His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck.

"Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety."

He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her.

I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper.

When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect.

He raised the whip.

"Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach.

"Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down.

I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner.

He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden.

I finally fled, vanishing into the night.

It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted.

He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man.

The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently.

"Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even."

I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt.

"You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."

Chapter 1

Ella Farmer POV

My fiancé, the ruthless Underboss of the Mckay Crime Family, tore my dead mother's emerald necklace from my throat, the gold chain snapping with a sickening pop that signaled the end of my life.

He didn't look at me with the eyes of the man who had once defied his grandfather, Don Cornelius, to put a ring on my finger three years ago.

He looked at me like I was a stranger.

Arthur Mckay was the most feared man in New York, a man who had survived a leukemia diagnosis that should have buried him, a man whose hands were stained with the blood of anyone who dared look at me wrong.

But the man standing in our penthouse living room wasn't Arthur.

He was a vessel corrupted by a stranger's blood.

"Diana needs it," he said, his voice devoid of the warmth that used to bring me to my knees.

"She feels a connection to the stone. It calms her anxiety."

I stood frozen, my hand flying to my bare neck, the skin stinging where the metal had cut me.

Diana Hess sat on the velvet sofa, her legs tucked under her, watching us with wide, teary eyes that held a glint of absolute malice.

She was the ex-girlfriend of the man whose bone marrow now flowed through Arthur's veins.

She had walked into the hospital recovery wing two weeks ago, bypassing security that would shoot a senator on sight, claiming she just wanted to hear her dead lover's heartbeat one last time.

Arthur had let her in.

And she had never left.

Arthur walked over to her, dangling my mother's heirloom-my dowry, the last shred of my family's dignity-before gently fastening it around Diana's throat.

"It's just a necklace, Ella," Arthur said, turning his back on me to adjust the clasp for her.

"You have access to the family vaults. Buy another one."

He didn't understand.

It wasn't about the emeralds.

It was about the promise he made when I nursed him through the chemo, when I held a bucket for him to vomit in, when I burned my hands putting out a kitchen fire just to make him broth.

He had promised I was his queen.

Now, he was crowning a usurper.

"The cellular memory," Diana whispered, touching Arthur's hand.

"Your blood remembers loving me, Arthur. That's why you want me to have it."

Arthur looked down at her, his expression softening in a way that made my stomach turn.

He was high on the anti-rejection meds and the subtle poison of her words.

I felt the air leave the room.

I didn't scream.

I didn't cry.

I was a mafia wife in training, and I knew the code of silence better than anyone.

I walked to the door, my heels clicking sharply on the marble floor.

"Where are you going?" Arthur asked, his tone sharp, the command of the Underboss slipping back into place.

"To pack," I said quietly.

"You aren't going anywhere," he growled.

"Diana needs stability. We are staying here."

He didn't say I need you.

He said we.

He and the woman who was wearing my mother's soul around her neck.

I looked at him one last time, memorizing the sharp jawline and the cold blue eyes I used to adore.

I wasn't just leaving the apartment.

I was leaving us.