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 5
Dante POV
The silence in the estate was not peaceful; it was a predator.
It was a massive compound, filled with guards, maids, and the constant, low-frequency hum of empire business, but the quiet pressing against my eardrums was deafening.
It was the heavy, suffocating silence of absence.
I sat in the library, a tumbler of scotch in my hand. It was only 10:00 AM.
Sofia sauntered in. She had draped herself in Elena's silk robe again.
It looked wrong on her. Like a child playing dress-up in stolen finery. Too broad in the shoulders, too short in the hem. Cheap.
"Dante, baby," she whined, her voice grating against my hangover. "The staff won't listen to me. I told the chef to make eggs benedict and he just looked at me like I was trash."
"You are trash," I muttered, the words tasting like bile.
"What?"
I looked up at her. The caked makeup, the orange tint of her fake tan, the naked desperation in her eyes. I had brought her here to hurt Elena. To prove that I didn't need my wife. To prove that Elena was merely an asset, easily replaced.
But looking at Sofia now, wearing the ghost of my wife's clothes, all I felt was a violent surge of nausea.
"Get out," I said.
"But Dante—"
"Get out!"
The glass left my hand, shattering against the wall inches from her head.
She squeaked in terror and scrambled out of the room.
I rubbed my temples, trying to massage away the pressure building behind my eyes. The image of Elena—bleeding, standing tall, telling me she didn't love me—was seared into my retinas.
She was bluffing. She had to be. She had nowhere else to go. She was an orphan. I was the gravity holding her world together.
I picked up my phone and dialed her number.
Disconnected.
A spike of adrenaline, cold and sharp, pierced my chest.
I called Marco immediately.
"Where is she?" I demanded.
"She's gone, Don Moretti."
"Where?"
"I cannot say. Nonna's orders."
I hung up and stormed out of the library, cutting a path straight to the East Wing.
Nonna Rosa was sitting in her sunroom, calmly sipping tea as if the world wasn't ending.
"Where is my wife?" I asked, my voice shaking with a rage I could barely contain.
"She is not your wife anymore, Dante. The annulment is filed."
"Bring her back."
Nonna set her cup down with a delicate clink. "Why? She is broken. She cannot breed an heir. She is a drain on our resources."
I slammed my hands on her table, rattling the fine china. "Bring her back!"
She looked at me with pity. "You look like a child who lost his favorite toy."
"She's not a toy!" I yelled.
Nonna stood up, smoothing her skirt. She walked over to the window, turning her back on my temper.
"She is gone, Dante. She left the country this morning."
I felt the blood drain from my face, leaving me cold. "Left the country?"
She had nothing. No money. No connections.
"She had her mind," Nonna corrected softly. "She traded the family's security blueprints for her safe passage."
I stared at her, the air leaving my lungs. Elena... my sweet, quiet Elena... had blackmailed the Family?
"She hates you, Dante," Nonna said, her voice devoid of sympathy. "And she hates me. And she is right to do so."
"No." I shook my head, denial rising like bile. "She loves me. She begged me."
"That was survival," Nonna said. "We broke her. And now, the jagged pieces have cut their way out."
I turned and ran.
I ran to the garage. I threw myself into my car. I didn't know where I was going. The airport? It was futile.
I drove to the cliffs overlooking the sea. The place where we used to go when we were teenagers. Before I became the Don. Before the darkness swallowed me whole.
I looked at the empty passenger seat.
I remembered the way she used to look at me. Like I was the sun around which her universe revolved.
And I remembered the look in her eyes last night.
Dead.
My chest constricted. I couldn't draw breath. It wasn't anger. It wasn't pride.
It was terror.
I had won every war. I had slaughtered every enemy. I had conquered the city.
But I had lost the only thing that made the victory count.
I screamed. A raw, animalistic sound that tore through my throat until I tasted copper, the cry lost to the crashing waves below.
She was gone.
And she wasn't coming back.
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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."