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.
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Chapter 4
Isabella POV:
The next day, we stood in the quiet, dusty living room of my father’s house. It was a mausoleum of memories, every photograph on the wall a fresh stab of grief. Dante stood beside me, his hand on the small of my back, a possessive, performative gesture for Valentina’s benefit.
“I’m surprised you two have gotten so close,” Dante said, his voice a low murmur meant only for me, but his eyes were tracking Valentina as she looked at my father’s old portraits. The question was laced with suspicion, with the possessiveness of a man who owned everything, including the relationships of the people around him.
“Grief is a strange bond,” I replied, my voice empty.
Valentina approached us, her expression genuinely somber. “Your father was a good man, Bella. An honorable associate of the family. I am so sorry for your loss.” She turned her gaze to Dante. “It’s good that you’re here for her. She needs you.”
The irony was so bitter it tasted like acid.
Dante’s face arranged itself into the perfect mask of a grieving, supportive husband. “Of course. My wife is my world. Especially now.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. Instead, I stood there, a silent, hollowed-out version of myself, and let the lies wash over me. This house wasn’t just the place my father had died. It was the place my marriage had been officially pronounced dead.
After an hour of stilted conversation, Dante suggested we go for lunch. We ended up at a small, upscale Italian restaurant in the city, a place the Morettis had owned for generations. A place loyalists came to broker deals under the guise of pasta and wine.
Dante and Valentina fell into their easy, familiar rhythm, their conversation weaving a tapestry of shared history that I had no part in. I realized with a sickening lurch that the stories Dante had told me about his childhood, the anecdotes I thought were special, intimate pieces of himself he had shared only with me—they were all recycled. They were his stories with *her*. I had been living a secondhand life.
The waiter, a man who had known Dante since he was a boy, came to take our order.
“The usual for you, Don Moretti?” he asked, then smiled at Valentina. “And the lady? Veal saltimbocca, extra sage?”
“You remembered,” Valentina said, smiling warmly.
Dante’s gaze was soft as he looked at her. He had remembered her favorite dish for over a decade. He still didn’t know I was allergic to shellfish.
Valentina, to her credit, seemed to notice my silence. “Bella, you haven’t ordered.”
Dante finally turned to me, his attention a reluctant afterthought. “What do you want, darling?”
“Just some plain broth,” I said quietly. “My stomach is still upset.”
His brow furrowed with that false concern. “You have to eat, for the baby’s sake.”
Before I could answer, a commotion erupted at the next table. A young, nervous busboy, his hands trembling, stumbled. A tureen of steaming hot soup flew through the air, heading straight for our table.
Everything happened in a split second. A blur of motion.
Dante moved like a predator. He lunged, not towards me, his pregnant wife, but towards Valentina. He threw his body in front of hers, shielding her completely, taking the brunt of the scalding liquid on his own back and arm.
I was left exposed.
The hot broth splashed across my arm and hand, a searing, shocking pain. I cried out, pulling my arm back, staring in disbelief as my skin instantly reddened and began to blister.
Dante didn't even look at me. He was fussing over Valentina, his hands checking her face, her arms. “Are you alright, Lena? Did any get on you?”
He shot a venomous glare at the terrified busboy, a look that promised a violent end. Then, his eyes flickered to me. It wasn’t a look of concern. It was annoyance. A flash of irritation that my cry had interrupted his moment with her.
In that single, horrifying moment, the last vestiges of my foolish hope died. He would let me burn to keep her safe. He didn't just not love me. He didn't see me. I was invisible.
The pain, the shock, the finality of that realization—it was too much. The world tilted, the edges of my vision going dark. The last thing I saw before I fainted was Dante’s face, his expression not one of worry for me, but of pure, unadulterated fury on Valentina’s behalf.
I woke up to the smell of antiseptic and the low murmur of voices. I was in a hospital room. Dante and Valentina were standing by the window, their backs to me.
A nurse with kind eyes walked in. “Mrs. Moretti. You’re awake. You have some nasty second-degree burns on your arm, but they’ll heal. You were lucky.”
She glanced at the chart. “The doctor also did an ultrasound, just to check on the baby given the shock…” Her voice trailed off, her expression turning to one of deep sympathy. “I’m so, so sorry, Mrs. Moretti. There was no heartbeat. You’ve lost the baby.”
The words hung in the air, a perfect, tragic lie.
My mind raced, seizing the opportunity, the perfect, heartbreaking excuse. This was it. This was my escape.
I looked at the nurse, my eyes pleading. “Please,” I whispered, my voice raspy. “Don’t tell my husband. Not yet. The shock… I can’t bear for him to know right now. Let me tell him myself, when I’m stronger.”
The nurse nodded, her eyes full of pity for the poor, tragic wife. “Of course, dear. I understand.”
I would use this fake tragedy. I would tell him I needed to recover, to grieve, somewhere quiet, away from the city. Away from him. And he, consumed by a flicker of guilt, would let me go. He would never know that our child, the one he wanted to shape into a monument for his obsession, was already gone, by my own hand.
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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.'