"I stayed close to try to save you both!" Julian confessed, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. "I thought I could pull her out and break your marriage at the same time!"
He claimed his twisted plan was to rescue me.
Instead, it pushed his desperate sister to the brink of madness.
She lunged at me in my own bedroom, driving a six-inch blade into my side.
"You hold the crown and you don't even want it!" she screamed. "I would kill for someone to look at me the way he looks at you!"
As I lay bleeding out on the mattress, my husband and my first love fought over me, both screaming my name.
I had broken my own heart years ago to save Julian from this violent underworld.
I didn't understand why my sacrifice only turned him into a manipulative monster, just like my husband.
Why did their twisted versions of love only bring me scars and blood?
Waking up in the hospital, I looked at the two men desperately offering me blood-soaked thrones.
I calmly signed the dissolution papers, took ten percent of the clean assets, and walked away.
This time, I was done being a queen on any man's board.
Chapter 1
Gianna Moretti POV
Just as my pen hovered over the dissolution papers that would strip the most ruthless Capo in New York of half his empire, I heard my mob lawyer-who also happened to be my first love-speak through the crack of the parlor door.
His voice was a low, tense thread of sound.
"Keep Siena as your official mistress, Lorenzo. But give Gianna back to me, or I'll hand the Boss the ledgers proving you've been skimming millions from the syndicate."
A clammy sweat broke out between my thumb and forefinger; the heavy gold pen slid from my grasp. Its nib scored a sharp line across the mahogany before the pen rolled to a stop, bleeding a dark, intrusive blot of ink onto the edge of the dissolution papers.
I had been installed in a private backroom of the Famiglia's most exclusive gala. Out in the corridor, the air was thick with the scent of expensive cigars and a cold, calculated stillness.
I rose and moved without a sound toward the heavy oak door, which had been left ajar.
Just outside the room, I heard Lorenzo's low scoff-a sound of pure contempt. This was the man who, between sips of espresso, could give a quiet order that would erase an entire bloodline.
He was a top-tier Caporegime in the New York Famiglia, a man who had wiped out a rival Russian syndicate before his twenty-fifth birthday, leaving a trail of bodies that secured his violent reign.
"You think you can threaten me on my own ground, lawyer?" Lorenzo's voice was a low rumble, the sound of gravel shifting deep underground. "You think you can walk in here and buy my wife with a stack of papers?"
"She isn't yours anymore," Julian said.
His voice was smooth, but I could hear the faint vibration of suppressed rage beneath it-the same tremor I remembered from years ago, when he used to argue with professors over a grade, when he still had clean hands and an unbroken spirit.
"You parade Siena around every club in the city. You made your choice. Now sign the papers and let Gianna go."
A cold dampness formed on the nape of my neck. Julian. The boy who once bought me coffee with loose change on a civilian campus now stood in a suit of tailored armor, attempting to barter with a warlord.
And he was doing it to secure the position of Siena, the very woman who had turned my marriage into a quiet hell.
I pushed the heavy door open.
Both men turned their heads toward me.
Julian stepped forward at once. His face softened, the old protective mask of the boy I once loved falling into place.
He reached out as if to shield me from the presence in the room.
Lorenzo's gaze dropped to Julian's outstretched hand. The Capo's jaw locked.
The muscles in his neck strained against the silk of his collar.
His eyes, dark and fixed, then moved to me, and in them I recognized the familiar heat of a possessive, destructive jealousy.
"Look at this," Lorenzo sneered, stepping closer.
He towered over us, his broad chest blocking the dim light from the hallway.
"Does your lawyer provide extra services, Gianna? Is that why you're so eager to bleed my holdings dry?"
Before I could answer, the staccato click of heels echoed on the marble floor.
Siena appeared.
She was draped in a red dress purchased with the blood-tithe of the man standing before me.
She looked at Julian for a split second-a silent exchange passing between them-before she turned her large, innocent eyes to Lorenzo.
Lorenzo did not even look at her.
He just reached out, wrapped a hand around Siena's waist, and pulled her hard against his chest.
He dragged her into his lap as he leaned back against a heavy, ornate console table.
It was a mechanical gesture, devoid of heat. A prop being moved into place.
He was marking territory. Trying to break me.
I saw Julian's fists clench at his sides. His knuckles went bone-white.
I let out a dry, hollow laugh. I looked at Siena, who was clinging to my husband's neck.
"You look exactly like what you are, Siena," I said, my voice as flat and toneless as a contract being read aloud. "A prop he's using until he gets bored."
Lorenzo's eyes flashed with a pure, animal rage.
He shoved Siena aside, his full attention locked onto me.
"You're the one who can't let go, Gianna," Lorenzo fired back, his voice vibrating with a dark current of anger. "You're obsessed with the crown. You don't care about me. You just hate that she has my attention."
I took a step closer to the Capo. I looked him dead in the eye.
"I don't care about your attention, Lorenzo," I said slowly. "And I certainly don't care about her. But since we are laying everything on the table, you should know why Julian is fighting so hard for my exit."
I paused, letting the heavy silence stretch.
"He was my first love," I said clearly.
I saw the air go out of Lorenzo's chest as if from a physical blow. The entire hallway went dead silent.
The Capo's dark eyes widened for an instant, then a dark stillness settled over his features.
He looked at Julian, and I saw the exact moment Lorenzo decided he was going to kill him.
I turned on my heel and walked back into the private parlor.
I picked up the gold pen. I did not hesitate.
I signed my name at the bottom of the dissolution papers.
I threw the pen onto the table. It rolled and struck the edge of the heavy parchment.
"Sign it," I demanded, looking back at Lorenzo, who had followed me into the room. "Keep your dirty secret in the shadows. I am done."
For two years, I had fought this war of attrition. It began not with the diamond necklace in his coat pocket, but with the night he came home with blood on his knuckles and a cloying hospital smell clinging to his clothes. Siena had staged a miscarriage and blamed me. Lorenzo, in his paranoid fury, had grabbed my shoulders and shoved me against the wall, demanding I look at him, demanding I fight for us. I had shoved him back. We had both been bleeding from wounds the other couldn't see.
That night, I lost a pregnancy I hadn't yet known about. The doctors said it was stress, trauma, the toll of living in a pressure cooker. Lorenzo never knew he had lost a child. I never told him. It seemed too cruel-even for him.
But when I discovered Siena's pregnancy was a fabrication, something inside me went cold. I stopped trying to leave quietly. I hired lawyers. I demanded not just my freedom, but half of his holdings-enough to dismantle the foundations of his power.
Now, Siena rushed into the room behind Lorenzo. She grabbed his arm.
"Lorenzo, please," Siena begged, her voice trembling. "Sign it. I'm pregnant again. For real this time. We can be a family."
Lorenzo did not look at her. He did not look at the papers.
His gaze passed over everything else in the room to fasten on me.
He ripped his arm out of Siena's grip.
Then, with a cold efficiency, he took her by the nape of the neck and propelled her from the room, his eyes fixed on mine the entire time.
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