Too Late For Regret, Mr. Underboss
I caught the white roses at my best friend’s wedding.
Everyone expected Nero, the Mafia Underboss I’d loved for eight years, to drop to one knee and propose.
Instead, he ripped the bouquet from my hands and gave it to his secretary.
“Next time, Siena,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Let Valentina have her moment in the spotlight.”
In front of every Capo and soldier in the city, he stripped me of my dignity just to please a girl who played at being a mobster’s muse.
To him, I was merely an entry in a ledger—forever pending, never prioritized.
I quietly sold our penthouse, packed my bags, and walked away.
In seven days, I would no longer be his shadow.
I planned to marry his rival Don.
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Chapter 2
Nero’s hands dropped to his sides. In the silence, I heard the faint, rhythmic grind of his molars.
“If you’re going to give me the cold shoulder over a bouquet, I’m not staying.”
He pulled his car keys from his pocket, the metal clinking sharply in the still air.
“Valentina lives in a secluded area. I need to make sure she gets home safely.”
I didn't say a word. I didn't stop him.
I simply watched as the heavy steel door clicked shut behind him, sealing me in the echo of his departure.
The moment he was gone, my shoulders slumped. I collapsed onto the leather sofa.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the low hum of the central air, which sounded like the deep breathing of some great beast.
Slowly, I pushed myself up and walked down the dim hallway.
I stopped at the room at the far end.
It had reinforced steel walls and bulletproof glass to keep the scent of gunpowder and bleach away from the contents.
It was supposed to be our future nursery.
I walked to the small safe in the corner and clicked it open.
Inside were the mementos of eight years of surviving this brutal industry.
I pulled out a faded photo of us as teenagers.
Nero had his arms wrapped tightly around me, glaring at the camera with fierce protectiveness.
That day, he had promised to spend his life guarding mine.
I put the photo back and locked the safe, sealing away the broken promises.
It was past 3:00 AM when I heard the front door open.
Nero walked into the living room, loosening his tie with an air of exhaustion.
He smelled of expensive cigars and something else—the faint, cloying scent of vanilla perfume.
I was waiting for him, sitting in the dark.
“Feeling nostalgic?” he asked softly, noticing I was still awake.
“Did you get Valentina safely to her door?” I asked, my voice flat and calm.
“Her neighborhood is dangerous, Siena,” he said, deftly sidestepping the real question.
He walked over and reached down, grabbing my arm to pull me up.
“Let’s go to bed.”
I jerked my shoulder, breaking his grip.
I stood up on my own, my legs stiff from sitting too long.
I looked directly into his dark eyes, searching for the boy in the photo and finding only a stranger.
“We’re done, Nero.”
He scoffed, a condescending smirk playing on his lips.
“You’re throwing a tantrum over the bouquet.”
He turned his back on me, walking toward the master bath, dismissing me entirely.
“I’ll buy you a bigger, more expensive bouquet tomorrow to appease you.”
I watched his broad shoulders move away from me, the final thread of our connection snapping.
“I’m getting married next week.”
Nero stopped dead in his tracks.
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7.3
I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Clayton.
The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party.
"Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up.
Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock.
"Ivy? You're... we buried you."
They hadn't buried me.
They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability.
Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger.
He accused me of faking my death for attention.
He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain.
He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize.
"You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation."
But he made a fatal mistake.
He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees.
He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it.
Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist.
Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us.
"Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand."
I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face.
I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself.
I came back to bury them.
9.6
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."
7.1
One look was all it took for the Golden Wolf to mark his prey.
To the glittering elite of Milan, Dante Moretti is a god among men, a billionaire mogul whose Midas touch turns every gold future into an empire. But beneath the bespoke Italian suits and the cold, amber eyes lies a monster. Sworn in as the new Capo of the Moretti Syndicate over his father's open casket, Dante is a man who rules with an iron grip and a heart of stone. He doesn't ask for what he wants. He takes it.
Then he saw Bianca.
Bianca Rossi is a creature of light, an innocent art student who finds beauty in the shadows of Milan's back alleys. She lives for her canvas and her dreams, unaware that a chance encounter in a midnight storm has placed her in the sights of the city's most dangerous predator.
Dante doesn't just want her. He is obsessed.
Using his billions like a silken web, Dante orchestrates a "gilded cage" for Bianca. From anonymous scholarships to lavish "chance" encounters, he draws her into a world of blood-stained gold and lethal power plays. But Bianca is no porcelain doll. Behind her soft beauty lies a fierce, indomitable spirit that refuses to be bought-or broken.
As a brutal war with the Ricci family threatens to burn Milan to the ground, Bianca must choose: flee the man who stalks her dreams, or stand beside the Wolf and become his Queen.
In a world where loyalty is paid in blood and love is a lethal weakness, will Dante's possessiveness be their salvation... or their ultimate destruction?
7.3
Jolene flies to Italy broke and desperate for a PA job. She walks into the wrong room and finds a man naked in the shower. She can't stop staring. He notices.
The interview is brutal. Two men, Marco and Enzo, tear her apart, humiliate her, and dismiss her. She thinks she failed.
Then Enzo gets in the car. It was all a test. They wanted to see if she'd break. She didn't. The job is hers.
But they don't want a normal assistant. They want control. They touch her when they want, stand too close, give orders that cross every line.
On her first night, Marco tells her to take off her blouse.
Jolene has to choose: obey or walk away with nothing.
The problem? Part of her doesn't want to leave.
7.6
I am the wife of Julian Falcone, a powerful mafia boss, but my title in this house is nothing but a joke.
When our car broke down in a deadly blizzard, Julian rushed to the scene, only to bypass me entirely.
He wrapped his heavy coat around his fragile cousin, Livia, and put her in his only available passenger seat.
"Livia's constitution is too weak to survive this cold. I have to take her back first."
He left me to freeze in the pitch-black car for the entire night.
When his men finally dragged my half-dead body out the next morning, they openly mocked me, calling me a piece of "collateral" that the boss wouldn't care about as long as I was breathing.
Back at the estate, Julian didn't even ask if I had survived the frostbite. Instead, he stormed into my sickroom, demanding I treat his mistress with respect just because my absolute silence had hurt her feelings.
His grandmother then publicly humiliated me for failing to provide an heir, while Livia flaunted the custom diamond bracelet Julian bought to soothe her "fright" from the storm.
I finally understood. He didn't marry me out of honor to save my fallen family. He just needed my aristocratic Rossi blood to legitimize his new-money mafia empire.
I was never a wife. I was a transaction he was willing to let freeze to death.
When his men delivered a heavy diamond necklace to buy my submission, I didn't cry or beg.
I dropped the blood diamond into the deepest drawer, and began to plan my escape.
7.6
I spent five years as the perfect wife to Easton Harrington, smoothing his midnight-blue ties and fading into the wallpaper of his massive estate. I thought I was the heart of our family, but I was really just a ghost in a sensible beige dress.
The illusion shattered at a charity gala when Easton’s "family friend," Georgina, appeared in a gown that matched his suit perfectly. While they basked in the flashbulbs as a golden couple, I was literally pushed into the velvet ropes by a cameraman. No one noticed.
Then my four-year-old son, Holt, slapped my hand away in front of the city's elite.
"Don't touch me! You're not my mom, you're just the nanny. Daddy said so."
The room went silent, but Easton didn't defend me. He just looked annoyed that I was causing a scene, making a sharp shooing motion for me to take the boy away. Beside him, Georgina feigned shock while her eyes crinkled in pure amusement.
I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a placeholder. They had stripped me of my dignity and even my child's love, treating my five years of devotion like a temporary staff position.
I didn't scream. I just slid off the Harrington heirloom ring, tossed it into a fountain, and walked out into the night.
Easton thinks I’m a penniless housewife who won’t last a week without his credit cards. He doesn't know that I’m Dr. Althea Morrison, the "prodigy" researcher his company has been begging to hire.
I'm not asking for alimony, and I'm not begging for a second chance. I’m returning to the lab to build an empire that will bring his to its knees.