My Cruel Husband Let Me Die So I Married His Brother Chapter 01
On my twenty-first birthday, my father set two identical velvet boxes on the desk in his study and told me to choose one.
Whichever name I picked would belong to the man I married—and the one who would take over the family business.
One box was for Griffin Romano. The other was for Dante Romano.
The only person I had ever wanted was Griffin. Choosing Dante was never an option.
I dragged it out for three years. I fought. I begged. None of it mattered.
In the end, I bribed my father’s assistant to tell me I’d picked the right box. So I married Griffin.
Not long after the wedding, he dropped the act. Over the next ten years, all he gave me was indifference.
He rarely came home. He never touched me. I could have put a gun to his head, and he still wouldn’t have bothered to look at me.
My life was a miserable half-life, but I refused to let go.
Until the day I had an asthma attack and collapsed on the floor, gasping for air. He just stood there watching me, then kicked my only inhaler out of reach.
“I switched the boxes a long time ago,” he said, his voice cold.
“You were never going to get the one you wanted. You forced me to marry you, and because of that, Ava is gone. You should have died a long time ago.”
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the study, holding one of the velvet boxes in my hand.
“Then I’ll choose Dante,” I said.
***
The study fell silent.
My father and the old men who had served him for decades all froze. Even Dante, who had been leaning in a corner disassembling a pistol, stopped what he was doing.
Everyone knew I’d spent years chasing Griffin. The old me never would have surrendered so easily.
“Daphne, isn’t Griffin the one you love?” my father asked immediately.
“Griffin isn’t here yet, so this doesn’t count. You can choose again when he arrives.”
He turned to his man, Leo.
“Go find out what’s going on. We notified Griffin hours ago. Why isn’t he here?”
My father was stalling.
But I knew Griffin had already switched the boxes.
The name I wanted wasn’t in either of them. Choosing again was pointless.
More than that, I already knew the price of forcing the issue.
Leo glanced at me before answering my father. “Griffin said he went to pick up the woman he really loves.”
“He also said he’s never loved Daphne. He only ever saw her as a sister. If she misunderstood, he asked me to apologize on his behalf.”
Last time, Griffin hadn’t gone to Ava at this point.
It seemed he remembered, too.
Good. This time, I wanted nothing to do with him either.
“No need to apologize. I choose Dante.”
I looked straight at Dante. “Let’s go get the license now. We can skip the engagement party and just set a wedding date.”
Dante’s hand went slack, and a piece of the gun clattered to the floor.
It wasn’t until we were standing outside the County Clerk’s Office that he finally seemed to snap out of it.
He turned to me, his face a cold mask.
“It’s been twenty minutes. The news should have reached Griffin by now. So, when is he showing up? If you two want to put on a show, leave me out of it.”
Last time, Dante had died for me.
The Moretti family had ruled New York for generations, and we’d made our share of enemies. Back then, Griffin was the one running things.
He never liked to get his hands dirty. Our enemies saw it as weakness, and they grew bold.
When Dante died in my arms, his last words were a plea for Griffin to protect me.
But Griffin refused to avenge him the Moretti way.
He cut me off from the family business and forbade me from seeing my father.
He didn’t love me, but he kept me a prisoner in our house, torturing me with his cold indifference.
I didn’t even know he’d fallen for someone else until I was on the brink of death.
“Too scared to get married?” I met Dante’s gaze. “Since when were you such a coward?”
Dante let out a sharp laugh.
“What have I got to be scared of? But you’d better think this through. Once you walk through my door, don’t expect it to be easy to walk back out.”
“I don’t put much value on my own life. If you go running back to Griffin behind my back and make a fool of me, I’ll shoot him first, then put a bullet in you.”
“You talk too much,” I said, walking inside ahead of him.
After we finished the paperwork, Dante announced he was going to prepare my wedding gift.
He planned to seize all the territory controlled by the West Side crews and present it to me.
My father set the wedding for one week later. On that day, he would publicly announce that my husband was the next head of the Moretti family.
I made plans to meet my friend Sophia at a bar to tell her the news. I didn’t expect to run into Griffin the moment I walked in.
His face turned to ice.
“You went to the courthouse?”