After Tearing Apart the Wedding Dress, I Became the Donna of Ex’s Enemy

Three years as his fiancée, reduced to nothing more than a soulless trinket.

No going out. No friends. No opinions. Every breath I took was measured against Leo's mood.

For three years I obeyed him unconditionally, trying to warm the heart of this mafia tyrant.

Then today, in the fitting room at the atelier, his adoptive sister Alice snatched my couture wedding gown right off the rack. She didn't even have the decency to do it behind my back; she walked straight into Leo's arms while I stood there watching.

Leo barely glanced at me. Just patted her head and said, “It's just a dress. Let her have it.”

Three years of patience, and that's what it came to. A joke.

I looked at the two of them, that smug, triumphant, and I thought: Marciano, did you really think I wouldn't fight back?

That gown was supposed to be mine.

I'd waited six months for it at the most exclusive private atelier in Vienna. Eighteen seamstresses had sewn every inch by hand. The hem was studded with crushed crystal and black swan feathers.

Now it was on Alice.

The Marcianos had taken Alice in two years ago, an orphan, officially Leo's sister with no blood relation. At this moment, she was holding up the skirt and spinning in the middle of the fitting room, her thin heels thudding against the silk carpet.

“Charlotte, you don't mind, do you?” Alice stopped and held up the waist to show me how narrow it was.

She had an angel's face, and those green eyes were full of gloating. “Leo told me last night that fallen noble families like yours are all dried up and broke, and you have no right to wear something this fine.

“Next week at the St. Louis graduation gala, every top school in New York will have their eyes on me. I'm going to walk in wearing the Marciano crest and let everyone know who the real queen of this city is.

“As for you, the Ashford family's survival next month depends on Leo's goodwill anyway. So don't be difficult about something like a dress. It's not worth it. Right?”

I stood by the mirror, hands locked around the spare gown I'd just taken off.

I was the last heir to the Ashford family, and fallen or not, old blood still ran in my veins. I turned and looked at the man sitting in the leather armchair.

Leo Marciano.

Don of the largest crime family in New York, my fiancé. He was wearing a hand-tailored black suit, long legs crossed, a burning cigar pinched between his fingers. Not a flicker of anything in those grey eyes.

“It's just a dress, Charlotte.” Leo's voice was flat.

He exhaled a slow curl of smoke. The acrid scent of tobacco quickly hung thick in the air. “Alice hasn't been well. She just wants one good night at her graduation. We'll charter a flight to Paris and have another one brought over in time for the engagement party.”

“Leo. This is my engagement gown. It has both the Ashford and Marciano crests embroidered on it. You're asking me to give this to an adopted orphan?”

My voice didn't shake. But I was furious.

“The crests can be redone.” Leo tapped his ash, tone final.

“Charlotte, know your place. Your father's debts are kept alive by Marciano money. What I need is a fiancée who behaves, not a woman who picks fights with Alice over a dress.”

“Two years ago you refused to greet the mayor's wife properly at that dinner. I had you locked at the Long Island estate for three months. Have you still not learned?”

“Don't come at me with that cheap noble dignity routine. It doesn't play well. Get smart.”

Behave. Stay in line.

Every word he said was peeling back three years of everything I'd swallowed for the family's sake.

To keep my father from going under. To keep Ashford alive on Marciano funding. I'd filed daily itinerary reports to his right-hand man, accounting for every hour of my life.

I had told myself the obedience would matter. That this man might eventually feel something genuine. But in their eyes, it had only ever been what was owed to a woman who'd traded her dignity for money.

Looking at the two of them together, I felt sick.

I gripped the spare gown and worked my hand into the hidden pocket sewn into the inner lining.

In the mirror's blind spot, I unlocked an old phone I'd kept tucked inside and typed an encrypted set of coordinates into a disappearing-message app.

Alice clicked over to Leo on her thin heels and practically melted into him. She pulled at his tie, voice sugary:

“Leo, look, Charlotte's upset. Maybe I should just take it off. I mean, I really do love it, and if I wore this for the first dance I'd be the one everyone was looking at. But...”

Leo put a heavy hand on the back of Alice's head, calm, reassuring, then cut his cold gaze straight at me. “She's not upset. Keep it.”

I stopped looking at Leo. I stepped forward, walked straight up to Alice, and the moment her smug little smile hadn't quite finished spreading, I shot out my right hand and grabbed the French lace at the front of the gown.

“Charlotte — what are you doing?” Leo's expression went hard. He was on his feet instantly.

I didn't answer him. I put my arm into it and pulled down.

The sound the fabric made was ugly and final, a long, tearing shriek as the expensive hand-sewn gown split from the neckline all the way to the waist.

Lace and crystal scattered across the carpet. Alice screamed and scrambled backward behind the sofa, clutching the ruined bodice with both hands.

“Charlotte Ashford!” Leo's voice finally cracked with something that sounded like real fury, the kind that belongs to someone used to being obeyed. He was walking toward me with that particular coldness that had always meant danger.

I turned to face it. I dropped the scrap of torn fabric on the floor, raised my heel, and ground it into the black swan feathers and scattered crystal.

“She wanted it so badly, she can have it.” I looked at Leo and let myself smile. “And Leo Marciano, whatever we were to each other ends right here. Explain tomorrow's engagement party to the press yourself.”