You Can't Buy My Heart, Mr. Vitiello
My father sold me to the Vitiello Crime Family to settle a three-million-dollar gambling debt.
For three years, I was Dante Vitiello’s property. I warmed his bed, tended his wounds, and let him own every part of me.
I thought I was earning my freedom. I thought I mattered.
Then his "true queen," the Mafia Princess Sofia, returned to the city.
Dante pushed me off his lap the moment she walked into the room. He ordered me to leave because, in the presence of his equal, I was nothing more than "the help."
The humiliation didn't stop there.
He evicted me from the penthouse to renovate it for her.
At a gala, he outbid me for my grandmother’s heirloom bracelet—my family's last scrap of dignity—just to gift it to Sofia in front of the entire city.
But the final blow came when he came to my bed drunk one last time.
He kissed me with a desperate hunger, whispering that he was only "practicing" his technique on me so he would be perfect for her.
I realized then that I wasn't a person to him. I was a training dummy. A debt with a pulse.
He told me to wait for him while he took her to Paris. He thought I would stay in the kennel like a good pet.
He was wrong.
While he was gone, I accepted a surgical fellowship in Switzerland.
I snapped my SIM card in half, left his millions on the floor, and boarded a one-way flight.
By the time the Wolf comes home to find his cage empty, I will be gone.
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Chapter 6
Elena Rossi POV
"Practice is over, Dante."
I whispered the words to the empty air, but they tasted like ash on my tongue.
Dante was asleep on the leather sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out the city lights bleeding in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. His phone sat on the coffee table, vibrating with a persistence that demanded attention.
I shouldn't have looked. I knew the rules. *Omertà*. Privacy. Know your place.
But the screen lit up, and the message was right there, a glowing white scar cutting through the darkness.
*Sofia: I’m not ready, Dante. It’s been too long.*
My eyes drifted up to the previous message, the one he had sent minutes before he dragged me down onto the cushions. Minutes before he kissed me with that desperate, terrifying hunger.
*Dante: I’ll wait. I’ll practice.*
The air was punched from my lungs.
I wasn't a person to him. I wasn't even a mistress. I was a sparring partner. A warm body he used to rehearse his passion so he wouldn't fumble when he finally touched the woman who actually mattered.
He was perfecting his technique on me so he could be perfect for her.
I sat there in the silence until the sun began to bleed through the smog of Los Angeles. When Dante finally stirred, groaning as the hangover hit him, I was already standing by the door with my bag.
He sat up, rubbing his temples. He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot and devoid of the vulnerability he had shown last night. The Capo was back.
"You're still here," he rasped, his voice rough with sleep.
"I was just leaving."
He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a checkbook. The sound of the pen scratching against the paper was deafening in the silent room. He tore the check out and held it toward me.
Three million dollars.
"A bonus," he said, his voice flat, businesslike. "For the last three years. And for last night."
I stared at the piece of paper. It was enough to buy a house. Enough to buy a new life. But right now, it looked like payment for services rendered.
"I don't want it," I said.
He frowned, his hand still extended. "Don't be stupid, Elena. Take the money. You have nothing."
"I have my name," I said, my voice steady. "And I'm taking it back."
I didn't take the check. Eventually, his hand dropped, and the paper fluttered to the floor, landing face down on the dusty concrete.
"Clean up any trace of yourself before you go," he said, already turning his back to me to hunt for his cigarettes. "Sofia is coming by later to look at the space. I don't want her to find a stray hair tie and get upset."
He didn't look at me as he said it. He was already lighting up, the flame flaring, his mind already moving on to the next item on his agenda.
I walked to the kitchen. I took the mug I used for coffee every morning and dropped it into the trash. The ceramic shattered. I went to the bathroom and retrieved my toothbrush.
I walked back to the living room.
"Goodbye, Dante," I said.
He waved a hand dismissively, smoke curling around his head like a halo of vice. "Yeah. Close the door."
I walked out. The heavy steel door clicked shut behind me.
It was the sound of a prison cell finally opening.
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9.7
I ran through the freezing rain, desperate to escape the Pennington estate. My adoptive family had raised me for one purpose: to be sold off as a bargaining chip in a wealthy arranged marriage.
But before I could reach the highway, I was cornered. Not just by my family's cruel guards, but by Hollis Wall—a terrifying, ruthless billionaire who snapped my tormentor's wrist and dragged me into his car. He didn't want a ransom. He threw a prenuptial agreement in my lap.
I thought he was insane until he took a scalpel to his own arm, and a burning agony ripped across my flawless skin. Because of a near-drowning accident three years ago, our nervous systems were linked. Every time I bled, he felt the agony. He locked me in his fortress to keep me safe, but when I finally escaped back to my adoptive parents, they didn't protect me. Instead, my adoptive father smiled and showed me a live video of my biological father on life support, a guard's hand hovering over the plug.
"You will marry Douglas Cherry tomorrow, or your father dies," he sneered.
My own family was willing to murder my only real flesh and blood just to secure their wealth. I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, my heart crushed in a vice of absolute, suffocating despair.
"I'll marry him," I sobbed, surrendering to the darkness.
But miles away, in his dark study, the ruthless Hollis Wall violently collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as my severe panic attack bled directly into his chest. Our twisted bond was killing him, and I knew he would tear the city apart to find me.
7.3
Power built his empire. Silence protected her heart.
When a billionaire's untouchable world collides with a woman who refuses to be owned by it, a contract meant to save a legacy becomes a risk neither can afford. Signed, Sealed, His is a slow-burn billionaire romance about control, exposure, and the terrifying cost of choosing love when power is on the line.
8.5
I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die.
Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice.
"Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up."
He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake.
I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city.
Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them.
With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece.
"Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."
9.6
I endured years of humiliation and forced sedatives from my billionaire husband's family, hoping my quiet obedience would eventually win his heart. When I finally discovered I was pregnant, I thought the child would be our anchor.
But when I rushed to his office to tell him, I found his untouchable first love sitting in his chair, rubbing her own swollen belly.
She smiled and whispered that she was the one who orchestrated the car crash that left my adoptive mother in a vegetative state.
When I lunged at her in a blind rage, my husband shielded her and shoved me backward with brutal force. My spine slammed against a marble table, and blood pooled at my feet.
"Kingston, please! I'm pregnant too!" I sobbed, clutching my stomach.
He just looked down at me with profound disgust.
"I had a vasectomy five years ago," he hissed, condemning me as a cheating whore before ordering his men to lock me up and forcibly abort the child.
I had never touched another man. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could order the murder of his own flesh and blood without a second thought.
To save myself, I stole his prized Aston Martin and drove it off a bridge into the freezing Atlantic, letting his pathetic, obedient wife drown in the wreckage.
Five years later, I returned to New York as a powerful European executive, ready to burn his empire to the ground.
7.6
Eloise was the adopted stray of the wealthy Foreman family, mocked daily for her tarot cards and dismissed as a mentally unstable burden.
When her adoptive father suddenly collapsed with thick, black veins pulsing up his neck, they didn't blame his corrupt real estate deals. They blamed her.
"She's a witch! She cursed me!" Mitch roared, ordering his doctor and armed guards to forcefully drain her blood to cure his supernatural toxin.
Her adoptive mother revoked her trust fund and threatened to drag her to a psych ward. Her spoiled sister threw a crumpled twenty-dollar bill at her feet, laughing as the security team cornered Eloise against the wall.
Eloise stared coldly at the family that had abused her for years. They had dug up a sacred burial ground to build condos, bringing this deadly curse upon themselves, yet they wanted to bleed her dry to survive.
Just as the guards lunged, the heavy oak doors were violently shoved open.
An aristocratic butler stepped through the freezing rain, flanked by elite operatives who snapped the guards' legs in seconds. He dropped a three-billion-dollar trust document onto the table as mere "compensation" for her shelter.
"Please, Miss Palmer," the butler bowed deeply, offering her pristine white gloves. "Do not dirty your hands in this place."
Leaving her adoptive father to his midnight death sentence, Eloise stepped into a waiting Rolls-Royce, ready to reclaim her place in a hidden global dynasty.
9.7
I woke up in a hospital bed with the sting of antiseptic in my nose and my body feeling like lead. My world had been turned upside down by a crash, but the nightmare was only beginning.
Instead of a doctor, I found my Aunt Ursula and a man named Julian standing over me. They weren't there to comfort me; they were calculating my worth.
"Poor thing," Ursula cooed, pinning my wrist to the mattress.
Julian claimed he was my fiancé, even though I’d spent a year dodging his calls. I tried to scream, but my throat felt like it was filled with broken glass. They were using my silence to paint me as incompetent so they could seize my family’s trust fund. Just as Julian tried to force a ring on my finger, the door slammed open. Hilliard Blackburn, the city’s most ruthless billionaire, walked in and tossed a marriage certificate on the floor.
"I am her legal husband," he said. "Now, get out."
I was a piece of collateral, traded by my dying grandfather to pay off a debt. To Hilliard, I was just an asset in his portfolio. He didn't know that I was secretly "The Analyst," a hacker who moved millions on the dark web. He didn't know about the missing algorithm that could crash the market, or that my mentor had vanished in a lab fire.
The world saw a broken, mute heiress, but I was hiding a secret that could destroy us all. I was pregnant, and my stolen code was already being auctioned to the highest bidder. With Hilliard moving into my house to monitor me, I had to find the truth before my "husband" realized I was his greatest threat.