Runaway Mistress: The Mafia Boss Begs On His Knees
The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in at four degrees below zero.
Ten minutes ago, I was the woman Dante Moretti promised to burn the world for.
Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir.
Dante didn’t just lock me in. He looked at me with eyes devoid of warmth and said, "Evidence says otherwise."
He chose the lie of his arranged wife, Sofia, over my truth.
For months, I endured the price of loving the Underboss.
I watched him marry Sofia in a grand ceremony to secure a family alliance.
I let him force me onto a table to drain my blood to save her life when she was injured.
I took twenty lashes from his family’s enforcers, all while he stood by and watched, claiming it was necessary to "protect" me.
He told me to wait. He told me the marriage was a sham.
But when I finally escaped and he came chasing after me, revealing that Sofia was a fraud and he wanted me back, I didn't feel relief.
I felt nothing.
Even after he threw his body over mine to save me from a collapsing building, taking a jagged shard of timber through his chest, I couldn't forgive him.
In the hospital, his mother handed me his journal.
It was filled with entries about his undying love for me, written on the very same days he allowed me to be tortured.
"Tell him the debt is paid," I told his mother as I handed the book back.
"He saved my life. I saved his child. We are even."
I turned my back on the ICU and walked out into the rain.
Dante Moretti might have been willing to die for me, but he never knew how to live for me.
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Chapter 2
The overhead fluorescent strips hummed with a frequency that drilled straight into my temples, the light unflattering and harsh as I stared at my reflection in the grime-streaked mirror.
I held the needle steady, my hands trembling only slightly as I forced the tip through the skin of my own forehead.
I didn't have insurance.
And I couldn't use the Moretti family doctor.
That privilege was reserved for the family. Not the mistress.
So, I stitched the wound Dante gave me with a sewing kit I had purchased from a 24-hour pharmacy.
Each tug of the thread was a sharp, stinging reminder of who I was now.
I wasn't the cherished lover.
I was the collateral damage.
The metallic tang of blood in my mouth triggered a memory, pulling my mind back to the Fulton Fish Market, three years ago.
The air had smelled of brine and gutting knives back then, a stark contrast to the scent of Italian silk and gunpowder that always followed Dante Moretti.
He had walked through the blood and slime of the market floor in a three-thousand-dollar suit just to ask me my name.
He didn't care about the filth.
He only saw me.
I remembered the day the rival gang firebombed the stalls.
The explosion had thrown us to the ground, the world turning into fire and noise.
Dante had covered my body with his own, shielding me from the shrapnel and the heat.
His back had been burned, his suit ruined, but he had looked down at me with a smile that eclipsed the sun.
"A life for a life, Elena," he had whispered, wiping soot from my cheek. "You owe me. Forever."
I severed the thread with my teeth, the taste of iron coating my tongue.
The man who took a bomb for me was dead.
The man who had just shoved me into a marble fireplace was alive and well, probably holding Sofia's hand in the VIP suite upstairs.
I walked out of the bathroom, clutching my side where the cold from the industrial freezer still ached in my bones.
Dante was waiting in the corridor.
He looked impeccable, not a hair out of place, untouched by the chaos he had orchestrated.
He saw the fresh bandage on my head, and for a second, his mask slipped.
Regret flashed in his eyes, but he blinked it away instantly, replacing it with a wall of ice.
"You shouldn't have touched her," he said, his voice low and dangerous.
I laughed, a dry, humorless sound that scraped my throat.
"I touched her wrist, Dante. You cracked my skull."
"She is under a lot of stress," he said, stepping closer, closing the distance between us until I could smell his cologne.
"The stress affects the milk. It affects the heir. You know the rules."
"The Plan," I said, mocking the word he used to justify every betrayal.
"Is shoving me part of the Plan too?"
He grabbed my shoulders, his grip tight, possessive.
"Don't do this, Elena. Don't make me the villain."
"You are already the villain," I whispered.
He pulled me against him, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
"It's only you," he breathed against my skin. "It's always been you. Just wait a little longer."
I stood rigid in his arms.
His body heat used to be my sanctuary.
Now, it felt like a cage.
"Soon, it will just be us," he promised, pulling back to look me in the eyes.
He brushed his thumb over the bandage on my forehead, a tender gesture that felt like a lie.
"I have to go back to her. She's hysterical."
"Of course," I said, stepping out of his reach.
"Go to your wife."
He hesitated, looking at me as if he wanted to say more, as if words could fix the hole in my head or the hole in my heart.
"I'll send a guard to drive you home," he said finally.
He turned and walked away, heading toward the elevators that led to the VIP floor.
He didn't look back.
He never looked back anymore.
I watched him go, feeling the phantom weight of his body shielding me from a bomb, and realized that was the true tragedy.
He had saved my life back then only to destroy it slowly now.
"I don't believe in your code anymore, Dante," I whispered to the empty hallway.
I walked toward the exit, leaving the hospital-and the man who broke me-behind.