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I was seven months pregnant with the Falcone mafia heir when his mother slid a stack of hush money across the table. That was how I found out my husband had completely forged our marriage registry. He was legally married to someone else-Gianna, the orphan girl I had taken a knife for and bled on the asphalt to save five years ago. To protect his real wife's position, his mother demanded my "bastard" child be erased and shoved me down the grand staircase. Xander was standing right below us. He reached out, but when he saw his mother's warning glare, he made a cold, calculated choice and deliberately pulled his hand back. He just watched me fall. My body slammed against the hard wooden steps, and I woke up in a sterile hospital bed with a flat stomach. My baby was gone. My father took a bullet to the heart to save Xander's life when we were kids. I gave up everything for him, yet he degraded me to a hidden mistress while dressing the traitorous girl I saved in five-million-dollar diamonds. Gianna even barged into my hospital room, rubbing her own swollen belly to mock my dead child. I didn't scream or cry. I just calmly pulled out my encrypted phone, retrieved the hidden security footage of Xander letting me fall, and dialed the rival syndicate's Don. "I possess leverage that will dismantle Xander Falcone's standing. Are you interested?"
Contents
Claimed By The Enemy: The Jilted Queen Chapter 1
I was seven months pregnant with the Falcone mafia heir when his mother slid a stack of hush money across the table.
That was how I found out my husband had completely forged our marriage registry.
He was legally married to someone else-Gianna, the orphan girl I had taken a knife for and bled on the asphalt to save five years ago.
To protect his real wife's position, his mother demanded my "bastard" child be erased and shoved me down the grand staircase.
Xander was standing right below us.
He reached out, but when he saw his mother's warning glare, he made a cold, calculated choice and deliberately pulled his hand back.
He just watched me fall.
My body slammed against the hard wooden steps, and I woke up in a sterile hospital bed with a flat stomach. My baby was gone.
My father took a bullet to the heart to save Xander's life when we were kids. I gave up everything for him, yet he degraded me to a hidden mistress while dressing the traitorous girl I saved in five-million-dollar diamonds.
Gianna even barged into my hospital room, rubbing her own swollen belly to mock my dead child.
I didn't scream or cry.
I just calmly pulled out my encrypted phone, retrieved the hidden security footage of Xander letting me fall, and dialed the rival syndicate's Don.
"I possess leverage that will dismantle Xander Falcone's standing. Are you interested?"
Chapter 1
I was seven months pregnant with the heir to the Falcone's network of docks and union officials when I slid an envelope of surveillance photographs across the table to the older woman who had been meeting my husband in secret.
I expected a denial, but instead, she produced a sheaf of untraceable bearer bonds totaling ten million dollars and the deed to an offshore property, placing them before me. It was an offer to procure a discreet and hazardous procedure to end my pregnancy before his legal wife discovered the affair.
The high-end espresso lounge was unnervingly still, cleared out by the armed men standing sentinel by the tinted glass doors.
Xander Falcone was a man who wore custom Italian suits to mask the fact that he could order a body sunk in the harbor while stirring sugar into his coffee. He was the most feared enforcer of the Cosa Nostra, a man whose reputation was built upon a foundation of rival corpses.
He possessed a raw, predatory magnetism that bent the entire underworld to his will. I had always known he was a man who took what he wanted; I had simply never imagined I would be counted among his acquisitions.
I stared at the crisp stack of bonds sitting next to my half-empty teacup, the silence between us growing heavy, pressing down like a physical weight.
My mind struggled to assemble the words leaving this elegant woman's mouth.
I looked at the photographs again. They showed her stepping from a black town car, meeting Xander in secluded, rain-slicked alleyways moments after he had left our penthouse.
I stared at the sharp angles of her cheekbones and the dark, assessing eyes that were a perfect, chilling mirror of the man I loved. Before my mind could fully connect the resemblance, she spoke.
"Are you the comare my son keeps tucked away in the shadows?" she asked, her voice low and smooth.
A cold shock traveled up my spine, prickling the fine hairs on my nape. The air seemed to catch in my throat, my lungs refusing to draw. The confirmation struck me with the force of a physical blow. This woman was Carmela Falcone. Xander's mother.
I looked back up at her, my jaw aching with a sudden tension. "Does your husband know you've sunk your claws into my man?"
The older woman let out a dry, brittle laugh, her fingers moving to idly adjust the massive diamond that weighted her hand.
"Her son is permitted his indiscretions," Carmela stated smoothly. "But illegitimate bloodlines are an impurity we do not tolerate. You will see to this problem. Quietly."
She tapped a manicured nail against the bonds. "For your recovery."
My hands flew to my swollen stomach, a reflexive, protective gesture. I pushed the papers back across the polished table.
"We are lawfully wedded," I countered, my voice a tremor held in check by sheer will. "Our union is recorded in the Syndicate registry and sanctified by the Church. This child is the Falcone heir."
Carmela regarded me with an expression that mingled pity with a profound, almost clinical disgust.
Before she could speak, the heavy glass doors of the lounge swung open with a muffled thud that seemed to absorb all the sound in the room.
The atmosphere grew dense, the air suddenly too thick to breathe.
Silvio Falcone stepped inside. The formidable Don of the Falcone Famiglia. He was a titan of the old world, a man whose presence alone commanded a deferential silence.
He walked directly to Carmela, pressing a devoted, proprietary kiss to her cheek.
He then turned his eyes to me, and they held no focus, the pupils drawn to pinpricks, stripping away what little hope I had managed to cling to.
"Your marriage documents were forgeries, Sienna," Silvio said, his voice flat, devoid of inflection.
A crushing weight settled in my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.
"A piece of theatre orchestrated by Xander," Silvio continued. "He employed his associates to fabricate the registry and the church records. It was done to ensure your compliance. To prevent a war."
The floor beneath my feet seemed to vanish.
Eighteen years. I was promised to him for eighteen years.
My Capo father took a bullet to the heart to shield Xander when he was just a boy. I grew up believing in the honor of the Famiglia. I believed I was his wife.
"You are a mistress," Silvio said, and the words hung in the air for three full seconds before my mind could assemble them into sense, and a sour bile rose in my throat. "No outside blood will inherit what is mine. I apologize for my son's deception, but I strongly advise you to erase that pregnancy."
Silvio placed a possessive hand on the small of Carmela's back. He meticulously escorted her toward the door, his every movement radiating a regal authority.
Outside, an armored Maybach waited, its engine a low thrum.
I sat frozen in the booth. I watched the legendary, protective devotion of the Falcone men in action.
It was a devotion I had once foolishly believed was mine.
The heavy doors clicked shut, leaving me alone with the horrifying, unvarnished truth of what Xander was.
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