His Unwanted Wife, The Rival Don's Queen

The gunman pressed a Glock to my temple and gave my husband a choice. "One walks out. One stays. Choose, Mr. Underboss." I wasn't worried. I was Haven. I was his wife of ten years, his Consigliere, the woman who built his empire. Beside me sobbed Gemma, a fragile twenty-two-year-old he had known for six months. "Take Gemma! Leave Haven!" Connor screamed, his honor twisting into something unrecognizable. He walked out of the warehouse with another woman in his arms, leaving me to be butchered. I didn't wait for the bullet. I threw myself through a glass window into the freezing canal. I survived the fall, but the life inside me didn't. After five years of failed IVF, the miracle baby I hadn't even told Connor about was gone. While I lay in a cold hospital room, bleeding out the remains of our child, my husband was buying diamond earrings for the woman who had set me up to die. When the doctor tried to sedate me for the surgery, I grabbed his wrist. "No anesthesia," I commanded. "But the pain..." "I want to feel it," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I want to feel every scrap of him leaving my body." I burned that pain into my soul. Then, I went home, poured gasoline over our wedding bed, and lit a match. Two years later, I returned to the city. Connor thought I was dead. But when he saw me on the arm of his mortal enemy, wearing the crown of a rival Queen, he realized his mistake. He didn't just lose a wife. He started a war. Chapter 1 Haven POV It wasn't the cold steel of a Glock 19 pressed against my temple that killed me. It was the name that left my husband's lips when the gunman gave him a choice between his wife and the other woman. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of building the Apex Crew from a scrappy street gang into a shipping empire that controlled the entire eastern seaboard. I stood there, my wrists zip-tied behind my back, the acrid smell of rusted iron and stagnant canal water filling the abandoned warehouse. Beside me, Gemma sobbed. She was twenty-two, porcelain-fragile, with big doe eyes that seemed to constantly beg for protection. She was the daughter of a soldier who died taking a bullet for Connor three years ago. That was the debt. The blood debt that hung over my marriage like a guillotine. Connor was on his knees across from us. His suit was torn, and blood trickled from a cut on his brow, but his eyes were frantic. Not for me. The masked man behind me cocked the hammer of the gun. Time seemed to slow down, the dust motes dancing in the singular beam of light cutting through the gloom. "Choose, Mr. Underboss," the gunman rasped, his voice distorted by a modulator. "One walks out. One stays. You have five seconds before I paint the walls with both of them." Connor looked at me. I held his gaze. I was his Consigliere in all but name. I was the one who laundered the money through the construction firms. I was the one who strategized the takeover of the docks. I was his wife. Then, he looked at Gemma. She let out a whimper, a high-pitched sound of pure terror. "Please, Connor," she begged. "Please." "Five," the gunman counted. Connor struggled against his restraints. "Four." "Haven can handle herself!" Connor shouted, his voice cracking. "She is strong. She knows the protocol!" "Three." My heart stopped beating. I knew what was coming before he said it. I saw the shift in his eyes. I watched the way his honor twisted into something unrecognizable. "Two." "Let Gemma go!" Connor screamed. "Take Gemma. Leave Haven." The silence that followed was louder than any gunshot. The gunman laughed, a dry, humorless sound. He shoved me forward, causing me to stumble onto the concrete. He cut Gemma's bonds. Connor scrambled up as his own ties were slashed by the second enforcer. He didn't run to me. He ran to her. He scooped Gemma into his arms, checking her for injuries I knew she didn't have. "We have to go," the gunman said, pointing his weapon at me. "Deal is a deal. You walk. She pays the toll." Connor looked back at me then. His eyes were wide, filled with a panic that looked suspiciously like guilt. "I will come back for you, Haven," he promised, his voice shaking. "I swear on my mother's grave. I just have to get her to safety. You are tough. You survive." He turned his back. He walked out the heavy steel doors with another woman in his arms. The metal slammed shut, the echo vibrating through the floorboards and up into my bones. I was alone with three men who wanted to send a message to the Apex Crew. The leader holstered his gun and pulled a knife. He stepped closer, grinning. "Your husband has strange priorities, Mrs. Jones." I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I looked at the shattered window twenty feet away, overlooking the freezing canal. It was a suicide jump. But staying here was a death sentence. I ran. I threw myself through the jagged glass before they could grab me. The ice-cold water hit me like a sledgehammer, knocking the air from my lungs and the love from my heart.