He Traded A Diamond For Cheap Glass

I was the "Ice Queen," the perfect Mafia wife who managed the De Luca empire's millions while my husband, Alessandro, played the part of the feared Underboss.

I thought my silence and competence earned me respect.

That was until I woke up in the estate's medical bay with a shattered leg.

My saddle had snapped mid-jump. It wasn't wear and tear; it was sabotage.

Lying in the dark, feigning sleep, I heard Alessandro whispering outside my door with his enforcer.

"The buckle was filed down," the enforcer said urgently. "Aria tampered with it. She could have broken her neck."

I waited for Alessandro’s rage. I waited for him to execute the mistress who tried to kill his wife.

Instead, his voice was cold and dismissive.

"Bury it," Alessandro ordered. "It’s just a broken leg. Aria was upset about the credit cards. She just wanted to teach Katarina a lesson."

A lesson.

My husband wasn't just cheating on me; he was protecting the woman who tried to cripple me.

Three days later, at the Family Charity Gala, he humiliated me publicly. He outbid me for my grandmother's heirloom necklace and clasped it around Aria's neck while I watched from my wheelchair.

He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a piece of furniture to be rearranged.

He didn't know I had bugged the entire villa while I was recovering.

He didn't know I had the recordings of what Aria was really doing when he wasn't looking.

I gripped the USB drive in my pocket and signaled the tech team to lock the doors.

The statue was broken, but he was about to learn that shattered ice is sharp enough to slit a throat.

Chapter 1

Katarina De Luca POV

The encrypted financial ledgers digging into my palm were proof that my husband was the most feared Underboss in New York. But when I heard the woman’s laughter from behind his study door, that fear dissolved into a cold, hard realization.

The sound offered me exactly two choices: die a silent, dutiful wife, or burn this entire mansion to the ground and survive as a widow.

The laughter wasn't soft. It was the loud, performative shriek of a woman who knew she was trespassing and wanted the world to know it.

I stood frozen in the hallway.

My hands, usually steady enough to sign death warrants on bank transfers, betrayed me with a subtle tremor.

The ledger dug harder into my hip.

Alessandro De Luca. The Heir. The man who could silence a room of hardened criminals with a single glance.

He was my husband.

He was the man I had molded myself into a statue for.

I was the Ice Queen. The perfect Mafia wife. I spoke only when spoken to. I dressed in neutrals. I managed the legitimate front of the De Luca empire with the precision of a surgeon.

I did it all to earn a scrap of his respect.

"You're so warm," Alessandro’s voice drifted through the wood. It was low, husky. A tone he never used with me. "Real. Not like the ice sculpture I have to sleep next to."

The air left my lungs as if I’d been punched.

Ice sculpture.

That was what I was to him. A decoration. Cold. Lifeless.

I looked at my reflection in the hallway mirror.

My hair was pulled back in a severe chignon. My dress was a structured grey sheath. I looked like a fortress.

I looked like a woman who didn't feel pain.

But beneath the silk and wool, my chest was cracking open.

I pushed the door open.

I didn't knock.

The scene inside was a cliché that tasted like bile.

Aria Diaz was perched on the edge of his mahogany desk. Her legs were spread, her cheap pink dress hiked up to her thighs.

Alessandro stood between them. His hands were on her waist. His head was buried in her neck.

They froze.

Aria didn't look ashamed. She looked thrilled.

She smirked at me, a victor’s grin, and deliberately ran a manicured nail down Alessandro’s chest, leaving a faint red scratch.

"Katarina," Alessandro said.

He didn't pull away. He didn't look guilty. He looked annoyed.

"I have the quarterly reports," I said. My voice was flat. Mechanical. It didn't sound like my own.

"Get out," he said.

"This is the study," I replied, stepping further into the room despite every instinct screaming at me to run. "Business is conducted here."

"I am conducting business," Alessandro snapped. He turned fully toward me, shielding Aria with his body. "Personal business. Something you wouldn't understand."

Aria giggled again. "Maybe she needs a diagram, baby."

Baby.

She called the future Don "baby."

"You are breaking protocol," I said to Alessandro, my eyes flicking to the open collar of his shirt. "The staff is whispering. Discretion is the first rule of the Family."

Alessandro laughed. It was a cruel, sharp sound.

"Protocol," he mocked. "That's all you are, Katarina. Rules and ledgers. Look at you. You're barely a woman. You're a spreadsheet in a dress."

He turned back to Aria, dismissing me completely.

"Aria makes me feel alive. You make me feel like I'm in a morgue."

Nausea hit me in a violent wave.

The financial files slipped from my fingers.

They hit the floor with a heavy thud, scattering papers across the Persian rug like fallen leaves.

Neither of them looked down.

"Leave us," Alessandro ordered, his back to me. "And close the door. We aren't finished."

I turned.

I walked out.

I passed the maids in the hallway. They lowered their heads, but I saw the pity in their eyes. They knew. Everyone knew.

I was the last to know.

I walked to the master suite. Our bedroom.

The bed was made perfectly. The silk sheets were cold.

I sat at my vanity.

I looked at the woman in the mirror.

She was beautiful. She was powerful. She was a joke.

I picked up a tissue and wiped the perfect nude lipstick from my mouth, scrubbing until the skin was raw.

My father, a Sicilian Capo, once told me: "The sharpest knife is hidden under the calmest water."

I opened the bottom drawer of my vanity.

Inside was a dossier. I had started it weeks ago, just a suspicion.

Aria Diaz.

Gambling debts. Fraud charges in Miami. Links to the rival Russo family.

She wasn't just a mistress. She was a leak. She was a parasite targeting the villa Alessandro had promised to me.

I picked up my phone.

I dialed Giuseppe, the only man in this house who remembered what loyalty meant.

"Signora?" his gruff voice answered.

"Prepare the car," I said. "And Giuseppe?"

"Yes, Signora?"

"The statue is broken," I whispered, staring at my hollow eyes in the glass. "We are going to war."