Divorcing My Queen Cost Me An Empire

naive, pliant wife to Dante M

ily wealth. I endured his affairs. His

stress, a rival mafia princess. His mother wore my late mother's stolen diamonds around her neck. He declared I w

very soldier. They were waiting for the sof

y knew how to pick

d money was the only thing keepin

dn't

ned my back to the crowd. And signaled the so

audit. Stri

pte

na

l to my mother-in-law's sixtieth year, my husband of sixteen delivere

I was to quit the compound without my daughter,

official script lying still against th

, I lifted my eye

tark, uncompromising force. He was a man who possessed a dark, feral magnetism-a predat

had inhabited the role

n expensive ornament from the Rossi family, a soft, foolish woman who knew only how to selec

lebration for a woman who had never shown her an ounce of genuine love. Her fingers were twisted so tightly in the silk of my gown t

always held my tongue when Dante

y I taught her that not every

cks to the Moretti compound. They arrived bearing untraceable currency, imported armaments

ixed on her lips. She listened to the low, guttural rumble of the trucks outside, her eyes

are a glance i

te jade hanging from his designer belt. It was a R

a champagne flute to her lips. Her neck glittered with a heav

oak doors of the ballroom swung ope

lo had walked

in a palpable arrogance. Dante had looked at her, and in his eyes was a

, a deliberate, calculated motion so all could hear her mock my "new money" Rossi background. "Not like some," Carmela declared, her gaz

Capos, soldiers, and Syndicate wives. He had pointed a finger at me. He declared to the ent

annulment papers had f

d of ice cubes dropping in the silence, and th

ng for the ornament to weep,

low, but not with the ache of heartbreak. It was the fee

edgers. Sixteen years of

ross my face-an expression my mu

in the Moretti famil

the marble the only sound, and picked up the annulment p

words a venomous hiss, telling me to pack

brittle sound from beh

me as one might regard a piece of fi

red th

hand and turned my back on

ght, their bodies forming a solid wall before the grand oak doors. His voice cut across the room, dec

ped wa

e I had funded for sixteen years. My voice dropped to

elonged to my bloodline, and I woul

a promise none of them