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I Left The Jester For The King

Jing Jing

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Mafia

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"Little Siren: I miss your hands on me." That message lit up the screen of a burner phone I found in my fiancé's jacket pocket while he was in the shower. Franco Moretti, the rising star of the Vitiello crime family, treated me like a fragile glass doll. He claimed he was "saving himself" for our wedding night out of respect. But the phone told a different story. I unlocked it and found three years of betrayal. It wasn't just a fling. It was Camilla, a girl from high school I had befriended out of pity. I watched their history unfold. He complained that I was cold. He called me a statue. Then I saw the invoice. He had bought two identical pink diamond engagement rings. One for me, and one for her. Worse, he had stolen my grandmother' s heirloom jade bracelet-a piece of history meant for his bride-and given it to his mistress. "I need her name to get the chair," he texted her. "You are my true Queen." I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I realized I wasn't a person to him; I was a ladder. Leaving him would be too easy. Leaving is what victims do. I walked to my laptop and opened a new document. I wasn't just going to cancel the wedding. I was going to broadcast his ruin to the entire underworld, and our wedding would be my stage. Then, I picked up the phone and dialed the one number my father forbade me to call. "I accept," I told the deep voice on the other end. "You understand what you are agreeing to, Gianna?" Enzo Falcone asked. "I understand," I said, looking at the New York skyline. "You want an alliance. I want a weapon."

Betrayal

Love triangle

Mafia

I Left The Jester For The King Chapter 1

"Little Siren: I miss your hands on me."

That message lit up the screen of a burner phone I found in my fiancé's jacket pocket while he was in the shower.

Franco Moretti, the rising star of the Vitiello crime family, treated me like a fragile glass doll. He claimed he was "saving himself" for our wedding night out of respect.

But the phone told a different story.

I unlocked it and found three years of betrayal.

It wasn't just a fling. It was Camilla, a girl from high school I had befriended out of pity.

I watched their history unfold. He complained that I was cold. He called me a statue.

Then I saw the invoice.

He had bought two identical pink diamond engagement rings. One for me, and one for her.

Worse, he had stolen my grandmother' s heirloom jade bracelet-a piece of history meant for his bride-and given it to his mistress.

"I need her name to get the chair," he texted her. "You are my true Queen."

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I realized I wasn't a person to him; I was a ladder.

Leaving him would be too easy. Leaving is what victims do.

I walked to my laptop and opened a new document. I wasn't just going to cancel the wedding. I was going to broadcast his ruin to the entire underworld, and our wedding would be my stage.

Then, I picked up the phone and dialed the one number my father forbade me to call.

"I accept," I told the deep voice on the other end.

"You understand what you are agreeing to, Gianna?" Enzo Falcone asked.

"I understand," I said, looking at the New York skyline.

"You want an alliance. I want a weapon."

Chapter 1

"I accept."

The words were a rasp in my throat, leaving the metallic tang of old copper on my tongue. I forced them out into the secured line, and with them, I felt the tumblers of a lock fall into place.

"You understand what you are agreeing to, Gianna?"

The voice on the other end was deep, a low rumble that vibrated in the receiver. Lorenzo "Enzo" Falcone.

The Capo Bastone of the Falcone crime family. A man my father had called a butcher. The man who had been a figure of rumor and shadow throughout my childhood.

"I understand," I said, staring at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window of my penthouse. The New York skyline glittered back at me, indifferent to the fact that I was bartering the remainder of my life. "You want an alliance. I want a weapon."

"I am not a weapon you can holster when you are finished, Tesoro," Enzo replied. His tone wasn't threatening; it was a promise. "If I return to New York, I am coming to stay. And I am coming to collect."

"Come collect," I said, my voice a flat, toneless thing. "But know this, Enzo. The wedding to Franco Moretti is dead."

A heavy silence hung on the line. I could almost hear him smiling, a predator sensing blood in the water.

"You cannot retract your word to me once I board that plane," he warned, his voice lowered, the resonance of it a physical weight. "I will be in New York within the month. Prepare yourself."

The line went dead.

I lowered the phone, my hand trembling slightly. Not from fear of Enzo, but from the sheer adrenaline of burning down eight years of my life with a single, irrevocable act.

I walked over to my laptop and opened the encrypted browser. The "Underworld Gossip" forum was lighting up. A thread titled The Union of the Century had thousands of comments speculating about my engagement party to Franco Moretti, the rising star of the Vitiello family.

They look so perfect together, one user wrote.

A match made in heaven, said another.

I let out a short, bitter laugh. It sounded foreign to my own ears, a brittle sound, like a shard of ice cracking.

Heaven.

I closed the laptop with a dull, final thud and opened the drawer of my desk. Inside lay a burner phone. It wasn't mine. It was Franco's.

I had found it three nights ago.

It had been vibrating in his jacket pocket while he was in the shower. I had reached for it, thinking it was his business phone, intending to silence it. But the screen lit up with a message that stopped my heart.

Little Siren: I miss your hands on me.

My vision swam for a moment, the parquet floor seeming to rise and fall with the rhythm of my own blood. Franco, the man who treated me like a fragile glass doll, the man who claimed he was saving himself for our wedding night out of "respect," had a Little Siren.

I had unlocked the phone-shockingly, it had no passcode-and scrolled.

It wasn't a fling. It was a three-year saga.

I saw the number. I ran it. Camilla. The girl from high school. The charity case I had befriended because no one else would talk to her. The daughter of a low-level associate who cleaned floors for a living.

I sat in that chair for hours, reading three years of betrayal line by damning line.

I watched their text history evolve. At first, Franco was dismissive. Then, he was intrigued. Then, he was obsessed.

He complained to her about me. She's so cold, he wrote. She acts like a princess. She doesn't understand a man's needs like you do.

And then, the text that made me decide to burn it all down. Sent just last week.

Franco: You are my true blood oath, Camilla. In another life, I'd make you my Queen. But I need her name to get the chair.

He didn't love me. He didn't even like me. I was a stepping stone. I was the ladder he was climbing to get to the top of my father's organization.

I picked up the burner phone now, weighing it in my hand. It felt heavy, like a slab of lead.

I wasn't going to just leave him. Leaving was too easy. Leaving was what victims did. I would let him walk me all the way to the altar, and then I would leave him standing there alone, a fool in front of the entire world.

I was a Vitiello. We didn't get sad. We got even.

I tossed the phone back into the drawer and slammed it shut. The sound was a deadened report, absorbed by the heavy draperies.

Let him have his Little Siren. I was about to introduce him to a shark.