Vincenzo Moretti was Stonehaven’s youngest financial titan— a tech mogul commanding a multibillion-dollar empire, gracing the covers of business magazines as a modern legend.

But only a select few knew the truth: he was also the ruthless Don controlling the East Coast mafia. To him, wealth and power were mere chips in a game.

And I? I was just another pawn used to stabilize a fragile family alliance.

In our ten-year marriage, he slept with my friends, my coworkers… every single person I once trusted.

Then one morning, as I took our one-month-old baby for a routine checkup, Sienna Newton, his latest mistress, ran me down with her car.

The baby screamed endlessly.

I begged her to take us to the hospital, and when Vincenzo arrived, he looked at me with cold disdain.

“Isabella,” he sneered, “when did you learn to stage accidents?

“Even if you died here, I wouldn’t bat an eye.”

Then he took Sienna’s hand and walked away without a backward glance.

By the time I was rushed to the hospital, the child in my arms had suffocated.

Upon hearing the news, my mother suffered a heart attack. She didn’t survive.

I slipped into a coma for two days.

When I finally woke up, I found out that Vincenzo never visited.

Instead, his father, Renato Moretti, the true king of the Moretti empire, stood by my bedside.

I looked at him calmly and said, “Let me go. Whatever I owed your family, I’ve repaid in full with two lives.”

Later, that same Don who had once looked down on me knelt before me, begging me to come home.

But I was no longer the woman who waited, silent and broken, for his change of heart.

I was the Don’s wife who turned away and never looked back.

My phone wouldn't stop vibrating.

One photo after another of Vincenzo Moretti and his new lover, Sienna Newton, flooded in.

A five-star hotel, a champagne-filled bathtub, her seductive red lips… They kissed like no one else existed.

And me?

I, Isabella Bradford, an executive at Stonehaven Healthtech, once the most independent and clear-headed kind of woman, had married this bastard.

Sienna, covered in kiss marks, leaned against Vincenzo’s chest as if marking her territory.

Meanwhile, I lay in a hospital bed, hooked to an IV, drugged, stitched up, and hanging by a thread.

At that moment, Renato Moretti—the original Don of the Moretti empire—still didn’t know the full truth.

“Isabella,” he said gently, “Vincenzo… he’s a good kid at heart.

“You’ve been together so many years. Why not give him another chance? As long as I’m here, no one can take your place in this family.”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I tapped on the video Sienna had sent me—a provocation in digital form.

Their voices echoed through the sterile hospital room.

Sienna gasped, her scarlet nails digging into Vincenzo’s back, each moan louder than the last.

Vincenzo pinned her against plush pillows and whispered, “Tell me, who do you belong to?”

Eyes hazy with lust, Sienna murmured back, “I’m yours. I belong only to you…”

Then her voice turned playful.

“You really left Isabella and her baby in the street today. Don’t you feel even a little guilty?”

Vincenzo bit her neck, his voice cold.

“Guilty for what? I love you. Her? Even if she bore my child, she’ll never compare to you.”

Renato’s face darkened as the sounds of their pleasure filled the room.

He lowered his head.

“The Morettis owe you. I’ll take care of the divorce. In seven days, you’ll have your freedom.

“As for your mother and the child…”

Before Renato could finish, a nurse walked into the room, carrying the lifeless body of my baby.

That tiny bundle who, just that morning, had nursed in my arms was now cold to the touch. And with him, the last of my heart died.

“He will be buried under the Moretti name. But my mother’s ashes—I’ll take them.”

“Thank you, Isabella,” Renato said hoarsely.

“You’re a good woman. You don’t deserve to be chained to a son like mine.”

With that, Renato took my baby and left.

My tears finally broke free.

Marrying Vincenzo had always been about mutual interests, about exchange. He needed a respectable wife to mask his bloodstained rise through the underworld, and I needed money—a fortune—to save my mother’s life.

So I put on a wedding gown and walked into the trap called “marriage”.

At first, I thought he wasn’t entirely heartless.

I heard him cry in his sleep, calling out for “Mama”.

He had lost both parents as a child, and in those moments, he seemed like a boy trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

I had felt something stir in me, believing two broken souls might find warmth in each other’s wounds.

With a heart full of compassion, I had tried to heal him by learning his mother’s cooking and rebuilding the wooden cabin from his childhood memories. I trained myself in the kitchen, striving to recreate the taste of his mother’s love.

I endured every demand, every controlling impulse he had in bed—all to give him a fleeting sense of safety.

I had foolishly believed that love might call him back to humanity.

In the end, he took my best friend to a hotel.

I rushed there to confront him, but he dismissed me with cold indifference, hiding behind the excuse of our “transactional marriage”.

“Who do you think you are?” he demanded angrily.

“You’re nothing but a dog my father took in to polish my image and cover up my identity.

“Don’t test me. Or I’ll immediately stop all of your mother’s medical treatments.”

After that, he shamelessly continued sleeping with other women.

He destroyed my social circle.

I had worked hard to become a department head at my company, but he threw everything into chaos. Projects stalled, meetings disrupted, clients lost.

All because I had to drop everything at a moment’s notice to clean up whatever mess he made.

I endured the rot of my marriage, watching my life erode until I could no longer recognize myself.

And yet, I endured it all for the sake of covering my mother’s medical bills.

One day, in a haze of exhaustion, I fell down the stairs.

When I woke up, they told me I was pregnant.

Renato came to see me, his tone almost pleading.

“Keep the child… Maybe this baby will soften his heart.

“If he still doesn’t change after the child is born, I swear, I won’t stop you from leaving.”

I hesitated. I struggled, but in the end, I agreed.

And yet, my mother died. My child was gone, and I laughed at myself for trying to tame a beast with gentleness.

In the end, he devoured me, leaving not even my bones behind.

Yes, I had lost everything, yet finally, I feared nothing.

I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and looked out at the gray, overcast sky.

Autumn in Stonehaven was as bleak and cold as ever.

The phone rang—it was Vincenzo.

“Did you go complaining to my father again? Sienna and I finally had a moment alone, and you had to ruin everything—again!

“I’m warning you: if you stick your nose in my business one more time, I’ll cancel every single one of your credit cards!”

In the past, I would have apologized instinctively, bowed my head, even if it wasn’t my fault.

But now, I simply replied in a flat tone, “Do whatever you want.”

There was a pause on the other end.

Vincenzo was stunned by my indifference, but quickly recovered.

“Don’t play games, Isabella,” he chuckled.

“As long as you’re still Mrs. Moretti, I have a hundred ways to break you—piece by piece.”

I already knew the depths of his cruelty.

I still remember the first time I caught him cheating.

Naively, I thought Renato would stand up for me. Instead, Vincenzo unleashed a storm of retaliation.

He threatened my mother’s life to force my submission, made me kneel on the balcony in subzero temperatures, slapping myself again and again until my face swelled beyond recognition.

That night, he was in the next room, entangling with his mistress while I was rushed to the hospital with frostbite.

Snow had fallen hard that night, and I lay trembling in pain on the emergency room bed.

From that moment on, no matter how vicious he became, I chose silence.

Like a numb machine, I kept up the facade of “Mrs. Moretti.”

I endured. I survived.

Until I lost my mother and my baby.

This marriage, this transaction, had finally come to its end.

I hung up the phone, then stood up and called the funeral home, scheduling my mother’s cremation.

As I returned to the hospital room, a familiar figure blocked my path.

Vincenzo stood there in a black suit, gazing at me coldly.

“No more pretending?” he sneered. “You were just in a car accident, and now you’re walking around? Seems like you’re strong enough to skip the whole recovery thing.”

He stepped closer, his tone dark and deliberate.

“Darling, I’m bringing Sienna to live at the villa. She’s young and doesn’t know how to run a household. When you’re discharged, come home and be our maid.”

He leaned in, voice laced with a twisted pleasure. “Your pain—it’s the best catalyst I’ve ever had in bed.”

He cupped my face, a perverse gleam flickering in his eyes.

He wanted to see me cry, to see me break, to see me beg—just like I used to.

But I didn’t. I looked at him like he was a stranger.

Vincenzo lost interest.

He shoved me aside and turned toward the nurse.

“Where’s my baby? Are the test results in? Bring the child to me.”

The young nurse turned pale, visibly flustered.

I answered softly, “The baby… your father took him. Our child…”

Before I could say he had died, Vincenzo’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

His expression changed instantly. A flicker of fear passed through his eyes.

“What? You were in an accident? Are you okay? Where are you?”

Then he hung up and slapped me hard across the face.

“What did you do to Sienna? If anything happens to her, I swear I won’t forgive you!”

I was already weak, and the blow knocked me into the metal railing behind me. Pain seared through my chest.

“I just had surgery… what could I possibly do to her?”

The nurse caught me before I collapsed, panic in her voice. “Mr. Moretti! You’ll kill her if you hit her again!”

Vincenzo shot me a vicious glare, then stormed off.

The nurse looked at me with pity.

My cheek throbbed, as it swelled red.

My body trembled, barely staying upright.

The doctor instructed me to rest as I finally pieced together the reason behind Vincenzo’s violent outburst.

The death of my baby devastated Renato. In his grief, he immediately mobilized the family’s power to blacklist Sienna across the board.

Sienna, convinced that I was behind it all, exaggerated the story and complained bitterly to Vincenzo.

In a fit of rage, he came to the hospital and laid his hands on me.

To appease Sienna, Vincenzo went further. He revoked my shareholder status in the Moretti family business and transferred all my shares to her.

He then spent millions to purchase naming rights to an entire star field from an astronomical institute, renaming twenty stars after Sienna.

On social media, he posted: [I bought the stars so she alone could shine.]

The photo showed him kissing Sienna at a private observatory.

In a later interview, Sienna flaunted her diamond ring, beaming with pride.

“I never saw myself as a homewrecker. If a woman can’t hold onto her husband’s heart, she deserves to live like a widow.

“Isabella only married Vincenzo for the Moretti fortune. But me? I gave him nothing but love.”

Then she reposted the interview clip on TikTok.

In the comments, a horde of mindless, rabid fans flooded the feed, insulting me, demanding I step aside and give Sienna her place.

After all these years, Vincenzo’s tricks for seducing women hadn’t changed.

I still remember how he once used those same moves on me.

He knew I came from poverty, that I had never celebrated a proper birthday, so on my twentieth birthday, he gave me twenty gifts, from a gold necklace meant for my first birthday to a villa and a sports car.

He said it was his way of making up for the hardships I’d endured for twenty years.

Then, beneath a sky full of stars, he held my hand and whispered with aching tenderness, “I lost my parents when I was young, so from now on, I’ll treat your mother as my own, and together we’ll build the happiest family in the world.”

I had melted in the warmth of his words, naively believing I had found the man I would spend my life with.

But once the novelty wore off, Vincenzo quickly moved on.

One time, we had planned a sunrise date by the sea, but midway through the drive, he suddenly disappeared.

Hours later, I learned he had taken a detour to deliver flowers to another woman.

Meanwhile, I was left alone in the countryside, stranded without even a cell signal.

That day, I walked dozens of miles alone.

By the time I got home, the blisters on my feet had bled through my shoes.

Honestly, I should’ve known even then. Vincenzo was a selfish and fickle man. He would never settle down with anyone.

Thinking of that, I left a comment under Sienna’s video:

[Wishing you both a long, happy marriage—and a child soon.]

Not long after, Sienna deleted the video.

Then I received a call from Vincenzo, demanding answers.

I ignored it.

Instead, I calmly blocked him, just as he had done to me so many times before.

Today was my mother’s cremation, so I asked for an early discharge.

The attending doctor had concerns, but couldn’t change my mind. He volunteered to accompany me himself.

When the funeral staff placed the urn in my hands, I didn’t feel the overwhelming sorrow I had imagined.

All I felt was that the shackle I had worn for ten long years had finally broken clean at that moment.

My mother was gone. My baby was gone.

I was on my own.

Back at the house, I opened the front door only to find Vincenzo and Sienna sitting on the living room sofa.

When I walked in, Vincenzo scrambled to zip up his pants, but the kiss marks all over his body exposed the passion that had just taken place.

I felt no sorrow, no anger.

I simply walked past them into the bedroom, as if I hadn’t seen a thing.

When I came back out, Sienna was gone, only Vincenzo remained, drinking alone on the couch.

As I approached, he slowly raised his head.

“I heard you were discharged early. Where were you all day?”

“That’s none of your business,” I said flatly, not wanting to explain.

His expression darkened immediately. He pulled out his phone and threw it down in front of me.

“What’s this?”

On the screen was a surveillance screenshot. My attending doctor and I were standing at a garage entrance.

He was handing me a bottle of water, leaning in to remind me not to miss my follow-up appointment.

“Still pretending to be pure?” Vincenzo sneered as he stepped closer.

“I saw the way you looked at him—the little glances you two kept exchanging.”

He smashed his glass on the floor and stormed toward me in fury.

“Is that it? You couldn’t hold back anymore? Feeling lonely, were you? Or neglected? Fine—I’ll give you exactly what you want!”

Then he grabbed me roughly and tore at my clothes as he dragged me toward the bed.

Fear gripped me.

I struggled and screamed, “Are you insane? I just got out of the hospital!”

He had lost all reason and ignored my words as he sank his teeth into my shoulder.

I pushed him off with all my strength and slapped him hard across the face.

Enraged, Vincenzo lunged again.

He dragged me toward him, trying to overpower me, but in the struggle, my head struck the corner of the table.

A warm trail of blood slid down my forehead.

Vincenzo froze, instinctively reaching to steady me.

“Why didn’t you move…”

I staggered back a few steps, trying to speak, but my body gave out.

I collapsed onto the floor as darkness embraced me.