The Runaway Wife: Never Forgiving You

My husband, the Mad Prince of the underworld, once burned down a city block just because a rival looked at me wrong.

Now, he forces me to kneel in the freezing New York snow, clad only in thin silk.

In his hand, he holds a tablet controlling my comatose brother's life support, threatening to kill him unless I confess to bullying his new mistress.

To save my brother, I swallow my pride and confess to a crime I didn't commit.

But the stress is too much.

I miscarry our child right there, staining the pristine white snow crimson.

Dante doesn't even blink.

He steps over my bleeding body to comfort his crying mistress, leaving me to scream for our lost baby alone.

He thinks he taught me a lesson.

He forces me to apologize to the woman who mocked me, even as my stitches tear.

He doesn't know that while he was guarding the door to keep doctors out, my brother actually died.

He doesn't know I buried the only family I had left in a pauper's grave while he slept with the woman who framed me.

On our tenth anniversary, he fills the house with lilies, expecting reconciliation.

Instead, I leave the signed divorce papers on the bed, take a handful of grave soil, and vanish into the night.

By the time he realizes the truth, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

Chapter 1

My husband-the man who had once burned down an entire city block simply because a rival looked at me wrong-was now the one forcing me to my knees in the freezing snow, clad in nothing but my silk nightgown.

The New York winter bit into my skin like a thousand tiny needles.

My knees were numb, buried in the white drift of the Vitiello estate courtyard, but I did not shiver.

I dared not shiver.

Dante Vitiello stood above me.

He was the Don of the Vitiello Crime Family, known to the underworld as the Mad Prince for a reason.

He wore a wool coat that cost more than the house I grew up in, looking every inch the reaper the world feared.

He held a tablet in his gloved hand.

The screen glowed, casting a ghostly blue light on his sharp, cruel jawline.

On the screen was a live feed of a hospital room.

My brother, Luca, lay there, the ventilator's rhythmic hiss breathing for him.

A soldier's hand hovered over the power cord of Luca's life support.

"Tell me the truth, Elena," Dante said.

His voice was a low rumble, devoid of the warmth that used to make my blood sing.

"Did you threaten Sofia?"

I looked up at him.

Ten years ago, I had saved his life in an alleyway, fighting just like the rats I used to run with.

He had taken me in.

He had molded me.

He had crowned me his Queen.

Now, he looked at me like I was something he had stepped in.

"I did not touch her," I whispered, my teeth chattering against my will.

Dante tapped the screen.

The soldier on the video feed gripped the plug.

"I will not ask again," Dante said.

He checked his watch.

"Luca has about three minutes of residual oxygen if that plug is pulled."

"Please, Dante," I begged, my pride shattering.

I tried to reach for his leg, but he recoiled as if I were a disease.

"Don't touch me," he spat.

"Confess."

I thought about Sofia.

The woman he brought into our home.

The woman who mocked my street origins at the auction last week.

The woman who claimed I pushed her, when she had tripped over her own vanity.

But the truth did not matter to Dante anymore.

Only she mattered.

And Luca was going to die because of my pride.

"I did it," I lied, the words tasting like ash and bile.

"I bullied her. I threatened her. I wanted her gone."

Dante signaled the camera.

The soldier stepped away from the plug.

Dante looked down at me with pure disgust.

"You are a disappointment, Elena," he said.

And then, reality fractured.

A sharp, jagged cramp ripped through my lower abdomen.

It was a pain unlike anything I had ever felt.

I gasped, clutching my stomach.

A sudden, sickening warmth flooded between my legs, staining the pristine snow a horrifying crimson.

"Dante," I choked out.

He glanced at the blood.

His expression did not change.

He turned his back to me.

"Get her out of my sight," he ordered his guards.

"Lock her in the Penance Room."

"Dante, please, the baby!" I screamed, reaching for him.

He paused.

He looked over his shoulder, his eyes dead.

"Whatever is happening, you brought it on yourself."

He walked away toward the warmth of the house where his mistress waited.

The guards dragged me up.

I screamed his name until my throat bled, but the Mad Prince did not look back.