The Capo Who Forgot His Beloved Wife

Five years ago, Dante Moretti was the Capo who promised to burn the world for me.

Today, he is a monster with amnesia who treats me like a servant while parading his mistress, Carla, in front of me.

When Carla cut her own baby's lip to frame me, Dante didn't ask for proof.

He dragged me into the hotel lobby, claiming I was a monster who hurt children.

He looked at me with cold, dead eyes and said, "You use your voice to lie. You don't deserve a voice."

He ordered his guards to hold me down.

Then, he took a silver needle and thick black thread.

Right there in front of the staff and guests, he sewed my mouth shut.

Three stitches.

One for silence.

One for obedience.

One for the Family.

He thought he had broken me.

He didn't know that while I bled, the walls blocking his memory were already crumbling.

Months later, after I had escaped and built a new life, he found me.

He knelt in the snow outside my gate, weeping, begging to fix what he broke.

"I remember everything, Elena. I love you."

I touched the white scars on my lips and looked down at him.

"You can't fix this, Dante."

"Unless you can give me the last five years back."

Chapter 1

Elena Vitiello POV

I stood before the man who once promised to burn the world for me, clutching the paperwork that would reduce his empire to ash, while he allowed another woman to sit on his lap.

Five years ago, Dante Moretti was the Capo of the New York Famiglia, a man whose shadow alone could freeze a room, and I was his beloved wife.

Today, he is Dante the Reaper, a monster with a hole in his memory where my name used to be. And I am nothing more than the discarded collateral damage of a truce between warring gangs.

The lobby of The Gilded Lily was suffocating.

Gold leaf peeled from the crown molding like dead skin, and the scent of stale cigar smoke clung to the heavy velvet curtains. This hotel was a front for the Moretti money laundering operation, and for the last five years, I had been its glorified housekeeper.

Dante sat on the plush leather sofa in the center of the lobby.

He looked every inch the king he was born to be. His suit was tailored to hide the holsters at his ribs, his dark hair was slicked back, and his eyes were cold shards of obsidian.

Carla Russo was perched on his thigh.

She was a Jersey girl with too much ambition and not enough sense, tracing the line of his jaw with a manicured nail. It was a public display of disrespect that would have gotten a man killed in the old days.

A Made Man does not parade his mistress in front of his wife.

But Dante did not remember I was his wife.

To him, I was Elena Vitiello, a contractual obligation forced on him by the Chicago Outfit.

I walked toward them.

My heels clicked against the marble floor, a rhythm like a ticking clock counting down to his ruin.

Dante didn't look up. He was busy whispering something into Carla's ear that made her giggle, a sound that grated on my nerves like sandpaper.

I cleared my throat.

Dante's eyes snapped to mine. There was no recognition, only annoyance.

"What is it, Elena?" he asked.

His voice was a low rumble that used to make my toes curl. Now, it just made my stomach turn.

I held out the folder.

"Signatures required for the property transfer," I said.

My voice was steady. I had practiced this tone in the mirror for a thousand mornings. It was the tone of a servant-invisible and efficient.

Dante sighed. He reached for the folder without shifting Carla from his lap.

He didn't read it.

He assumed it was another lease agreement for one of Carla's vanity projects or a supplier contract for the hotel kitchen. He didn't know he was signing away the Vitiello shipping routes.

Those routes were my dowry. They were the arteries that pumped cash into the New York Famiglia. Without them, the Moretti family would suffocate within a month.

He uncapped his pen. The ink flowed black and permanent.

I watched the tip of the pen carve his name onto the line. My heart hammered against my ribs. I was stealing back my freedom right under the nose of the deadliest man in New York.

"Done," he said, tossing the folder onto the coffee table.

He looked at me with disdain.

"The scent in here is cheap," he said. "Fix it. Carla deserves organic lavender, not this chemical trash."

Carla smirked at me.

"Dante is so powerful," she cooed. "He gets whatever he wants."

I reached for the folder. My hand shook slightly.

As I grabbed the paper, my pinky finger brushed against the back of Dante's hand.

The reaction was violent and instantaneous.

Dante recoiled as if I were acid. He shoved my hand away.

My wrist slammed against the edge of the marble table. Bone met stone with a sickening crack.

Pain shot up my arm, hot and white.

"Don't touch me," he snarled.

He grabbed a bottle of sanitizer from the table and scrubbed his skin where I had brushed him.

"You are unclean."

The word hung in the air. Unclean.

Flashbacks assaulted me.

The car bomb five years ago. Him waking up in the hospital. Me reaching for him, weeping with relief. Him looking at me with blank, hateful eyes and asking who let the trash in.

Five years of servitude. Five years of sleeping in the guest wing while he brought women home. Five years of paying for a crime I didn't commit.

I clutched my throbbing wrist to my chest.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

It was the script. Stick to the script. Survive.

Dante paused. He looked at my face.

For a second, the cruelty in his eyes wavered. He stared at the bruise forming on my pale skin, and his brow furrowed. Something in his broken brain was trying to connect the dots.

Why did my pain bother him?

Before he could process it, Carla pulled out her phone.

"I'm going to livestream the unboxing of the penthouse!" she squealed.

She pointed the camera at me.

"Say hi to the fans," she said.

Dante's face hardened again.

"Go with her," he ordered me. "Carry her bags. Film her if she asks."

I stared at him.

"I am a Vitiello," I said softly. "I am not a maid."

Dante stood up. He towered over me.

"You are whatever I say you are," he said, his voice deathly quiet. "You are a burden. A tax I pay to Chicago to keep the peace. Now do your duty."

He turned his back on me.

Something inside me snapped.

It wasn't a loud crack like my wrist. It was a quiet severance. The tether of hope I had been holding onto for five years finally broke.

Carla shoved her phone in my face.

"Get my good side," she ordered.

I took the phone. I looked at Dante's broad back. I looked at Carla's smug face.

I raised the phone.

But I didn't film her.

I turned and smashed the device against the wall.

Glass shattered. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent lobby.

Dante spun around. His hand went to his waistband instinctively.

I didn't flinch.

"She isn't pregnant!" I screamed.

The words tore out of my throat, raw and bleeding.

"She's been lying to you for months to get the ring! She's playing you, Dante! Just like everyone else!"

Dante froze.

His hand hovered over his gun. His eyes went wide.

A vein in his temple throbbed violently. He brought a hand to his head, grimacing as if a spike were being driven into his skull.

He looked at me. Really looked at me.

His lips parted.

"Little Dove?" he whispered.

The name floated across the distance between us.

It was the name he gave me on our wedding night.

But it didn't sound like love anymore.

It sounded like a ghost story.