on my neck was immense. My vision spotted with black.

But the pain in my abdomen was worse. His thigh was pressing directly against my fresh incision. I could feel the stitches popping, the warm wetness of blood seeping into my jeans.

"You love me," he spat, his face inches from mine. "You are obsessed with me. You stayed. You took the humiliation. You took the abuse. You stayed!"

He whipped his phone out with his free hand and tapped the screen. A video started playing.

It was me. Years ago. Kneeling on the floor of this very room, begging him not to leave for the night. Begging him to stay and hold me.

"Look at you," he sneered, shoving the screen in my face. "Look at how pathetic you are. Is that the woman who doesn't love me?"

I looked at the woman on the screen. She looked so young. So full of hope.

I looked back at Dante.

"That woman is dead," I whispered, my voice raspy from the pressure on my throat. "You killed her."

He froze.

I smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. It was the baring of teeth from an animal caught in a trap, realizing the only way out was to chew off its own leg.

"You think I stayed because I loved you?" I laughed, a broken, wheezing sound. "I stayed because Nonna threatened to put my father in a cement mixer. I stayed because I thought if I gave you a son, you would let me see Mia."

His grip loosened slightly. Confusion clouded his rage.

"I didn't love you, Dante. I survived you."

He dropped his arm. I slid down the wall, clutching my bleeding stomach.

"You're lying," he whispered.

I looked up at him, my vision blurring.

"Check the dates, Dante. Check the bank accounts. I haven't spent a dime of your money on myself in two years. I haven't slept in your bed in three. I haven't said 'I love you' since the night you pushed me down the stairs."

"I didn't push you," he said automatically. "You fell."

I closed my eyes. "It doesn't matter."

I pushed myself up, using the wall for support.

"I'm bleeding, Dante. Again. Because of you. Again."

He looked down at the dark stain spreading on my shirt. His eyes widened. He reached out a hand.

"Elena-"

"Don't," I said. "Just... don't."