Sacrifice: The Mafia Don's Pregnant Wife

I was the illegitimate daughter of a powerful mafia Consigliere, forced to scrub their marble floors while my half-sister Cassidy lived like a pampered princess.

When Cassidy was ordered to marry a condemned, brutally tortured Underboss in a deadly blood-oath execution, my father dragged me to the underground black site to take her place.

They forced me into a cheap wedding dress and locked me in a pitch-black cell with a dying man, expecting us both to catch an executioner's bullet.

My stepmother even handed me a small glass vial through the iron bars-the exact same poison she had used to slowly murder my pregnant mother years ago.

"The Don is issuing the kill order tonight. Drink this. Save yourself the agony," she mocked.

My father simply stood by and watched, willingly throwing me to the wolves just to keep his precious legitimate daughter entirely safe.

I stared at the poison in my calloused palm, and then at the bleeding, terrifying mafia boss chained to the concrete wall.

They honestly thought I was just a disposable pawn, meant to die quietly in the dirt so they could continue building their glamorous underworld empire on my mother's bones.

But they forgot I inherited my mother's underground medical brilliance.

I pulled a sterilized scalpel from my hidden trauma kit, looked the deadly Underboss right in the eye, and made a blood vow that would soon burn my family's entire empire to the ground.

Chapter 1

Chloe POV

I was fighting my raw, blistered arms into the boned bodice of a wedding dress when my stepmother's fingers clamped onto my jaw. She brought her face so near I could smell the cloying scent of her perfume, whispering that since Cassidy had gone so far as to throw herself into the estate's landscape lake, staging a dramatic drowning and feigning a coma to escape this fate, I had to take her place. If I did not die alongside the condemned mafia heir in the underground black site, my father would have my mother's grave opened and her bones scattered in the ocean.

The threat hung in the stagnant air of my cramped attic room. Brenda smiled, her perfectly painted red lips stretching over teeth of a startling, porcelain white.

She adjusted the cheap lace collar around my neck, her manicured nails leaving four sharp indentations in my skin.

I stared back at her, my face a carefully blank canvas. I had learned long ago that showing fear to a predator only made them bite harder.

My father, Charles, stood in the doorway. He was a powerful Consigliere in the Syndicate, a man who wore custom Italian suits and commanded fear across the city, yet he could not bring his gaze to meet mine.

He was tossing his illegitimate daughter to the wolves to save his precious legitimate child, Cassidy, from a blood-oath marriage to a dead man walking.

They zipped the dress up. It was too tight across my chest and too long at the hem-a shroud disguised as a gown.

Two massive Syndicate enforcers took my arms and dragged me down the grand staircase of the estate. I did not struggle.

I let them shove me into the back of a heavily armored black SUV. The doors slammed shut, the sound a heavy, final thud that sealed me in with the smell of old leather and gun oil.

As the engine roared to life, I leaned my head against the tinted glass. A dark, bitter amusement curled in my chest. Charles thought he was discarding a useless pawn.

He had built his entire empire on the back of my mother's underground medical brilliance and her underworld connections. When she was no longer useful, he let Brenda poison her slowly, leaving me to scrub their floors with calloused hands.

They thought I was going to die today. They were wrong.

The SUV rumbled over uneven terrain for an hour before coming to a violent halt. The doors opened to the blinding glare of floodlights.

We were at the Syndicate black site-a heavily guarded concrete fortress hidden deep in the wastelands.

Silas, the corrupt Syndicate Fixer, stood waiting by a heavy steel door. He wore a mocking grin, his eyes tracing the poorly stitched seams of my cheap wedding dress with a theatrical slowness.

"A grim venue for a bride, I confess," Silas's voice was a low drawl. "The Don insists on upholding the old traditions, even for a traitor."

I stepped out of the vehicle, the cold wind whipping my hair across my face. I looked Silas dead in the eye, entirely unfazed by his intimidation tactics.

"Lead the way."

Silas blinked, his smirk faltering for a fraction of a second. He turned and swiped a keycard.

The heavy steel doors groaned open, revealing a dark, damp stairwell that smelled of rust, bleach, and old blood.

I descended into the earth, my heels making a sharp, lonely report against the concrete. The air grew colder with every step.

At the bottom of the stairs, a single barred cell sat in the center of a cavernous basement.

Silas unlocked the iron gate, applied a firm pressure to the small of my back that sent me stumbling inside, handed me a silver flask, and walked back up the stairs without another word. The heavy door slammed shut above, its echo swallowed by the thick concrete, locking me in a ten-square-meter box that stank of bleach and damp earth.

I righted myself, the grit of the floor scraping against the palms of my hands. In the deepest, darkest corner of the cell, a man was chained to the wall.

Leo. The Underboss they called the Lion.

Before he was framed for poisoning the Old Boss's favorite wife, Leo was a force in the underworld. It was said that his name alone caused rival Capos to sweat through their silk shirts. He commanded an army of ruthless Soldiers.

Now, he was a broken, bleeding mess, waiting for the executioner's bullet.

I reached up and pulled the cheap veil off my head, tossing it onto the filthy floor.

Leo lifted his head. The dim light caught his face, and my breath hitched.

Even battered and bruised, his features held the sharp, unforgiving lines of a fallen statue. His jaw was a hard angle, his cheekbones high, and his dark eyes burned with a still, contained rage.

He stared at me, his gaze dropping to the white dress, and then to my face. He did not recognize me. He had been expecting Cassidy.

"Are you ready to drink the blood-oath whiskey?" My voice was steady, echoing off the damp walls.

Leo let out a low, raspy growl. It sounded like metal scraping against stone.

"Do you realize you are going to share my execution, little girl?"

"I know." I held up the silver flask. From a hidden fold in my skirt, I produced a sterilized scalpel. The steel felt cold against my skin as I drew it firmly across the pad of my index finger, watching three thick drops of crimson fall and dissolve into the amber liquid. "I had no choice in the matter. Drink."

He lunged forward as far as the heavy chains would allow. His coarse knuckles clamped over my radial artery; the pressure was so immense I could hear the faint compression of cartilage between my wrist bones, my pulse hammering against his fingertips.

"You are a fake. A cheap substitute." He sneered, his breath a hot, foul gust across my face. "Charles didn't have the spine to send his real daughter."

He looked ready to snap my arm in half.

I did not flinch. I let him hold my wrist, letting him feel my steady pulse. Then, with my free hand, I drove my thumb and forefinger into the hollows of his cheeks, forcing his jaw open with a pained grunt.

Exhaustion suddenly overtook him. His grip loosened. He slumped back, and I tipped the flask's cold rim against his lips, forcing the harsh liquor mixed with my blood past his teeth.

He shoved the flask back into my chest, the impact sending me back a step.

"I have loyal Soldiers," he rasped, his head falling back against the cold stone, his eyes slipping shut. "I will give you the location of my offshore accounts. They will get you out of here before the kill order drops. You don't have to die with a dead man."

I uncapped the flask and took a long, burning swig of the whiskey. The fire coated my throat, sealing the mafia vow.

"How bad are your injuries?" I asked bluntly. "And are you strong enough to consummate this marriage?"

Leo's eyes snapped open. He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

"What insane thoughts are running through your head?"

I set the flask down and stepped closer to him. I reached forward and grabbed the collar of his ruined, blood-soaked shirt.

"I am going to treat your wounds."

He violently swatted my hands away. His eyes darkened with absolute hostility.

"Get your hands off me. Patching up a corpse is a waste of time."

"I am an underground trauma medic." I looked down at his chest, spotting deep lacerations that looked dangerously close to the bone. "And you are not a corpse yet."

I knelt on the cold floor and lifted the heavy layers of my wedding dress. Strapped to my thigh was my mother's hidden medical kit.

I unrolled the canvas fabric, revealing sterilized needles, high-grade sutures, and crushed painkillers.

Leo watched me in heavy silence. He stopped resisting as I reached out, my calloused fingers finding the edges of his deepest wound.

I worked meticulously. The basement was dead quiet, save for the sound of my ragged breathing and his occasional sharp intake of air.

I cleaned the infected cuts, my hands steady despite the horrific damage to his flesh. A fine sheen of sweat broke out across his brow from the agony, his muscles jumping under my touch, but he refused to make a single sound.

When I tied off the last suture, Leo slumped against the chains. He looked at the ceiling, a dark nihilism settling over his features.

"Stop wasting your effort. We are dead."

I packed up my supplies. I stood up and gripped the cold iron of his chains, leaning in close so he could see the absolute certainty in my eyes.

"Neither of us is going to die in this cell." My voice was a low, fierce promise. "I am going to walk out of here with you."

Leo slowly turned his head. His dark, intense eyes locked onto mine. He stared at me for a long time, silently testing the weight of my words.

I held his gaze and did not look away. Because I knew something he didn't-I had not come here to die. I had come here to burn their entire world to the ground, and I needed the Lion to do it.