Too Late To Beg: The Don's Regret
I was still bleeding into the mesh underwear the hospital gave me when the photos hit the internet: my husband, the Don, forcing his tongue down his mistress's throat.
Three days ago, that very mistress had shoved me off a yacht.
I lost the baby. I lost my uterus. I was left completely barren.
Yet, when my husband finally called, it wasn't to ask if I was alive.
"The press is eating us alive," Dante barked through the phone. "Send a gift basket to Sofia. Fix this mess."
To make matters worse, his grandmother stood at the foot of my bed, holding the hand of the daughter they had stolen from me at birth.
"Mommy looks like a ghost," my daughter said, her voice devoid of love.
That was the moment the last ember of affection died. I realized I wasn't a wife to them; I was just a broken vessel.
So, when they sneered that I was useless, I didn't cry.
I pulled a black USB drive from under my pillow and threw it on the bed.
"Divorce papers," I said calmly. "And the complete security blueprints of the Moretti Fortress. Every blind spot. Every tunnel I designed."
"Sign the papers and let me go, or I sell this drive to your enemies for one dollar."
I left the country with nothing but the clothes on my back, vanishing into a freezing attic in Paris.
I thought I was finally free.
But three weeks later, Dante kicked down my door, looking at my poverty with horror.
"Come home," he begged, tossing a box of diamonds onto my drafting table. "We can be a family."
I looked at the man who had destroyed me and opened the window.
"You're looking for the girl who loved you," I whispered, throwing the diamonds into the trash alley below.
"But you killed her."
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Chapter 2
Elena POV
Nonna flicked the signed papers toward my face. They fluttered down like dead leaves, settling silently on the expensive Persian rug.
I knelt to pick them up. My hands weren't shaking. For the first time in seven years, I took a breath that didn't feel like I was inhaling broken glass.
I had nothing. No money. No womb. No child.
But I had this piece of paper.
I was zipping the single duffel bag I had brought from the hospital—just a change of clothes and my sketchbook—when the door slammed open again.
This time, it was the devil himself.
Dante Moretti filled the doorway. He was six-foot-four of pure, unadulterated violence wrapped in a bespoke suit. He smelled of rain, sandalwood, and another woman's perfume.
He saw the bag. He saw the papers in my hand.
He closed the distance in two strides and snatched the papers from me. He didn't even read them. He just crumpled them in his fist.
"Going somewhere, wife?"
His voice was a low rumble that used to make my toes curl. Now, it just made me tired.
"I'm leaving, Dante. Nonna signed them. It's over."
He laughed. It was a dark, humorless sound. "Over? Nothing is over until I say it is."
He tossed the crumpled ball of paper into the fireplace, where a low fire was burning. I watched my freedom turn to ash, but I didn't panic. I had copies. I had digital backups sent to a lawyer in Zurich.
Sofia appeared in the doorway behind him. She was wearing a silk robe that I recognized. It was mine.
"Oh, let her go, Dante," she purred, leaning against the doorframe. "She's expired goods anyway. You need a real woman now. A Queen."
Dante didn't look at her. His eyes were locked on me, burning with a mix of confusion and rage.
"You think because you lost the baby, you get to walk away?" he sneered. "You think that makes you special? Women lose babies every day, Elena."
The cruelty of it took my breath away. He spoke about his own child like it was a set of lost car keys.
I looked at him. Really studied him. The sharp jawline I used to trace with my fingers. The dark eyes that once looked at me with adoration.
"I'm not leaving because I lost the baby, Dante. I'm leaving because I lost you. Years ago."
He stepped closer, invading my space. He grabbed my chin, his fingers digging into my jaw.
"You belong to me," he hissed. "You are the Don's wife. You wear my ring. You live in my house. You don't get to quit."
I didn't pull away. I just stared up at him.
"Are you going to make Sofia the new Queen?" I asked softly.
He stiffened. Sofia let out a little gasp of excitement behind him.
Dante's grip on my face tightened. "I don't care about her," he said, loud enough for Sofia to hear. "She is a distraction. You are my property."
I saw Sofia flinch, but I felt nothing.
I reached up and took his hand, prying it from my face. His skin was warm. Mine was ice.
"You can keep the title, Dante. You can keep the house. You can keep the mistress."
I stepped back.
"But you can't keep me. Because there is nothing left of me to keep."
He looked at me, searching for the anger, the tears, the fire that usually lit up my eyes when we fought.
He found nothing.
"I'm not angry, Dante," I said, my voice flat.
His brow furrowed. "What?"
"I stopped loving you a long time ago."
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9.4
I spent the night with a stranger...
Who got me pregnant...
And turned out to be my boss...
Whoops, sorry, did I say "boss"? I meant a MOB boss.
To be fair, I didn't know he was my boss when I slept with him.
I thought he was just the kind stranger offering me a place to stay.
But one night in Misha Orlov's hotel room got me way more than I bargained for.
It got me champagne that tasted like starlight.
Satin sheets as soft as a dream.
And a man with silver eyes who showed me how it felt to come undone.
And then, in the morning...
He was gone.
That's I needed to get my life together anyway.
After all, my ex-not-quite-husband (it's a long story) just emptied all our bank accounts and disappeared, taking my home and my money and my job with him.
So I'm starting from a blank slate.
I find myself a new apartment.
A new job.
And I put both Misha and my husband behind me.
At least, I thought I did.
Until Day 1 of orientation.
When I learn that Misha Orlov is my new boss.
That's bad enough.
What's worse is what came next.
A car crash.
A doctor's appointment.
And two pieces of unsettling news.
Congratulations, the doctor says. You're pregnant.
Congratulations, Misha says. You and I are getting married.
8.4
May Boston is a sassy, powerful woman who owns the biggest fashion agency in the city. Her perfectly controlled world is thrown into chaos when she crosses paths with Luca, a homeless man suffering from amnesia.
Out of pity, and curiosity, she lets him live with her. What she does not expect is to be bossed around in her own house, treated like a subordinate, and willingly doing everything he asks. Slowly, without realizing it, May falls deeply in love with him.
That turns out to be her greatest mistake.
Because before Luca lost his memory, he was the ruthless king of the largest Mafia group in Italy, Oliver de Luca
7.8
Seven years. That was the price tag attached to my father's life.
When my father gambled away money he didn't have, Michael Vance paid the debt.
He bought my father's safety, and in return, he bought me.
I was nineteen then. A peasant girl he polished up to look like a mob wife.
I was reapplying my lipstick in the vanity mirror of his armored SUV when I found a diamond choker tucked behind the sunshade.
It was a million-dollar piece of jewelry that wasn't mine, engraved with a date that wasn't my birthday.
That night at the gala, Michael threw his mistress's heavy fur coat at me.
"Hold this, Sarah. Jessica gets hot easily."
I stood there like a servant, buried under the scent of another woman’s perfume, watching my fiancé hold her on the dance floor with a tenderness he never showed me.
When I stumbled from hunger, he called me a liability to his image.
But when Jessica faked a crisis, he abandoned me at the venue to rush her home.
I walked to the nearest trash can and shoved the expensive fur down past the half-eaten caviar.
As the sugar from a cheap candy bar hit my bloodstream, the fog lifted.
I realized I wasn't a wife-in-training. I was a debt that had been paid in full.
I left the penthouse, the ring, and the life.
But Michael wouldn't let his property go.
He cornered me in a parking garage, screaming that I belonged to him, threatening to start a war.
He didn't expect me to be standing next to David Chen, the Underboss of the rival Triad faction.
And he certainly didn't expect me to take off my Louboutin stiletto and use it as a weapon.
"I don't love you, Michael," I said, looking him in the eye as he knelt on the concrete.
"And I'm not for sale anymore."
8.4
Eleven years ago, Damien Falcone pulled me from the freezing waters, and I thought I was marrying my savior.
Instead, he orchestrated my absolute ruin by forging evidence to frame me for selling a vital mafia bootlegging route to the FBI.
Under the guise of saving me from the family's brutal death sentence, he stripped away my future as his Mafia Queen. He dragged me to New York and locked me in a gilded penthouse cage. For eleven years, I rotted away as his secret prisoner until my failing body finally gave out.
As I collapsed in the freezing New York snow, he caught me, his hands trembling as he held my dying body against his chest.
"No, Fia, stay with me. I did it to keep you alive. I had to—"
I didn't want to hear his monstrous lies anymore. I had given him all my love, and he repaid me with a tomb. Loving him was the only unforgivable sin I ever committed.
"I pray... we never meet again."
When the howling wind faded, I opened my eyes to the heavy stench of rust and lake water. I wasn't dead.
I was back in the cramped cabin of a cargo freighter, exactly sixteen years old again. It was the very night my jealous cousin sent an assassin to carve up my face and void my marriage to the Falcone family.
This time, I quietly gripped the heavy oak slat under my mattress.
8.2
These are the last thirty days of my life.
Four years ago, I secretly donated my kidney to save Falco, the mafia soldier I loved deeply.
To ensure he accepted the surgery, I lied and said I betrayed him for money, selling myself to a rival family.
Now, he is the ruthless mob boss of this city, and he has finally found me.
He thinks my terminal illness is just another trick.
"The sight of you makes me sick," he sneered.
I bore his humiliation, quietly bought my own grave, and waited to pass away in peace.
But when the underground doctor uploaded my surgical records to the mafia network, Falco completely broke down.
7.3
My wife, Elena, walked into the Grand Boardroom and placed a possessive hand on her lover's chest.
Julian, a low-level associate I’d only hired as a favor to her, sat in my chair with his muddy boots on the polished mahogany table.
He blew smoke in my face and laughed.
"You're just a figurehead now, Dante. The Syndicate belongs to Elena. And since I'm the one keeping her happy at night, it belongs to me too."
Elena looked at me with cold eyes, delivering the ultimate betrayal without a shred of remorse.
"I'm pregnant, Dante. It's Julian's. We need the Moretti name for the baby, so sign the transfer papers and leave."
She believed the power of attorney documents I signed while delirious with fever had given her my empire.
She thought the mercenaries standing behind her were loyal to her checkbook.
She truly believed she could fire a Don like a mid-level manager caught stealing office supplies.
But she didn't know that in our world, loyalty isn't bought with stolen money.
And she certainly didn't know what was actually in the leather folder she was holding.
I looked at the traitor and the rat, feeling a strange, lethal sense of calm.
"You want to talk about papers?"
I tossed the real file onto the table, watching their smiles falter.
"You didn't sign a transfer of power, Elena. You signed a Renunciation of Protection."
I signaled my Enforcers, and the room exploded into motion.
"Now," I said, staring at Julian's terrified face. "Let's see how much the streets respect you without my name."