The Don's Regret: She Saved His Life

On our fifth anniversary, instead of a ring, I gave Elena a death sentence.

I believed her father killed mine. So, I spent five years making her fall in love with me just to break her.

I replaced her with Sofia, the woman I thought donated her kidney to save me.

I stripped Elena of her dignity, forced her to crawl over hot coals, and locked her in a freezing cellar until her artificial heart gave out.

She died alone in the mud, pulling the plug on her own life to escape me.

It was only when I saw her body on the autopsy table that I found the truth.

Sofia’s skin was flawless. It was Elena who had the scar.

Elena gave me her kidney. Elena saved me while I destroyed her.

Broken by the truth, I drove a knife into my own chest to join her in hell.

But I didn't die. I woke up ten years in the past, back in high school.

I thought God gave me a second chance to fix it. I saved her father. I cleared the path for our love.

I walked toward her in the school courtyard, ready to be the hero she deserved.

But she didn't look at me with love.

She looked at me with absolute, freezing terror.

I wasn't the only one who remembered the previous life.

Chapter 1

I was smoothing the red silk of the dress Dante had bought me for our fifth anniversary when the door to my penthouse burst open.

The man I loved walked in, a gun pressed to my father’s temple.

"Dante?" I whispered, the name dying in my throat.

Dante Vitiello, the Capo of the New York families, the man who ruled the underworld with an iron fist and a heart I foolishly thought belonged to me, didn't look at me.

His eyes, usually warm like melted whiskey, were now two chips of absolute zero. Dead. Empty.

"Happy anniversary, Elena," he said.

His voice was devoid of humanity.

He shoved my father, Dr. Antonio Rossi, onto the Persian rug. My father—a man who had spent his life saving others—was trembling, his hands zip-tied behind his back, his face a mask of abject terror.

"Please," my father sobbed, curling into himself. "Dante, don't do this. She knows nothing."

"That makes it better," Dante replied.

He uncocked the hammer of his pistol. The metallic *click* echoed like a thunderclap in the silent room.

"Ignorance is a luxury I’m taking away."

He strode over to me. I stood frozen, my hands hovering uselessly over the delicate fabric of my dress. He reached out, his large hand seizing the neckline.

*Riiip.*

The sound was violent, tearing through the air. The silk shredded from my collarbone to my waist, exposing my bra, exposing the jagged scars on my chest, and exposing the battery pack strapped to my side that kept my blood flowing.

"Dante!" I screamed, crossing my arms to cover myself.

"Look at him," Dante commanded. He grabbed my jaw, his fingers digging in like steel talons, forcing my face toward my father. "Look at the man who killed my father."

The world tilted on its axis. "What?"

"Ten years ago. The surgery," Dante spat the words, venom coating every syllable. "He let the Don die on the table. He broke Omertà. He took my father, and in return, I took five years of your life to make you fall in love with me, just so I could break you."

It wasn't a romance. It was a long con.

Every kiss, every touch, every whispered 'I love you' was a bullet he had been saving for this exact moment.

My mother wandered into the room then. Her mind, eaten away by dementia, left her smiling vacantly, clutching a stuffed rabbit. "Antonio? Is that you?"

"Open the balcony doors," Dante ordered his men.

"No!" I lunged for him, but a guard caught me by the arms, wrenching me back. "Dante, she’s sick! She doesn't know what she's doing!"

Dante didn't move. He stood like a statue as the glass doors slid open, letting in the howling wind of the city night.

My mother, confused by the sudden roar of the wind and the lights below, walked toward the brightness of the street. She didn't see the danger. She walked past the threshold, disoriented by the gale.

She went right over the edge.

I didn't see her fall. I only heard the screech of tires and the sickening, wet thud of a delivery truck hitting a body three stories down.

"Maria!" my father screamed—a sound of pure, animal agony.

He looked at Dante, then at me. His eyes were shattered glass.

"I can't let you pay for my sins, Elena."

My father stood up. He ran. Not toward the door, but toward the open balcony.

"Dad, no!"

He didn't hesitate. He vaulted over the railing to join my mother.

I collapsed. My knees hit the floor, but I couldn't feel the impact. I couldn't feel anything except the mechanical *whir-click-whir* of the LVAD pump attached to my heart.

My artificial heart.

Dante stood over me, a titan of vengeance. He checked his watch, indifferent to the carnage.

"You have a defective heart, Elena," he said, looking down at me like I was a stain on his shoe. "My doctors tell me that without the transplant you were supposed to get, that machine will fail in seven days."

He crouched down. His cologne—sandalwood and gunpowder—filled my senses, choking me.

"Seven days," he whispered against my ear. "I intend to make every second feel like a century."

The door opened again.

A woman walked in. She was beautiful, glowing with health, holding onto Dante’s arm as he stood up. Sofia Moretti.

"Is it done?" she asked, her voice like honey laced with arsenic.

Dante wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. "Yes. Elena, meet Sofia. My fiancée. And the woman who gave me her kidney when I was dying three years ago. The woman who actually saved me."

It was a lie.

I opened my mouth to scream the truth, to tell him *I* was the one who lay on that table, *I* was the one who ruined my heart to save his kidneys. But the grief choked me, sealing my lips.

"Welcome to hell, Elena," Dante said.