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 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Bella's POV
For a moment, all I could do was stare at Luciano Moretti.
He stood in my tiny living room like he owned oxygen, like he could command gravity itself. His coat was still buttoned, not a wrinkle on him, not a single lock of hair out of place. Meanwhile I was one blink away from falling apart.
He wanted me to pretend to be engaged to him?
Me?
A girl who had just proposed in public because her heart got drop-kicked into a trash can?
Really?
"No," I said, my voice trembling for a whole different reason now. "Absolutely not. I'm not doing any of that."
His eyebrow lifted, so gracefully arrogant it should've been illegal. "You don't have a choice."
My jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"
He took a slow step forward, and my lungs forgot their purpose. "This is already public. You and I are in a mess together, Miss Hart. The only way out is forward."
"Forward?" I sputtered. "By lying to the entire world? By...by being your fake fiancee? Are you insane?!"
His lips twitched. "Possibly."
I threw my hands up. "Fantastic. I proposed to a lunatic."
His gaze flickered over my face, lingering a second too long on my mouth. The air between us thickened, heated and charged with something I absolutely refused to name.
I stepped back. He stepped forward.
"Look," I said, trying to keep my voice steady, "I didn't mean what I said. I was emotional. Heartbroken. Stupid. Pick any adjective you want, okay? I don't even know you."
"You will," he murmured.
My stomach fluttered-annoyingly-while my brain screamed run. "I don't want to," I snapped.
He tilted his head, studying me like I was an equation he fully intended to solve. "Do you think I want this?" he asked quietly.
"Well... you said 'I do' pretty fast."
"I was curious."
"Curious?" I repeated, incredulous.
"Yes." His voice dropped again, lower, darker. "You didn't run from me. You didn't lower your eyes. You didn't tremble like other people do when they realize who they're standing in front of."
"I did tremble!"
"That was not fear."
My breath hitched. "I-excuse me-what-"
His eyes glinted, as though he could hear the disaster happening inside me. Then, with a faint tilt of his head, he said with a softer tone, "You're overwhelmed. Breathe."
"I am breathing!" I snapped again. "And you're... you're doing that thing."
"What thing?"
"That thing where you act like you're in control of every molecule in this room."
"I am in control of every molecule in this room."
I blinked. "See? This is exactly why I can't do this."
"You must," he said simply.
"Why?" I threw my arms out. "Why me? Why this? Can't you just call your PR team and say I'm clinically insane? Or possessed? Or drunk? I don't care...just fucking pick one."
He stepped closer...dangerously closer. His cologne curled around me, warm and dark, stealing my oxygen. "Because you said, 'Marry me.' And I said I do. And the world heard."
I swallowed, heat crawling up my neck. "Then... then say no."
Luciano's gaze dropped to my lips again. "I don't want to."
A sharp pulse shot straight through my body. I hated the way it made me feel. I hated that he noticed. I hated that he was right about the trembling.
"Get out," I whispered, because my voice couldn't handle anything louder.
He studied me for a long, silent beat which as long enough for my heart to thump embarrassingly loud in my ears. Finally, he nodded once.
"Very well."
He walked toward the door, his presence trailing behind him like a shadow that didn't want to leave. His hand touched the doorknob, but he paused, looking at me over his shoulder.
"Think carefully, Bella," he said softly. "This is bigger than a broken heart."
My pulse jumped. "What does that mean?"
His eyes locked with mine. His gray eyes were stormy. Serious. Too serious.
"Trouble is already coming," he said. "And now? It has your name."
The doorknob clicked just then and he walked out.
I looked at him until he left, my heart beating frantically in my chest as he did so.
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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.