Accidentally Proposed To The Mafia King
Isabella Hart thought her Valentine's Day plan was perfect: propose to her boyfriend, celebrate in the Maldives, and finally start the life she'd dreamed of.
Instead, she walked into his office and found him kissing his assistant who was also her friend.
Heartbreak turned to fury and before she could stop herself, she shoved the engagement ring meant for him onto the finger of a stranger with cold gray eyes.
The stranger looked at her, amused, and said, "I do."
Moments later, her ex called that stranger Boss.
Luciano Moretti, the stranger, was no ordinary man. He was the quiet, ruthless king of New York's underworld, the man people whispered about but never dared to name aloud.
What began as a viral mistake became a dangerous entanglement of power, lies, and a love too forbidden to survive the truth.
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Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Bella's POV
I've always believed that the universe sends warnings before it breaks your heart. Little shivers, gut pinches, whispers that sound like, "Something is fucking wrong."
I have always believed that it did.
This morning, the universe did just that. Heck, it wasn't only whispering.
It was screaming at me.
I just didn't want to hear it.
"Bells, you sure you don't want me to drive you?" Ava asked from the doorway, her eyebrows raised in that way only best friends have mastered which was a combination of half concern and half judgment.
I tucked my lip gloss into my purse and forced a smile. "I'm fine. It's just a quick stop at Ethan's office. I want to surprise him before his presentation."
Ava rolled her eyes in response and folded her arms. " Oh please. Surprises are for people you trust. Last week, he canceled your date for the third time. The universe is talking to you, babe. You just don't want to hear it"
I waved her off like her words weren't scratching at something raw inside me. "He's just stressed, Ava. This pitch to Valor Tech is huge. He said they might promote him to VP if it goes well. He is not acting up. Don't make a big deal out of it please."
At my words, Ava's expression softened. "I am not trying to, Bells. You know that. I just... don't want you running after a man who's not running to you."
I laughed and I felt it was too light, too fake. "I'm not running anywhere. I'm just being a supportive girlfriend. That's all."
I then smiled brightly at her and made to leave. But when I hugged her goodbye and stepped into the elevator, that uneasy knot in my chest tugged a little tighter.
Still, I told myself what I always tell myself when I feel things I don't want to: Stop overthinking.
If only I knew I should have listened to the knots.
***
The city felt different that morning, I thought as I left my apartment building. It was as if it too was giving me a sign I could not help but to ignore.
I sighed deeply as I clutched the small velvet box in my bag, running my thumb over the outline of the ring through the fabric.
Ethan didn't know about it. He didn't know that I'd spent the last three months quietly saving, planning, praying...
He didn't know that today I was going to ask him to marry me.
I smiled, imagining the surprised look on his face, the way his serious expression would soften, the way he'd kiss me like the world finally made sense.
Because it did, when I was with him.
Or at least... it used to.
The cab ride down to Midtown felt endless, each red light dragging me deeper into my own head. At one point the driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror and then furrowed his brows in concern.
"You okay back there? You look like someone with a lot on your mind."
I forced a nod. "I'm fine."
But my heart wasn't. It was pacing like I had been running for miles. But of course, I couldn't tell the driver that.
By the time we reached Ethan's company building-a tall glass tower that reflected the Manhattan sky like it wanted to swallow it whole-my palms were damp.
I adjusted my dress, smoothed my hair and reapplied a thin layer of my peach gloss. Ethan loved that gloss. Said it made me look soft.
Then I checked my reflection in the lobby's mirrored wall-my skin was glowing, lashes were curled, edges behaving for once.
Perfect.
I looked like someone ready to start a new chapter.
If only I had known the chapter waiting for me was the kind people don't put in love stories. They put it in warnings.
***
The elevator hummed as it rose-soft, almost too calm, like it didn't want to disturb me before everything shattered. I held the velvet box in my hand now, unable to let go of it, like it could anchor me.
Ethan had sounded tired on the phone the night before. Distracted. Distant in a way that made something cold slither up my spine. But when I suggested coming by, he said:
"Not tomorrow, baby. I'll be swamped."
He didn't want me there.
But I wanted to be there for him.
So I had decided to surprise him.
The elevator dinged at the seventh floor, and the doors slid open to reveal a reception area with sleek furniture and pretentious indoor plants that looked like they belonged in a billionaire's Tribeca mansion .
His assistant, Camilla's coat was draped over the back of the receptionist's chair.
A flicker of something in me tightened.
Why was she here? She wasn't supposed to be in until much later. Ethan mentioned she was taking a half-day because of a migraine. Because she had become a friend, I had even made a mental note to call her later in the evening to check up on her.
Maybe she felt better?
Maybe she came in early to help him prepare?
Maybe...
Stop overthinking, Bella. Please.
Still, my heart continued to pace frantically as I walked past the empty reception desk to an adjacent corridor. My heels echoed too loudly in the corridor as I walked. It was like the building too was trying to warn me of what was coming.
Ethan's office was at the far end of the corridor-glass walls, frosted halfway up for "privacy"
As I reached it, I could hear voices.
Muffled voices. Too intimate sort of.
I froze as I realised who had the voices.
Camilla's laugh floated through the corridor to me in a soft and breathy manner.
My stomach twisted immediately.
No. Not twisted.
Dropped.
I tightened my grip on the ring box until my knuckles ached.
I tried to talk myself out of it.
Maybe they were talking about the pitch.
Maybe he said something funny.
Maybe I was being paranoid because Ava's words were still in my head.
Maybe...
But then my heart didn't believe that word anymore.
So, I took one more step. Then another. The closer I got, the clearer the sounds became which were the voices of Camilla and Ethan blending into something unmistakably intimate.
I reached the door.
My hand shook as I grabbed the handle.
"Ethan..." Camilla breathed just then in a moan.
My blood froze.
I didn't wait to hear more.
I didn't need to.
I pushed the door open.
And there they were.
Ethan.
Camilla.
Her hands in his hair.
His mouth on hers.
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7.6
She was the heir of a criminal syndicate, bred to command the underworld.
For seven years she loved the wrong man, serving his family and building their fortune. Her payment was betrayal-his affair with her best friend.
During her three-year coma, he hissed, "Don't wake up."
They carried on at her bedside, then plotted her death to steal the company. She woke anyway and shattered them, rattling high society as a mafia heir and lethal fighter who ran the black-market economy.
He begged. She kicked him aside and chose the man who'd waited a decade-the world's top arms dealer. "I'm yours."
8.1
My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck.
"Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety."
He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her.
I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper.
When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect.
He raised the whip.
"Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach.
"Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down.
I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner.
He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden.
I finally fled, vanishing into the night.
It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted.
He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man.
The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently.
"Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even."
I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt.
"You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."
9.6
When the boy I had loved in silence for five years dropped to one knee and proposed to the very girl who had bullied me, the entire room burst into laughter at my expense.
"That fat, ugly Lydia Prescott actually thinks she has a shot with a mafia boss?"
In a single night, I became the city's favorite punchline. I fled in humiliation.
The next time I appeared, I had transformed. The weight was gone, and so was the ridicule. I stunned everyone into silence.
Miles Calloway begged through tears for another chance, but I simply slipped my arm through the arm of the mafia godfather beside me and smiled.
"Sorry. I'm married."
The man rumored to be cold-blooded and untouchable pulled me closer and declared with chilling certainty, "Lydia is my wife."
The room erupted.
Only my best friend, Annie Sinclair, gasped, "Lydia, you seriously locked down my dad?"
7.4
As a princess who could not wield magic, Princess Daphne's only value to her kingdom was her arranged marriage. The task was simple, but when Daphne was kidnapped and brought to the cold mountains of Vramid, she realized that she was in over her head.
She had heard of these cursed mountains before― rocky terrain, freezing temperatures, and the land was ruled by a man feared by many within the continent.
King Atticus Heinvres, the blood-thirsty ruler of the North.
Even though she had never met him before, tales were spread of King Atticus's ruthlessness. Some said he was a monster, others claimed he was the devil himself, but whatever the story was, everyone knew of the man who had powers beyond anyone's imagination. He could topple armies and crumble nations with just one wave of his hand, aided by what others rumored to be a cursed obsidian ring.
No one outside of Vramid had ever met the fearsome king before. Not until Daphne.
However, upon meeting the formidable man, Daphne found out that the king might not really be the monster others had claimed him to be.
In fact, what was hidden under that obsidian shield could just be a diamond in the rough.
―
[Excerpt]
"Now... where should I put you both?" he asked casually, not expecting a reply. "It's regretful that I only have one chandelier."
"Underneath my bed? No, no, too dirty. My dust bunnies don't deserve this," Atticus mused to himself. "The mantlepiece? How about the vanity table? I suppose if I lop off one of your heads I could mount it over... Wife, which head do you want to stare at while you do your hair?"
"Atticus!" Daphne screamed. "I don't want any heads! Let them go."
"Fair enough." Atticus shrugged, and flicked his fingers.
There were two identical cracks as both necks snapped at once.
Daphne gasped, horrified. This man, her husband, had just killed two men with a flick of his finger, as though he was snuffing out candles.
"I told you to let them go!" Daphne cried out.
"Yes, I let them go," Atticus said. Then, his eyes darkened. "To receive divine judgment from the heavens."
7.6
I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me.
But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest.
The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me.
They didn't.
Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her.
They let me burn to keep her warm.
When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages.
That was the moment Elena Vitiello died.
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York.
By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring.
"You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them.
"Burn for it."
7.6
I was the Harrington family's only son, forced to play a deadly game of shadows in the brutal underworld of Chicago. After a meeting with the Falcones left me poisoned and broken, my car was run off the road in a calculated hit.
I crawled from the wreckage, bloodied and desperate, only to find Damien Cobb, the city's untouchable Don, looming over me with a gun pressed to my temple. He didn't see a victim; he saw a pawn to be crushed.
My jacket was ripped, my secret bindings nearly exposed, and my life hung by a thread. I managed to talk my way out of the execution, but the humiliation was absolute. When I returned home, the nightmare followed, haunting my sleep with the cold steel of a blade against my throat.
The world saw Alessandro Harrington, a man, but the truth was a fragile secret I guarded with my life. I was surrounded by predators who smelled my fear and mistook my silence for weakness. Why was I the target of their cruelty, and how could I keep my family safe when my very existence was a lie waiting to be unraveled?
Enough was enough. I wouldn't be the prey anymore. I stood in the mirror, adjusting my shirt, and made a choice: I would stop hiding and start hunting. The dockworkers' strike was my opening, and I would use it to bring the untouchable Don to his knees.