He Replaced His Wife And Lost His Mafia Empire Chapter 08
The temperature kept dropping.
I was afraid to sleep, so I kept trying to move my fingers and toes.
But by the second half of the night, my body was slowly ceasing to obey me.
When I heard cars outside the boathouse, I thought I was hallucinating.
The next second, a bright light swept across the frozen lakeshore, and someone was shouting my name into the wind.
“Evelyn!”
It was Miles.
I tried to answer, but no sound came out.
The footsteps pounded closer. The boathouse door crashed open, and a blast of cold air rushed in—followed by a warm blanket.
Miles dropped to his knees in front of me, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold me steady.
“Look at me.”
His eyes were red.
“Don’t fall asleep. The doctor’s right outside.”
I leaned into my brother’s arms, breathing in the cedar scent of his coat, and finally let my eyes close.
When I woke again, I was in a private hospital where the Moretti family had no authority.
A nurse told me that when I was brought in, my body temperature had dropped to a dangerous level and the wounds on my feet were frozen solid. Miles had sat in the car the entire way, calling my name nonstop until the doctors forced him out of the emergency room.
My first instinct was to ask for my phone.
I was still worried about whether breakfast at the old house had been arranged, whether anyone had reminded Margaret about her medicine, whether Dominic’s meeting with the captains the next day needed to be postponed.
The habit was written into my bones.
My mother pressed a hand over mine.
“You don’t have to take care of that this time.”
I sat there in a daze for a long time.
Leaving wasn’t just walking out of a place.
It was also learning to stop shouldering the consequences for the people who hurt you.
Miles placed a phone he had borrowed from an adviser in front of me.
There were more than twenty messages on the screen from Moretti staff and the families of his men. Not one asked if I was safe.
They were all asking about the breakfast menu, room assignments, missing gifts, and who to give the year-end payments to.
I deleted them one by one without replying.
My parents had flown in from California. My mother sat by my bed, holding my hand. My father stood at the window, silent.
The doctor told them my hands and feet were badly frostbitten. I had made it in time to avoid amputation, but the nerve damage would take a long time to heal. In the cold, they would probably hurt for the rest of my life.
As soon as Miles heard that, he turned and started for the door.
I stopped him.
“Don’t start a war for me.”
He halted.
“I’m not letting the Costa family lose anyone else over Dominic.”
My brother turned back toward me, his voice like ice.
“He took your phone and your papers, stripped your protection, and locked you out in a blizzard. That isn’t a marital spat.”
I nodded.
“Have the adviser prepare divorce papers. And draft a revocation of authority statement. Send the recordings and surveillance footage to neutral witnesses.”
“I want the Moretti family to publicly acknowledge that Dominic no longer has the right to command me, detain me, or speak for me.”
When I said it, I didn’t cry.
Five years of waiting had finally ended in that freezing boathouse.