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 3
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, vibrating against the dark wood like a warning signal.
I didn't need to look to know who it was.
Sofia.
Every morning at 9 AM, like clockwork, she sent a photo.
Dante pouring coffee. Dante tying his tie. Dante kissing the baby's forehead.
They were digital snapshots of the life I was denied-evidence of everything she had stolen.
Today, however, the photo was different.
It was a close-up of her wrist, adorned with my mother's emerald bracelet.
The caption read: Come get it if you want it.
I stared at the screen until my vision blurred and my grip on the phone turned my knuckles white.
I should have ignored it.
I should have stayed in my room and packed my bags for the exile the Don had promised me.
But that bracelet was the only thing my mother left me before cancer took her.
It was my history, my last tether to a world where I was loved, and Sofia was wearing it like a trophy of war.
I walked to the VIP suite in the main estate, my legs feeling heavy as lead.
The guards let me in without a word. They knew the hierarchy, and they knew I was at the bottom of it.
Sofia was sitting on the chaise lounge, looking like a queen holding court.
She smiled when she saw me, touching the bracelet with a perfectly manicured finger.
"Look at the stray dog, coming to beg at the table," she mocked.
"Give it back, Sofia," I said, my voice steady despite the violent pounding in my chest. "It doesn't belong to you."
She stood up, smoothing the front of her silk dress.
"Everything Dante touches belongs to me now. Including this."
She unclasped the bracelet and held it dangling over the marble floor.
"Kneel," she said.
I froze.
"Kneel and admit you are nothing, and I will give it to you."
I looked at the emeralds catching the light.
I thought of my mother's tired smile in her final days.
Slowly, painfully, I lowered myself to my knees.
I swallowed my pride, tasting bile at the back of my throat.
"Please," I whispered.
Sofia laughed, her eyes gleaming with pure malice.
"Oops."
She opened her hand.
The bracelet hit the floor.
The sound of gold snapping and emeralds shattering echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.
I stared at the ruins of my inheritance, paralyzed.
Before I could move, the heavy oak door opened.
Dante walked in, followed closely by his parents, Don Lorenzo and Isabella.
Sofia instantly dropped to the floor, bursting into theatrical tears.
She grabbed her own arm, where a fresh, angry bruise was forming-likely self-inflicted moments before.
"She hurt him!" she screamed, pointing a trembling finger at me.
"She tried to grab the baby! I tried to stop her and she twisted my arm!"
I looked up from the broken remains of my mother's bracelet, stunned.
I hadn't been within ten feet of the child.
Dante looked at Sofia, then at me.
He saw his wife crying. He saw the bruise.
Then, his gaze flickered down.
He saw the broken heirloom on the floor.
He recognized it. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes.
"Get her up," Don Lorenzo barked.
Two guards hauled me to my feet.
"I didn't do it," I said, locking eyes with Dante. "Dante, look at me. I didn't touch him. I came for the bracelet."
Dante looked away.
He stared at the wall, his jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth would crack.
He knew.
Deep down, he had to know.
But admitting I was innocent meant admitting his wife was a monster, and that would destabilize the family alliance.
"The Whip," Isabella said, her voice cold and absolute.
"Twenty lashes. For harming the bloodline."
"No," I gasped, the air leaving my lungs. "Dante, please."
Dante closed his eyes.
He didn't step forward.
He didn't speak in my defense.
"Proceed," he said softly.
The word broke me more than the whip ever could.
He had sanctioned my torture.
I laughed then.
It bubbled up from my chest, a hysterical, broken sound.
I laughed at my own stupidity for believing that love mattered in a room full of monsters.
The guards dragged me out to the courtyard.
They tied my wrists to the iron post, stretching me taut.
I heard the crack of the leather slicing the air before I felt it.
The first lash tore through my shirt and bit into my skin like a branding iron.
I screamed.
I screamed Dante's name.
But as the second, third, and fourth lash fell, my screams turned to silence.
I didn't look for him anymore.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, praying that when I woke up, I wouldn't feel anything at all.