At my boyfriend’s poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him.
Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary.
Everyone said he loved me to the bone.
But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me.
I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses.
He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, “Why aren’t you jealous?”
He didn’t know I was sick. Dying.
While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.
Too Late To Love: The Don’s Dying Wife Chapter 1
The tissue in my hand grew heavy, stained the color of rust with the third nosebleed of the morning.
The doctor said I might be lucky enough to see the cherry blossoms bloom in Central Park next spring.
“But the quality of life will be very poor. Seizures. Memory loss. Gradual loss of motor function,” the doctor said.
Death would be a mercy.
The real crisis was that I had to walk into the lion’s den and beg the husband who loathed me for the money to preserve my dignity before the end.
My fingertips brushed the skin beneath my eyes; it was thin as papyrus, and felt as if the slightest pressure might tear it. The woman whose face it belonged to was a stranger.
Her skin had taken on the translucent, yellowed hue of old parchment.
Her eyes were sunken, rimmed by violet shadows that no amount of luxury concealer could mask.
I was twenty-six years old, yet I looked like a ghost haunting the ruins of her own life.
My phone buzzed against the cold marble counter, the vibration a jarring intrusion into the room’s profound stillness.
It was a notification from a gossip site, the screen lighting up with a headline that screamed: The Don and his Muse: Dante Cavallaro and Sofia Rossi spotted ring shopping?
I waited for the sting of jealousy, but it never came.
Jealousy requires energy, and my body had none left to give.
Instead, I felt only a dull, grinding pain that seemed to originate from the very center of my bones, a friction of skeletal dust.
Terminal illness.
I wasn’t afraid of death, but I didn’t like the pain.
I wanted the high-grade morphine that cost more on the black market than a luxury sedan, the kind insurance wouldn’t cover.
But my bank accounts were frozen.
Dante had cut me off three weeks ago. He liked to control me with money because he realized he could no longer control my heart.
I pulled on my heaviest winter coat, wrapping it tight around me. I had to hide the fact that I had lost fifteen pounds in a single month.
If Dante saw the sharp angles of my bones, he might mistake my condition for a plea for pity.
I went to the High-Rise, the beating heart of the Chicago Outfit.
It was the fortress where Dante ruled as the Capo dei Capi. A monolith of glass and steel, built on a foundation of blood and illegal gambling.
When we arrived, the guards at the entrance gave me stiff nods.
I walked through the lobby, the sharp report of my heels echoing on the polished floor. My joints screamed in protest with every step, a grinding agony that shot up my legs.
I kept my chin high. I was Elena Vitiello. I would not limp.
I took the private elevator to the top floor.
The doors slid open to the executive suite, and there she was.
Sofia Rossi.
She was perched at the executive assistant’s desk, idly filing her nails.
She wasn’t a secretary. She was a message.
Dante had placed her there as a public declaration, a message to every gossip columnist in Chicago of exactly who held his attention.
Sofia looked up, her eyes bright and predatory.
“Well, look who finally thawed out,” she drawled.
“Is Dante in?” I asked. My voice was steady. Cold. Detached.
“He’s in a meeting,” Sofia said, leaning back in the leather chair that was far too big for her. “Important business. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand that I am his wife,” I said softly.
Sofia laughed. “Wife on paper, Elena. Everyone knows I’m the one he comes home to. Well, the home that matters.” She gestured grandly to herself.
I looked at her, really looked at her.
She was glowing with obnoxious health.
Her skin was flushed with life, her hair thick and shiny.
She was everything I used to be before the lies and the sickness ate me alive from the inside out.
“You look terrible, by the way,” Sofia added, tilting her head with mock concern. “Like a corpse. Maybe you should get some sun. Or a plastic surgeon.”
My gaze caught on the glass wall of the conference room, and for a full three seconds I did not recognize the skeletal woman who stared back.
She was right. I looked like death.
But she didn’t know how literal that comparison was.
A soldier, Enzo, stepped forward from the shadows near the door.
“Watch your mouth, Sofia,” Enzo warned, his tone low and dangerous. “She is still the Don’s wife. If you displease her, the Don might kill you.”
Sofia rolled her eyes, unfazed. “For now, Enzo. Just for now.”
For now.
I thought, she was right.
Soon I would leave Dante. Not through divorce, but through something far more permanent.
Too Late To Love: The Don’s Dying Wife Chapter 2
Sofia’s long, acrylic nails drummed against the glass desk.
Click. Click. Click. It was a staccato rhythm calculated to grate on the nerves.
“Can I get you anything?” Sofia asked suddenly. “Tea? Coffee? Vodka?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” she sighed, standing up.
She sauntered over to the small kitchenette in the corner of the waiting area, moving with a hip sway so practiced it looked choreographed.
She poured a cup of tea and brought it over, placing it on the low table in front of me with a delicate clink.
“Dante hates keeping people waiting,” she said, perching on the arm of the chair opposite me. “But he’s in the War Room. Dealing with… you know, the heavy stuff. He hates interruptions when he’s looking at maps.”
She smiled, clearly understanding nothing of the blood spilled for those maps, only that it sounded important to be near it.
It was a specific kind of smile. It reached her eyes, crinkling the corners.
It was innocent. It was the exact same smile I used to give Dante ten years ago.
Before I broke his heart to save his life.
That was when I realized why he kept her.
It wasn’t just the sex. It wasn’t even to humiliate me.
It was because she was a ghost of the girl I used to be. He was trying to recreate the past with a cheaper substitute.
“He treats me so well,” Sofia continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “He bought me a villa in Tuscany. He says he wants to take me there next summer.”
Next summer.
I wouldn’t be here next summer. I would be nothing but ash in a ceramic urn.
“That sounds lovely,” I said.
She frowned, visibly disappointed by my apathy.
“He loves me, you know,” she pressed, her voice harder this time.
I looked at her hands. They were smooth, unblemished by worry or time.
“Sofia,” I said softly.
She blinked, startled by the use of her name.
“Why do you settle for this?” I asked.
“Settle for what?” She scoffed. “Being the Queen of Chicago?”
“Being a mistress,” I corrected gently.
Her face flushed a violent red.
I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I was simply tired. My bones felt like they were grinding against each other with every breath.
“If you think you have his heart,” I said, leaning forward slightly, “then convince him to sign the divorce papers.”
I had signed them a year ago. They were sitting in his safe, gathering dust.
He had refused to sign them.
He told me I didn’t get to walk away until he was finished playing with his food.
Sofia stood up abruptly.
“You think you’re so superior,” she hissed. “You’re just a washed-up princess, Elena. You’re barren. You’re cold. You’re nothing.”
“You abandoned him when he had nothing, didn’t you?”
She was shouting now, her voice shrill.
“Look at you! You’re withering away. You look like an old hag. No wonder he never touches you. No wonder he spends every night in my bed.”
A sharp pain lanced through my chest.
Not from her insults, but from the phantom memory of Dante’s touch.
It had been three years since he had touched me with anything other than anger.
“You’re right,” I said.
Sofia stopped mid-breath, her mouth hanging open.
“I am withering,” I admitted quietly. “So take the advice. Get him to divorce me.”
Her hand trembled with rage.
She wasn’t used to a target that didn’t fight back. She wanted a scream. She wanted a catfight.
But I had long ago promised myself I wouldn’t get angry for Dante, wouldn’t get sad for him.
And I certainly wouldn’t fight over him with another woman.
Too Late To Love: The Don’s Dying Wife Chapter 3
Sofia didn’t throw the tea at me.
She was too smart for that.
Instead, she hurled the cup at the floor directly between us. The porcelain struck the marble with a sharp report, like a bone snapping, and flew apart into jagged splinters.
Then, in a fluid motion, she threw herself onto the ground, landing on her hands and knees amidst the wreckage.
“Ah!” she screamed.
She gripped her own hand, squeezing a microscopic cut on her palm until she forced a single, dramatic drop of blood to the surface.
The heavy oak doors of the conference room burst open.
Dante Cavallaro stepped out.
A giant of a man, he wore a bespoke black suit that likely cost more than most families earned in a decade.
His dark hair was slicked back, severe and sharp, revealing a face hewn from granite.
His pupils were black, like chips of obsidian that absorbed all light and reflected nothing.
He took in the scene in a heartbeat. The broken cup. Me, seated on the sofa, a study in stillness. And Sofia, arranged in a tableau of manufactured distress upon the floor.
“Dante!” she wailed.
Dante did not so much as spare me a glance.
He crossed the room in two long strides, rushing to Sofia. This man, who they called the Reaper, now moved with extraordinary tenderness.
“Let me see,” he murmured.
He took her hand. It was a scratch. A papercut. But he treated it like a bullet wound.
“Who did this?” he growled.
He looked at Enzo.
Enzo opened his mouth, his face draining of color.
“I did it,” I said coldly.
Dante turned his head slowly to look at me. He did not erupt. Instead, he fixed me with the cool, appraising gaze one might grant a piece of filth stuck to the sole of a shoe.
There was no fire in it, only a heavy, suffocating disgust.
“You threw a cup at her?” he asked. His voice was so low it was nearly a vibration in the air.
“Sure,” I said.
Why defend myself? I didn’t care.
Sofia buried her face in Dante’s chest. “She called me a whore, Dante! She said I was trash!”
Dante stood up, pulling Sofia with him.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, protective and possessive.
“Don’t cry, baby.” He kissed away her tears.
I thought, maybe she really was different to Dante. Three months and he hadn’t replaced her—his longest-kept mistress.
I lowered my eyes, not watching their intimacy.
“I came here for my allowance, Dante,” I said.
He laughed.
“Of course,” he said. “Greed. You smell money like a shark smells blood.”
Gold digger. That’s what he meant to say.
“I need fifty thousand,” I said.
Fifty thousand dollars. That would buy enough morphine to carry me to the end, to let me drift gently into nothingness.
Dante smirked.
“Fifty thousand?” he repeated. “For what? A new coat to hide those bones?”
“Expenses,” I said.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a checkbook. He scribbled something on a check. Then he ripped it out.
But he didn’t hand it to me. He held it out to Sofia instead.
“Here, cara,” he said to her. “Go buy yourself something nice to make up for this distress.”
It was a check for two hundred thousand dollars.
Sofia took the money, her tears instantly drying. She looked at me and smirked.
Dante turned back to me.
“You want money, Elena?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Then apologize to her,” he said, pointing at his mistress. “Lower your high-born head and say you’re sorry. Then maybe I’ll give you enough for a cab ride home.”
I looked at him.
I looked at the man I had saved.
The man for whom I had destroyed my own soul to protect.
He was selling my dignity for cash. And he was enjoying it.
A current of pain, sharp and electric, shot through my body. I didn’t have time for pride. But I still had limits.
I looked Dante in the eye.
“Then so be it, Dante,” I said.
I didn’t apologize. I turned around.
“Wait!” he barked.
I didn’t stop.
I could feel his gaze upon my back, a palpable, burning weight between my shoulder blades.
I was suddenly curious.
If someday Dante found out that this money could have let me live longer, suffer less pain—
What would he feel then?