The Mafia King Kneels For His Ex-Wife

I was the lawful wife of Salvatore Vitiello, the most feared Mafia Don in New York.

For six years, I endured his coldness, believing my miscarriage and subsequent hysterectomy were the tragic results of a rival syndicate's kidnapping.

But at the triennial Syndicate summit, my brother whispered a horrifying secret into my ear.

"The Don procured the services of the family surgeon to have your womb removed."

Salvatore himself had ordered the mutilation six years ago as a calculated punishment for our forced marriage.

While I reeled from the sickening truth, Salvatore publicly humiliated me.

He paraded his pregnant mistress, Serena, forcing me to surrender my seat of honor to her.

My own parents and brother fawned over the mistress, kicking me to the floor into a pile of shattered crystal.

Bleeding and broken, I was ordered by my husband to peel over a hundred shrimp for the woman carrying his heir, while the entire room mocked my barrenness.

I had spent six excruciating years trying to earn his forgiveness for a trap my parents set, desperately loving the devil who had coolly destroyed my ability to be a mother.

My family had sold me to him, and he had mutilated me just to break me.

The suffocating love I harbored for him snapped like a rotted cord.

I didn't cry or scream.

I packed a single suitcase, walked out of the heavily fortified estate in the dead of night, and mailed him the Syndicate severance papers.

Chapter 1

Elena Rossi POV

As the assembled leadership of the Cosa Nostra raised their glasses to my husband, my brother Leo inclined his head, his words a hot, secret dampness against my ear.

"The Don," he whispered, "procured the services of the family surgeon to have your womb removed. It was done six years ago."

With a hand that trembled slightly, he pushed a silver platter of iced seafood in my direction, his eyes unnaturally wide.

"You will keep your head bowed and serve his pregnant whore," Leo hissed, the words scarce more than a vibration in his throat, "or what remains of our family will be put in the ground before the dessert course is served."

The declaration seeped from his lips not like acid, but like a slow-acting poison, paralyzing the last of my reason.

My gaze fell to the tablecloth, and I fixed upon the intricate damask pattern, staring until the white threads began to swim and blur in a painful, watery haze. I dared not blink, for fear a single tear might escape and betray me.

A band of iron seemed to tighten around my ribs, making it impossible to draw a full breath.

At the head of the long table, enthroned in a high-backed chair, sat Salvatore Vitiello, the undisputed master of the Vitiello Family.

He was a man whose empire was not built, but quarried from the bedrock of human misery.

His dark eyes held the flat, patient stillness of a reptile waiting in cold water.

Every Capo in the room feared him.

Every woman in the underworld wanted to be owned by him.

But I was the one chained to him.

Six years ago, my parents and my brother, seeing the imminent collapse of our family's illicit enterprises, devised a desperate salvation.

During a Sunday dinner, a fine powder was stirred into my wine.

They saw my unconscious body delivered to Salvatore's bed, the forced conception a gambit to secure a marriage with the one man in New York they dared not cross.

I can still recall waking up in a tangle of unfamiliar, dark-smelling sheets, a profound confusion giving way to a cold, creeping terror.

I remembered his chilling voice over the telephone a month later, when a rival syndicate had taken me from the street.

I had pleaded with him to pay the ransom.

He had done nothing more than laugh through the receiver.

"You found your way into a Don's bed through deception," he had told me, his tone devoid of all warmth. "This is merely the cost of your ambition."

I lost the baby on the cold concrete floor of a dirty warehouse.

The torture that followed was a blur of pain from which I prayed for the release of death.

When I at last woke up in the underground mob clinic, the surgeon informed me my uterus had suffered severe trauma and its removal was necessary to save my life.

For six years, I believed it was a tragic consequence of the kidnapping.

I spent six excruciating years attempting to earn Salvatore's forgiveness for a trap I never helped set.

Now, Leo's whisper echoed in the hollow spaces of my mind, and the foundation of that lie crumbled to dust.

Salvatore himself had ordered the surgery.

He had not, in a fit of rage, taken my child; he had sat at his mahogany desk, weighed the strategic advantages, and with the same gold-nibbed pen that signed death warrants, coolly excised the very possibility of my motherhood.

A tremor began in my hands, a fine, uncontrollable shudder.

I looked up at my husband, but Salvatore was not looking at me.

His massive, ink-stained hand rested with a deliberate, theatrical possessiveness on the swollen belly of Serena, his favored mistress.

He had possessed the audacity to bring her to the triennial Syndicate summit, parading her before the most powerful men in New York.

As a final, petty turn of the screw, Serena wore a crimson silk dress that Salvatore had purchased for me two years prior.

She leaned her head against his broad shoulder, the very picture of triumphant possession.

Salvatore scanned the room, demanding absolute silence with a near-imperceptible tightening of his jaw.

The announcement of his heir's imminent arrival reverberated against the vaulted ceiling.

When his gaze swept to my seat, the assembled Capos leaned forward in their chairs, a collective intake of breath anticipating the spectacle.

He told the attendant Capos that my position as his lawful wife was merely an act of his boundless mercy.

He called me a barren, empty shell.

A wave of coarse, booming laughter erupted from the men around the table.

A hot flush of humiliation crept up my neck, but my heart felt like a cold, heavy stone in my chest.

Serena pouted her lacquered lips and pointed a single, manicured finger at the massive seafood tower in the center of the table.

"I desire the shrimp, Sal," she complained, her voice carrying across the room, "but the shells are a nuisance to my nails."

Salvatore did not gesture for a waiter to help her.

Instead, his dark, paranoid gaze settled upon me.

He commanded me to peel them for the mother of his child.

Two seats to my left, my parents sat glaring at me.

My mother mouthed the word, "Useless."

My father made a frantic gesture beneath the damask cloth for me to obey the Boss.

And in that moment, I understood the purpose of Leo's terrible secret; it was not a confession, but a weapon, a desperate tactic to force my submission by revealing the true nature of the man I was dealing with.

It did not have the intended effect.

A strange and absolute stillness washed over me, quieting the frantic beating of my own heart.

The desperate, suffocating love I had harbored for Salvatore Vitiello for six years did not evaporate; it snapped, like a rotted cord under tension.

It was, quite simply, gone.

I reached for my water glass, but my fingers were entirely numb.

The heavy crystal slipped from my grasp.

It shattered against the corner of the table, sending jagged shards cascading onto the polished marble floor.

The loud crash silenced the entire banquet hall.

Salvatore's eyes darkened, the pupils constricting until they were nothing more than points of cold violence.

He slowly stood up, his towering frame casting a long, dreadful shadow over me.

"Remove yourself from that chair," he ordered, his voice low and cold.

"That seat of honor belongs to a woman who can provide for this Family."

I looked at Serena, remembering the countless times she had paraded about in my nightgowns and stolen my jewelry.

I remembered the times she faked falls on the grand staircase, resulting in Salvatore locking me in a freezing basement for days.

This was not her first pregnancy.

Salvatore had always made sure his mistresses took care of their indiscretions.

But he was letting Serena keep this one, for the express purpose of breaking me.

I stood up, clinging to the last shred of dignity afforded by the Syndicate's unspoken code of silence.

I turned toward the heavy mahogany doors of the private dining room, desperate to slip out and escape the suffocating weight of my humiliation.

Salvatore stepped squarely into my path, his chest a solid, immovable wall of muscle that blocked the light from the chandelier.

"What is the matter?" he mocked, his voice a low sneer. "Afraid of departing before the performance has concluded?"

The doors swung open before I could retreat.

Mrs. Bianco, the notoriously arrogant wife of an older, disgruntled Vitiello Capo, entered with a smile of sickening satisfaction.

"Congratulations to Salvatore and Serena on the new life!" she announced, her voice pitched to carry.

My hands shaking, I saw Serena's telephone as it lay upon the table. The screen illuminated with a notification from a private Family channel: a message from Salvatore, proudly sharing her ultrasound photograph.

It was the ultimate, irrevocable disrespect to our marriage vows.

The delicate illusion of the peaceful life I had painstakingly built was reduced to ash.

Salvatore shared an intimate, lingering look with his mistress, completely ignoring my presence.

Mrs. Bianco turned her attention to me, her voice dripping with counterfeit pity.

"Do tell," she purred, "how does it feel to be the only woman in the Cosa Nostra who cannot produce a single heir?"

Through a sudden ringing in my ears, I saw my parents and Leo rushing toward the commotion, their faces pale with panic as they prepared to sacrifice me to their master once again. And in that moment, I knew I was utterly alone in a room full of my own blood.