Escaping The Cage: I Married His Worst Enemy
My husband, the Capo of New York, gripped my hand as we walked into the soundproofed room.
He wasn't there to save me.
He was there to watch the family doctor carve out my mind.
A stranger named Sofia claimed I had sold her to a brothel twelve years ago.
It was a lie.
But Dante looked at me with cold marble eyes, believing the woman sobbing in his arms over the wife he had vowed to protect.
"Sit, Elena," he ordered.
He strapped me into the chair. He watched as they injected liquid fire into my veins to force a confession.
He dragged me to the kennels, forcing me to feed the dogs I was terrified of, and watched as they tore into my flesh.
He even locked me in a freezer to "cool off" my jealousy.
The final straw wasn't the pain.
It was hearing him plan a Vow Renewal with Sofia, intending to parade me as her Maid of Honor to teach me humility.
I realized then that Elena Moretti had to die.
So, I set the hospital room on fire.
I left my wedding ring in the ashes and vanished into the night.
Six months later, Dante found me in Paris.
He fell to his knees, begging for forgiveness.
I looked at him with dead eyes and handed him a knife.
"Kill yourself," I said.
"That is the only way I will believe you are sorry."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 11
Dante POV
The screen of the burner phone went black.
Silence rushed back into the morgue, heavy and suffocating. It pressed against my eardrums, tasting of ash and formaldehyde.
I stared at the device in my hand. My reflection was distorted in the dark glass—I looked like a man who had been hollowed out, gutted by his own hand.
She hated me.
The realization did not pierce me like a knife, nor did it burn like fire. It was heavier than that. It was a mountain collapsing on my chest.
Elena hadn't died because of an accident. She did not die because she was weak. She died to get away from me.
I looked at the charred remains on the metal slab. The body was small. Fragile. Just like she had been when I first brought her home at twelve years old.
I remembered the nightlight. I remembered the way her small hand used to clutch my jacket when it thundered.
I remembered the origami cranes she folded for me, thousands of them, promising a love that would outlast the stars.
I had taken that love and fed it to the dogs.
I reached out, my fingers hovering over the sheet covering her. My hand was shaking so hard the fabric rippled.
"I am sorry," I whispered. The words scraped my throat. "I am so sorry, *Tesoro*."
My knees gave out.
I hit the cold tile floor. The impact jarred my spine, but I felt nothing.
I curled forward, pressing my forehead against the metal leg of the table. A sound ripped out of me. It was not a cry. It was a howl. A primal, animal noise that belonged in a slaughterhouse.
My stomach convulsed. Bile and acid surged up my throat. I retched, spitting blood onto the pristine white floor.
My body was rejecting the reality. It was trying to purge the guilt that was poisoning my blood.
I clutched the phone tighter. It was the only piece of her I had left. The only truth I had been given in months.
*You chose her*, Elena had said. *You chose the lie.*
I closed my eyes, but I could still see her face on the screen. Cold. Dead. Resolute.
*If there is a hell, I hope you rot in it alone.*
"I am already there, Elena," I choked out into the silence.
"I am already there."
You may also like
7.7
Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate.
I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo.
The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives.
My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked.
To her, I was finally being disposed of.
She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left.
She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex.
"She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds.
They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter.
They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back.
But they made a fatal mistake.
With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon.
I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him.
And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner.
He will be my vengeance.
9.8
I was bleeding out in the dark, bound to a chair, when I heard my husband tell another woman he would burn the world down for her.
Dante Moretti didn't know I was on the other side of the paper-thin wall.
He didn't know that ten years ago, I was the girl who saved his life in a frozen cave, not his mistress, Sofia.
Sofia had stolen my story, and now she was stealing my life.
When I tried to leave him, Dante chained me in his dungeon and whipped me until I passed out, claiming he was "disciplining" his wife.
When Sofia used steel cello strings to slice my fingers open, destroying my ability to ever play again, he looked the other way.
He even chose to save her over me when we fell into the freezing ocean, leaving me to drown because "Sofia is my soul."
That night, I finally stopped fighting for a man who didn't exist.
I called my brother, the Don of New York.
"The alliance is over," I whispered into the phone. "Take me home."
It took Dante three months to uncover the truth. To see the medical records proving I was the one who dragged him from that cave.
He burned his own boat to trap us on an island, begging for a second chance.
"I can fix this," he pleaded, tears streaming down his face as he touched my scarred, ruined hands.
I looked at him, then at the man standing behind him with a rifle—the man who actually loved me.
"You can't fix a shattered vase, Dante," I said.
Then I watched my new protector pull the trigger.
7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
8.9
"All I want is your body for a night. Give it to me, and I'll see to it that your mother survives. That was the proposal. cold, ruthless, and unstoppable. It was never intended for Scarlett Boone to come into contact with the underworld. But when hope was evaporating and her mother's life was in jeopardy, desperation drove her to take a risky risk and kiss a stranger in the dark. Everything changed on that one kiss. The unidentified individual? Fearsome Mafia Don Jaxon Creed was a cold-blooded billionaire who was accustomed to getting his way. And he wants Scarlett immediately. Just one evening. Not a thing. However, both of them are unwilling to confront some things that are buried deep in their history. Jaxon's demand for one night turns into a hazardous addiction as his obsession grows. Additionally, the price of that night might be higher than any of them had anticipated when lust and treachery clash. It was a desperate bargain. a passion from which neither can break free. and a history that has the power to destroy everything. Will one careless evening burn them both to ashes or spark something genuine?
7.2
His Temptation
7.2
"Please don't hurt me, I will do anything you want me to, I will not tell anyone anything. I swear on my life, I don't want to die please" I pleaded, it was the least I could do in a situation like this. After all that I had seen, I knew I was nothing to him than just another body that he could drop dead. I closed my eyes hoping and praying that he would spare my life.
"Anything?" I hear him say and I open my eyes immediately. Was he accepting my offer, was he going to spare my life. He was already standing in front of me, I had to tilt my head backwards a great deal to catch a glimpse of his face.
"Yes anything" I nodded my head.
Sky witnessed the death of her friend and family, while she stayed hidden in a closet. She thought she could escape the Culprit but she was caught and kidnapped by him.
On her knees she begged to do anything for him if he released her.
Rather be kidnapped her to be his maid, will she be able to escape him?
7.3
While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son.
Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate.
An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir.
Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack.
Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her.
He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me.
I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve."
The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice.
He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent.
And I was finally going home.