The Don’s Fake Poverty

I jerked my face away from her touch.

Chloe chuckled. She wasn't angry. She leaned back against her sports car, looking me up and down. Her eyes dragged from my cheap beanie to my soaked sneakers.

"No wonder Kil says you're boring. You look like absolute trash."

I clenched my frozen fists.

"Why do you call him yours?" The voice that came out of my throat was hoarse, raw. It didn't sound like me.

Chloe froze for a second. Then, she threw her head back and laughed.

She laughed so hard her fur coat slipped off her shoulder, exposing the dark bruises on her collarbone.

"Why?" She wiped a tear of pure amusement from her eye. "Oh, honey. You tell me. Why do you think he's yours?"

She took a drag from a slim cigarette. "He is Killian Moretti. The Don of the Moretti family. One of the Five Families of New York."

My ears started ringing.

"Three years ago, a rival family sent six hitmen after him. His real fiancée died in a car bomb." Chloe blew a smoke ring right into my face. "He needed a cover."

"A perfect, civilian cover. A clean, stupid orphan with no background, no status, and zero connections. A 'peasant wife' his enemies would never look twice at."

She stepped closer. Her perfume made my stomach turn.

"Guess why he picked you?" she whispered. "Because you have nobody. Because you live in the slums. Because you'd drop to your knees in gratitude just to marry a broke mechanic."

"You are a human shield, Aria. Bought and paid for with a fifty-dollar silver ring."

I stood paralyzed. The snow fell heavier, burying my shoes.

I felt my soul being ripped out of my chest, piece by piece.

Three years.

I starved myself to save money. I rode my bike through blizzards until my fingers bled to pay our rent.

Turns out, I was just funding a billionaire Don's little game of playing house.

"Kil told me you're actually trying to buy a house." Chloe pouted her lips in mock pity. "A tiny apartment in Brooklyn? Oh, my god, that is so pathetic it actually makes me sad for you."

Suddenly, she reached out and snatched my cheap beanie off my head.

"What is this? Ten-dollar garbage?" She tossed it into a muddy snowbank.

She tapped a glittering diamond clip in her perfect hair. "Know how much this Harry Winston clip costs? Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Kil bought it for me last week just because I said I had a bad hair day."

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

“Enough.” I snapped my head up and shoved her finger out of my face. “Stop rubbing it in! That’s between him and me. You don’t get to judge!”

“Ah—!” Chloe shrieked.

I barely even pushed her, but she threw herself backward on purpose.

The steps behind her were slick with ice.

Her forehead smashed against the sharp edge of a Roman pillar. Blood instantly gushed out.

My frozen legs gave out. I crashed hard into the snow.

Thorny dead branches ripped into my palms.

My hands were covered in blood. The pain was blinding.

“Chloe!”

The carved iron gates burst open.

Killian sprinted out, a dozen men in black suits right behind him.

His eyes locked onto Chloe in a pool of blood.

Then his head snapped to me, sitting in the snow, trembling all over.

His pupils contracted. Raw panic and sheer agony flashed in his eyes.

Pure instinct made him take a step toward me.

“Kil… help me…” Chloe sobbed weakly. Blood was dripping into her eyes. “Are you going to let me die… just like you let my brother die?”

That sentence stopped Killian dead in his tracks.

His jaw ticked hard. His eyes went bloodshot. Finally, he turned and scooped the bleeding Chloe into his arms.

He looked at me. His voice was incredibly hoarse.

His eyes were filled with a desperate, pleading look I couldn’t understand.

“Aria, listen to me. Go home right now! It’s too cold out here.” He rushed out the words. “I owe Chloe’s brother my life. I can’t let her die! I have to get her to the family hospital now!”

“Wait for me at home. Be good. I’ll explain everything tonight. The whole truth, okay?”

He didn’t even have time for a second glance. He rushed to the Rolls-Royce with Chloe, never looking back.

Engines roared. The convoy sped off, kicking up icy slush that slapped against my face.

The guards cleared out too. I was left completely alone outside the massive estate gates.

I looked down at my bloody, torn palms.

Suddenly, a bitter laugh escaped my lips. I couldn’t stop it.

Go back to what home? That crappy apartment where you watched me act like a clown, starving myself to save pennies for you?

Explain? Explain how you watched me live in dirt-poor misery for three years? How you sat on your high horse, testing my cheap, worthless devotion?

Burning up with a fever, I walked through the snow for a long, long time.

Until the headlights of a cross-country bus cut through the dark.

I emptied all the cash in my wallet, plus the debit card holding all my part-time pay. $3,274 in total.

The money I meant to use for Killian’s knee pads. For our bills. For our “future.”

I bought a ticket to the West Coast and stepped onto that Greyhound bus heading to the other side of the country.

Save your explanations, Killian.

I will never, ever forgive a calculated lie.

Goodbye forever.