Chapter 1 - The Weight of Twenty Million Dollars
The mahogany door of the private sitting room was heavy, yet it offered no resistance against my push. Inside, the air smelled faintly of jasmine and rain—Alina’s scent. But the sound cutting through that delicate fragrance shattered every rigid wall I had spent forty-three years building in the Chicago underworld.
“Mom, I can’t do this anymore,” Alina sobbed, her voice trembling in a way that made my chest constrict tighter than any a gun barrel ever could.
I froze in the dim hallway, the twenty-seven pages of divorce settlement papers clutched so hard in my fist that the crisp edges dug into my palm. Twenty million dollars. A sprawling estate in Aspen. Complete financial immunity and lifetime protection by my most trusted enforcers. It was everything a woman could ever want to escape the suffocating shadow of Dante Moretti, Chicago’s most feared mafia boss.
“Then tell him the truth, sweetheart,” her mother’s voice pleaded softly from within the room.
Alina’s breath hitched, turning into a ragged gasp. “Tell him what? That I love him? That every single night I lie awake staring at the ceiling, praying he’ll come home alive? Dante doesn’t love me, Mom. He married me because my father’s debts left us no choice. I was just a peace treaty signed in blood.”
My jaw locked so hard my teeth ached. A peace treaty? To me, she had become the only sanctuary in a world built on betrayal and execution.
“He deserves a woman he actually wants,” Alina whispered, her voice breaking completely. “I love him too much to let him stay with me out of pity.”
The divorce papers crumpled into a useless mass beneath my crushing grip. My heart thundered against my ribs like a trapped beast. I stepped forward, my hand reaching for the brass handle to tear the door open, to tell her she was wrong, that she was my life, my breath, my everything—
“Alina, enough!” her mother snapped, cutting through her daughter’s tears with sudden, fierce urgency. “You’ve protected that ungrateful man for three years, shielding him from a truth that would have torn his empire apart. Does Dante still have absolutely no idea what you sacrificed to save his life on our wedding night?”
My blood instantly turned to ice in my veins. The air vanished from my lungs.
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Alina gasped, crying harder, absolute terror lacing her tone. “Mom, please! No! If Dante ever discovers what really happened that night, everything will be destroyed! The Moretti family will tear itself apart, and he… he wouldn’t survive the guilt!”
I reached for the door handle, my muscles locking as her mother whispered the name of the man I had personally executed and buried three years ago.
