My Cruel Ex-Husband Demands A Remarriage

I spun the dial on the hidden wall safe, expecting to find the Glock 19 Aiden insisted I keep.

Instead, I found a ledger proving my husband, the Mafia's most feared Enforcer, was funding a secret family with my dead father's money.

For seven years, I had been his obedient doll. I cleaned the blood off his knuckles and justified his violence.

But the ledger showed he had siphoned my entire inheritance into a trust for a child he had with his brother's wife.

When I tried to leave, his mistress framed me as a spy.

Aiden didn't ask for proof. He didn't hesitate.

He dragged me to a damp warehouse, hooded me, and beat me until my ribs cracked.

He left me to rot in the dark, ignoring the diamond bracelet on my wrist—the very one he had gifted me the day before as a symbol of his "ownership."

He thought he had broken me. He thought I would die in that basement, a silent collateral of his rage.

But he made a fatal mistake. He left me alive.

I escaped through a ventilation grate and ran straight to the one man Aiden feared most: his sworn enemy, Jensen Levy.

"Make me a weapon," I told him.

Two years later, I walked back into Aiden's office.

Not as his battered wife, but as the CEO of the corporation that had just bought his empire's debt.

He looked at me with horror, realizing the ghost he created had come back to burn him down.

"Hello, Aiden," I said, pressing a high-voltage tactical pen against his chest.

"You're trespassing."

Chapter 1

Charlotte POV

I spun the dial on the hidden wall safe, expecting to wrap my fingers around the cold steel of the Glock 19 Aiden insisted I keep for protection.

But instead of a weapon, my hand brushed against leather.

I found the ledger that proved my husband had been paying for his mistress with my dead father's money.

My fingers trembled as I traced the worn binding.

This wasn't supposed to be here.

It wasn't supposed to exist.

Aiden Herrera, the Enforcer of the Family, the man whose mere silhouette made grown men cross the street, was meticulous.

He didn't make mistakes.

But he had been sloppy today.

Or maybe he just didn't care.

Maybe he thought I was too stupid to look. Maybe he thought I was exactly what he had molded me into over seven years-a silent, pretty doll who painted watercolors and kept her mouth shut.

I pulled the heavy book out.

The pages were filled with numbers. Offshore accounts. Crypto transfers.

And names.

The Herrera Family Trust.

Beneficiary: Leo Herrera.

Secondary Beneficiary: Haven Herrera.

My breath hitched painfully in my chest.

Haven. His brother's wife.

Leo. Her five-year-old son.

I flipped to the source of funds.

The Knox Estate Liquidation.

My dowry. My inheritance. The money my father had left me to ensure I would always have a safety net in this violent world.

It was gone.

All of it.

Siphoned off, systematically, over five years into a trust for a child that wasn't supposed to be his.

I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

With a shaking hand, I dialed the number for the Family's Consigliere, heavy dread settling in my stomach like lead.

"Mr. Vance," I said, my voice sounding hollow and foreign to my own ears. "The Trust for Leo. Is it active?"

"Of course, Mrs. Herrera," the lawyer's voice was smooth, dismissive. "Aiden set it up five years ago. Family business. You understand."

"Right," I whispered. "Family business."

I hung up.

Family business.

For seven years, I had justified Aiden's violence.

I had cleaned the blood off his knuckles.

I had iced his bruises.

I had let him grip my arms until they bruised because I told myself he was a weapon, and weapons couldn't help being sharp.

I had told myself I was his anchor.

That without me, he would drown in the blood he spilled for the Organization.

But I wasn't his anchor.

I was his bank account.

Then, laughter drifted down the hallway.

It was a sound that didn't belong in this cold, sterile mausoleum of a mansion.

It was warm. Genuine.

I walked toward it, my feet moving on autopilot, drawn like a moth to a flame that would burn me alive.

I reached the East Wing Solarium.

The glass doors were slightly ajar.

I didn't go in. I stood in the shadows of the corridor, invisible.

The scene inside was like a painting of the perfect life I was never allowed to have.

Aiden was sitting on the rug.

He wasn't the monster who had shattered a crystal ashtray against the wall last week just because I smiled at the waiter.

He was smiling.

Actually smiling.

Leo was climbing on his back, giggling.

Haven sat on the sofa nearby, looking like a Madonna in white silk, watching them with soft, adoring eyes.

Aiden's father, the Don, stood by the window with a cigar.

"The transfer is complete," the Don said, his voice like gravel grinding together. "The Knox assets are secure in the boy's name."

Aiden shifted, holding Leo steady.

"Good," Aiden said. "The Knox legacy belongs to the true Herrera bloodline. Not to outsiders."

An outsider.

I had shared his bed for seven years.

I had swallowed his rage.

I had let him isolate me from everyone I ever knew.

And I was still an outsider.

"Does Charlotte suspect anything?" Haven asked, her voice light, sickeningly innocent.

Aiden scoffed.

"Lottie lives in a dream world I built for her," he said. "She doesn't ask questions. She knows her place."

He looked at Leo with a tenderness that shattered my heart into a million jagged pieces.

"Everything I do is for him," Aiden said. "I do what I have to do to keep the peace. Even if it means dealing with her."

Dealing with me.

I was a chore. A burden. A necessary evil to fund his secret family.

I backed away.

My heels made no sound on the marble.

I had learned to be quiet. To be a ghost.

I walked back to the master bedroom.

The room was cold.

It smelled of his cologne-sandalwood and gunpowder.

A scent I used to associate with safety.

Now it just smelled like a lie.

I looked at the wedding photo on the nightstand.

I looked so young. So pathetically hopeful.

I picked up the frame.

I didn't throw it.

I didn't scream.

I just set it face down on the table, closing the lid on that life.

"Aiden Herrera," I whispered to the empty room, my voice steady for the first time in years. "I am done being your collateral."