Too Late For Regret: The Capo's Ex-Wife
To save my husband, the crime lord of this city, I took a bullet to the gut.
As I lay dying, Dante didn't even glance my way.
He was too busy shielding his mistress, Camilla, checking her for scratches.
When I woke in the hospital, I found out that while I was unconscious, my brother had called, screaming for help.
Camilla answered my phone. She told Dante it was just a prank.
The next morning, my brother was found dead in a dumpster.
When I confronted Dante, he defended her innocence, told me not to make a federal case out of it.
He forcibly removed my grandmother's heirloom ring from my finger and slipped it onto hers.
He mocked me for being unable to bear his heir, completely disregarding the fact that I'd lost that ability five years ago, taking shrapnel for him.
Camilla delivered the final cut: our marriage license was never registered.
Ten years. I was never his legal wife.
He thought I was trapped. He thought without the Moretti name, I was nothing.
But I didn't cry. I went to the guest room and packed my knives, not my clothes.
Two years later, I run the only security firm that can rival his.
When a man, his face a ruin, appeared at my brother's grave begging for forgiveness, I felt neither love nor hate.
"I'm free," I said.
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Chapter 5
Dante POV
I woke up reaching for her.
My hand brushed silk sheets, found warm skin.
Camilla.
She mumbled something unintelligible in her sleep and rolled over, taking the covers with her, cocooning herself.
I blinked at the ceiling, trying to clear the fog from my mind.
For a sleep-fogged moment, I'd expected the sharp, comforting scent of gunpowder and vanilla.
Serra's scent.
But the room was thick with the cloying perfume of roses, a sweet, chemical smell that clung to my sinuses.
I sat up, rubbing my face with my hands, a knot of unease forming in my gut.
There was a noise I usually heard at this hour. The low hum of the coffee grinder. The hiss of the gas stove. Her morning ritual, quiet and methodical.
But the house was silent.
A heavy, absolute silence.
"Camilla," I nudged her shoulder, maybe harder than necessary. "Wake up. I'm hungry."
She groaned, burrowing her face deeper into the pillow. "Get the maid to do it."
"We don't have a maid on Sundays. You know that."
"Then tell Serra," she mumbled, her voice muffled, dismissive. "Let me sleep."
My jaw tightened, the muscle twitching.
I kicked the covers off my legs, pulled on my pants, and stepped into the hallway where the silence pressed down on me like a physical weight.
Something felt wrong.
I walked down the hall toward the guest room.
I was going to tell Serra to make the eggs. That was the plan.
Maybe... maybe I'd ask her how she was doing.
The memory of yesterday flashed through my mind. I'd been harsh.
If the kitchen was silent, maybe she was hurting more than she let on. I should make sure she wasn't actually dying.
I pushed the door open without knocking.
"Serra, get up--"
The words died in my throat.
The room was immaculate.
The bed was made, empty, the mattress a stark white rectangle in the dim light.
I stepped inside, my heart giving a painful lurch.
The closet door was open.
Empty.
I turned to the dresser. The top was bare.
No brush, no gun oil, no tactical vest draped over a chair.
I moved further into the room, my footsteps loud on the hardwood floor.
The air was cold. Lifeless.
Like no one had lived here for years.
I checked the bathroom.
Empty.
I yanked open the drawers.
Empty.
A cold, constricting feeling wrapped around my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
I turned and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
I burst into the study and went straight to the gun safe.
Her Glock was gone.
Her knives were gone.
Every trace of her was gone.
"Serra!" I yelled.
My voice echoed through the cavernous hall, bounced off the walls.
Only my own voice answered.
I sprinted to the security room, my fingers fumbling clumsily for the control panel.
I scrolled back through the footage.
She must have hidden, she wouldn't leave me, she wouldn't.
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9.1
"Whether you like it or not, I'm going to marry you, Jillian," Sir Zach told me. His face was dead serious, as if he had already made up his mind.
"What do you mean, marry me? Hey! Just because you're rich doesn't mean you can do whatever you want! There is no reason for me to marry someone like you!" I snapped at him.
It felt like he was trying to dictate every single thing I did, even though he wasn't even my boyfriend.
"I have a reason to marry you, Jillian. Something happened between us, don't you remember? You were actually the one who kissed me that night you were completely wasted," he reminded me, a smirk playing on his lips.
I swallowed hard at his words. Right. Something did happen between us. But it wasn't intentional. Someone had drugged my drink, which was why I acted that way the night he pulled me away from the "friends" I thought were genuine.
"So, there's no reason to say 'no,' my future wife," he said with a wink.
It looks like there's no way out for me. I'm actually going to be the wife of Sir Zach-my professor and the one person I'm always at odds with.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
8.2
"I am not my sister. And you can LOVE ME OR HATE ME for that, but you don't get to punish me for her sins."
Daniel breaks. The wall doesn't just come down. It collapses.
---
Aria Blackwood didn't plan to fall in love with her boss. She planned to keep her head down, do her job, and ignore the way Daniel Cole's presence rearranged every room he entered, including the room inside her chest.
Daniel Cole didn't plan to feel anything ever again. Not after Vivienne. Not after the betrayal that stripped him of $50,000, a fake pregnancy that never existed, and every reason to trust a woman's smile.
He swore on her name. On her bloodline. On every person who carried her last name.
He just didn't know he'd already fallen for one.
When the truth surfaces at the worst possible moment, mid-engagement, mid-happiness, mid-finally, Daniel must choose between the wound that shaped him and the woman who healed him without even knowing he was bleeding.
Love was never supposed to find him again.
It sent the wrong sister anyway.
8.1
I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood.
For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe.
On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident.
Donovan didn't hesitate.
He forced me to drain my blood to save her life.
Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean.
He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her.
He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella.
He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night.
When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth.
He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman.
Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man.
He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy.
I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing.
"It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."
9.4
My marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine.
Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family.
To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset.
They both thought I was a broken doll they could control.
I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice.
She sang it, and now her career is over.
Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground.
7.3
While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son.
Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate.
An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir.
Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack.
Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her.
He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me.
I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve."
The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice.
He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent.
And I was finally going home.