When His Apology Comes Five Years Late

My husband, mafia Don Leo Falcone, detonated the door to my safehouse with forged syndicate papers in hand.

He came to force me to take the fall for his mistress, Serena, threatening to cut off my sister Chloe's medical funds if I refused.

What he didn't know was that Chloe had already succumbed to her agony three years ago because Serena stole her money.

And he didn't know that I had bled out in a dark alley five years before that.

He had exiled me to protect Serena, and I was cornered and stabbed thirteen times by the relatives of the rivals his syndicate killed.

Suspended near the ceiling as a ghost, I watched him aggressively demand my whereabouts, fully believing I was just throwing a tantrum.

"If she does not show up in three days to sign these papers, I will cut off every single dime," he threatened.

It wasn't until his Tracker handed him my cremation documents and the gruesome crime scene photos that he finally broke.

For five years, he had pampered the true venomous snake while I rotted in the ground, paying for her fatal mistakes with my life.

I watched the invincible Don reduced to a sobbing wreck, feeling no pity at all.

After personally sending Serena to a federal supermax, Leo returned to our old apartment, swallowed a bottle of pills, and slumped against the wall to die.

"This time, I am not looking for anyone else. Just you," he whispered.

But as he took his final rattling breath, I simply turned away and left him in the dark forever.

Chapter 1

Nia POV

The man who called himself my husband, Leo Falcone, did not so much knock as detonate the door to my safehouse. He arrived clutching a sheaf of forged syndicate papers, a flimsy shield intended to keep his mistress from the cold embrace of a federal supermax.

His first words were a threat, a promise to sever the funding for my sister's care if I did not materialize from the shadows.

What he did not know was that my sister had succumbed to her agony three years ago—or that I had bled out in a forgotten alley five years before that.

Suspended near the ceiling, where a brown water stain had mapped an unknown continent, I watched Leo's polished Italian loafers crunch over the splintered pine of the doorframe.

He wore a suit of such dark, immaculate wool it seemed to drink the light from the room. His footfalls, heavy and deliberate, were the only sound to disturb the years of silence.

The air, thick with the scent of decaying newsprint and damp plaster, held its breath. A fine gray powder coated every surface, a shroud spun by time and neglect.

He stopped in the center of the room. His gaze swept the space not with any real hope of finding me, but with the proprietary air of a man inventorying a derelict asset.

The forged papers crackled in his large, tense hand.

*I had been tethered to him since the moment of my death—an invisible cord woven from the remnants of our shattered marriage vows. When his emotions ran hot, I was dragged in his wake like a leaf in a storm. When he was calm, I could drift a little farther, a ghost with a longer leash. But I could never stray beyond the orbit of his obsession. Wherever Leo Falcone went, I was condemned to follow. *

A tremor of impatience ran through his broad shoulders before he pivoted on his heel and quit the room as violently as he had entered it.

I descended, a weightless thought, through the warped floorboards, trailing him down to the dingy bodega on the street level.

A small, tarnished bell gave a frantic jingle as Leo shouldered the door inward.

He made a straight line for the counter, his arm shooting over the register to seize the elderly proprietor by the collar of his worn flannel shirt.

"Where is Nia?" Leo demanded, the words a low vibration that seemed to come from the floor itself.

The old man trembled, his frail hands fluttering up to Leo's thick wrists.

"She is dead, Mr. Falcone."

Leo's grip constricted, the knuckles of his hand turning white as he lifted the man a few inches from the ground. "Do not lie to me."

"I am not lying," the owner choked out. "Five years ago. She was cornered in the alley behind this very building. The relatives of those men your syndicate killed in that botched run found her."

Leo's posture became unnaturally rigid, a statue carved from disbelief.

"They stabbed her thirteen times," the old man whispered. "She bled out before the ambulance even arrived."

Leo's hand flew open. The proprietor stumbled backward, his fall broken by a wire rack of stale potato chips.

"You took a bribe from her," Leo stated, his voice stripped of all inflection, a flat, dead thing.

"She is throwing a tantrum because I exiled her from the Family. She paid you to sell me this pathetic story."

The owner simply shook his head, rubbing the raw, red mark on his neck.

Leo took a single, predatory step around the counter, his presence shrinking the already cramped space. "You pass a message to my wife."

He tapped his heavy, gold signet ring against the metal frame of the display rack. The sharp tink was a period on his unspoken threat.

"If she does not show up at my estate in three days to sign these papers, I will cut off every single dime of her sister Chloe's underground medical funds."

Without waiting for an answer, Leo turned around and shoved the glass door open.

The bodega owner watched his retreating back with a mixture of pity and fear.

"Chloe already died a long time ago," the old man sighed to the empty shop.

*The bell above the door gave one last, faint jingle as the wind caught it. Leo was already in his SUV, already dialing Serena, already preparing to tear the city apart for a woman whose bones had been in the ground for five years. And I—I was dragged along behind him like a shadow, waiting for the moment he would finally understand that he was searching for a ghost. *