His Mafia Queen, My Substitute Heart
My perfect marriage to Don Dante Moretti, the most powerful man in the New York mob, ended the moment my father died. I was twenty-four, pregnant with his heir, and I believed I was his queen.
But for two days, while I planned a funeral alone, my husband was unreachable. Then a friend sent me a photo. Dante in London, his hand tangled in the hair of the woman beside him.
It was my cousin, Valentina.
He came home with lies about a dead phone and a difficult summit. That night, I found his private journal, and my world disintegrated.
He had married me because I had "Valentina’s eyes." I was a substitute.
Our unborn child wasn't a product of love. It was a project. A girl he planned to name Elena, after Valentina, calling her a "perfect, tiny piece of the woman I can never truly possess."
I wasn't his wife. I was a stand-in. The love I felt for him didn't just die. It was murdered.
The next morning, I slid a folder across the kitchen island. "Donation forms," I said. He didn't even look before scrawling his signature on what were actually our finalized divorce papers.
His arrogance was my weapon. As he slept beside me that night, smelling of lies and my cousin, I made an appointment at a private clinic. He wanted a legacy?
I would give him nothing.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 3
Isabella POV:
Dante was drunk. Not sloppy, but his edges were softened, his mask of control slipping. He lifted his glass of whiskey, the amber liquid catching the light of the chandelier.
“To Valentina,” he said, his voice carrying across the hushed dinner table. His eyes were fixed on her, burning with a raw, unguarded adoration that silenced the room. “The most brilliant, captivating woman I’ve ever known. The family is lucky to have her. I am lucky to have her.”
The words struck me with the force of a physical blow. A hot, sharp pain radiated from my chest, so intense it made me gasp. He wasn't just toasting his cousin, his Consigliere. He was making a declaration. A public humiliation.
In that moment, under the weight of a dozen pairs of eyes, I knew. It wasn’t just that he didn’t love me. He didn’t even see me. I was a ghost at his table.
I quietly excused myself, my movements stiff and robotic. I walked to the powder room, the sound of my own blood roaring in my ears. I stared at my reflection in the ornate mirror. The woman looking back was a stranger—pale, with haunted eyes and a grim set to her mouth. This was what his love had made me.
I was about to turn away when I heard their voices from the hallway, low and urgent. Dante and Valentina.
“You can’t say things like that in front of her, Dante,” Valentina hissed. “In front of everyone. It’s cruel.”
“It’s the truth,” he slurred slightly. “You know why I married her, Lena. I told you.”
My breath caught in my throat. I pressed my ear against the cool wood of the door.
“You said you found her interesting. You didn’t say you were using her as my stand-in,” she shot back, her voice laced with disgust. “That’s not just cruel, it’s… twisted. It’s a violation of the family honor.”
“It was the only way to keep you close!” His voice was a raw plea. “After you chose the business over us… seeing her, someone who looked so much like you did back then… it was a way to have a piece of you. And she’s weak. She adores me. She’d never leave, especially not now that she’s pregnant.”
My stomach churned violently.
“And the baby?” Valentina asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“The baby will be perfect,” Dante said, and the chilling conviction in his tone made me feel sick. “A girl. We’ll name her Elena. She’ll have Isabella’s face, but she’ll be my Elena. My legacy. A perfect blend of you and me.”
I stumbled back from the door, a strangled sound escaping my lips. Bile rose in my throat, and I barely made it to the toilet before I retched, my body convulsing with the violent rejection of his poison. He didn’t want a child. He wanted a breeding project. He wanted to create a living doll from my body and name it after his obsession.
I flushed the toilet, the sound unnaturally loud in the silent house. I rinsed my mouth, staring at my hollow-eyed reflection. The pain was gone. The shock was gone. In their place was a vow, silent and absolute, that echoed in the empty spaces of my soul.
I will burn your whole world to the ground, Dante Moretti.
His arrogance, his supreme confidence that I was a weak, adoring fool—that was my key. That was my escape route. He would never see me coming.
I walked back into the dining room, my composure a perfect, icy mask. I sat down and took a sip of water, ignoring the concerned look Valentina shot my way.
Later that night, back in our silent penthouse, I sat at my laptop. With steady hands, I booked a one-way ticket to San Francisco, departing in three weeks. I researched apartments in a place called Napa Valley. It looked green and quiet. It looked like a place a ghost could disappear.
My phone rang. It was Valentina.
“Bella? Are you alright? I wanted to talk about…”
“I’m fine,” I cut her off, my voice cold. “Just tired.”
“I’m coming over to your father’s place tomorrow to pay my respects before I leave for London. I’d like to see you,” she said softly.
A part of me wanted to scream at her, to blame her. But she wasn't the architect of this pain. She was just the muse. “Fine. Tomorrow.”
Dante walked into the room. “Who was that?”
“Valentina. She wants to meet at my father’s house tomorrow.”
His eyes lit up with that familiar, possessive hunger. “I’ll come with you,” he said immediately. It wasn’t a request. It was a command. Another opportunity for him to be near her.
“Okay,” I said, my voice betraying nothing.
He was a pawn in my game now. And he was entirely, blissfully unaware that I was even playing. His every move to get closer to her was a step that pushed me further toward my freedom. He was no longer my husband. He was just an obstacle.
You may also like
9.0
I shattered my knee jumping in front of a silver bullet meant for him.
The poison seeped into my marrow, putting my wolf into a coma and leaving me crippled.
I thought my sacrifice would secure his love forever.
Instead, five years later, Brennan stood in a warehouse while a Rogue held a silver-laced dagger to my throat.
Beside me sat Debbi, his mistress—a spy who had staged the whole kidnapping.
"You can only save one," the kidnapper sneered.
Brennan didn't even hesitate.
He looked me in the eye, his gaze cold and devoid of the bond we once shared.
"I choose Debbi," he said.
He walked out with her in his arms, leaving his Fated Mate to bleed out on the concrete floor.
As the blade dug into my skin, I felt the mate bond snap.
He thought I died in the explosion that followed.
He spent weeks howling in grief when he finally realized Debbi was a traitor and he had killed the only woman who truly loved him.
But he was wrong.
I didn't die.
A federal agent pulled me from the fire, and the trauma didn't kill my wolf—it woke her up.
A year later, Brennan walked into a small bistro in Italy, looking for redemption.
He fell to his knees when he saw me standing there, healed and glowing with the aura of a White Wolf.
"Alyssa," he wept, reaching for me. "I'm so sorry. I'll do anything."
I looked him dead in the eye, my gaze icy blue.
"Get out," I said. "We don't serve traitors here."
8.6
Ten days before our scheduled wedding, my fiancé, Capo Leo Gallo, came to my family's estate in the pouring rain.
He didn't come to comfort me over my parents' recent deaths. He came to tell me that his mistress, Angelica, would remain by his side and hold the real power in our home. I was to be his wife in name only.
He wanted to publicly humiliate me and steal my family's Brooklyn docks.
In my past life, I didn't realize Leo and his family had actually orchestrated the brutal ambush that left my parents dead in a pool of blood.
I endured his insults, only to be locked away in a gilded cage while they used my six-year-old brother, Luca, as a hostage.
They drained my mother's trust fund, elevated his mistress to rule my home, and eventually sent my little brother and me to our miserable graves.
They thought I was just a powerless orphan they could easily crush.
They thought I didn't know the absolute truth behind the massacre that ruined my family and crippled the Don's eldest son, Damien Moretti.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the cold drizzle, listening to his arrogant demands.
"As you wish, Leo," I said, burying my burning need for vendetta beneath a mask of hollow defeat.
The moment he left to celebrate his victory, I turned to my loyal maid.
"Send a message to the Mafia Queen. Tell her I am breaking my engagement to Leo. I wish to marry her crippled son, Damien, instead."
9.6
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."
7.4
In a world ruled by guns, secrets, and blood-soaked loyalties, love is the most dangerous currency of all.
Alessandro De Luca is the unseen king of a global cartel-ruthless, brilliant, and feared across continents. His word is law, his mercy nonexistent. Until one night, one woman, and one mistake unravel everything he has built.
Elena Hart is innocent but unbreakable, drawn into the underworld through a debt she never created. She should have been collateral-nothing more. Instead, she becomes his weakness.
As enemies close in and betrayal festers within the cartel, Alessandro must choose between the empire crowned in blood... or the woman who threatens to destroy it.
Love was never part of the plan.
Survival was.
And in this world, both demand a price.
8.5
My fiancé left me standing alone at the podium during our rehearsal dinner to rush to the side of a woman whose only illness was a desperate need for attention.
He humiliated me in front of the heads of the Five Families, abandoning our alliance to scoop his "dying" mistress off the floor.
I didn't cry. I didn't run. I walked straight to the head table, to the most terrifying man in the city—his older brother, the Don.
"The Woodward family owes me a husband," I declared calmly.
An hour later, I was married to the Capo dei Capi. But my ex-fiancé didn't accept his demotion.
He kidnapped me, strapping me to a chair in a soundproof basement.
For three days, he drained my blood pint by pint to "save" his mistress, Jaidyn, who watched me fade while she casually ate an apple.
"Take another bag," she ordered, smiling at my agony. "She still has too much fight in her."
As the cold crept up my chest and my vision blurred, I realized I was going to die for a lie, drained dry by a madman.
Then, the steel door detonated.
Through the smoke and debris walked my husband, not with a ransom, but with a serrated knife and a promise to burn them alive.
8.7
On our wedding anniversary, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I only had three months to live.
I planned to tell my husband, Tobias Wright, but I accidentally heard a conversation between him and his mother, Joanna Wright, when I was outside the study.
"Mom, she's finally going to die. I've been waiting for that day for five years."
"Don't rush, Tobias. Once she's gone, her heart can be given to Jolie."
So I realized that they had an evil plan when Tobias decided to marry me. They had just wanted my healthy heart.
I laughed. Then I decided that I would give them a taste of their own medicine for their five years of 'anticipation.'