My Mafia Husband Gave Her Couture—And Me Her Scraps Chapter 05
The cemetery had gone dead silent.
Dante’s face was a terrible, bloodless white.
I turned and walked toward the gates.
Dante took two steps after me—until Signora Moretti’s voice cut across the snow.
“Dante. The family.”
His steps stopped. He didn’t come after me. Instead he crouched to gather the flecks of ash from his cuff.
But nothing burned can be brought back.
The snow was still falling when I left the Moretti cemetery.
Dante didn’t come out after me.
Before the car door closed, I caught him in the rearview mirror, standing before the headstone, the half-charred blood pact still clenched in his hand.
Margherita stood beside him, her face colder than the snow.
At nine o’clock sharp the next morning, a copy of my divorce filing and the Blackwood family’s notice withdrawing the blood pact were delivered simultaneously to the Moretti main residence and to the East Coast Families’ Council.
Half an hour later, the Red Hook warehouse impounded three Moretti shipments.
The East River docks pulled Moretti’s transit clearance.
The dockworkers’ union struck their vessels from the offloading roster.
This wasn’t some fit of temper.
It was exactly what the blood pact had spelled out.
At ten, the Moretti consigliere arrived at the Blackwood estate—the family’s strategist, the man Dante sent to clean up his messes.
I sat in my father’s old study. Behind the oak desk hung the Blackwood port map.
I’d rarely sat there before.
After my father took ill, my mother always said the chair was too heavy to bear.
Today, I sat in it without a tremor.
The consigliere slid a new agreement across the desk. His face was whiter than the paper.
“Miss Elena, the Don’s position is that a burned pact can be redrawn. Sign this, and everything goes back to the way it was.”
I opened it.
Blackwood restores Moretti’s transit rights on the East River docks. Red Hook releases the impounded Moretti shipments. The three safe transport lines resume service on Moretti’s behalf.
And I—I withdraw the divorce filing, publicly acknowledge that last night’s conduct at the cemetery was a lapse in judgment, and pledge never again to use the marriage as leverage against the pact between our houses.
The final page added:
Should Elena Blackwood file for divorce a second time, the Blackwood family shall bear the full cost of any and all damages resulting from the rupture of the blood pact.
Each page was more absurd than the last.
“Tell Dante—not a chance.”
The consigliere’s color drained entirely.
That was the moment the study door opened.
Dante walked in, Sienna behind him. The emerald brooch was still pinned to her chest.
He didn’t look at the agreement on the desk. He didn’t look at the locked steel box beside it.
He looked only at me.
“Elena. That’s enough.”
I smiled and pushed the withdrawal notice across to him.
“This isn’t a tantrum. It’s a notification.”
The top page was the transfer agreement between Blackwood and Sullivan.
Declan Sullivan’s signature sat in the bottom right corner.
Dante’s eyes went dark.
“You went to Declan?”
“The traditions the Morettis wouldn’t honor, the Sullivans will.”
He laughed, cold and short.
“You think Declan’s some saint? He got close to you for one reason only—to bleed the Morettis.”
I lifted my eyes to his.
“At least he puts his terms on the table first.”
A quiet voice drifted in from the hallway.
“That’s a strange thing for Don Moretti to say.”
Declan walked in, his gray overcoat still carrying the chill of the outside air.
He looked at Dante, tone even.
“Three years ago, when you tore the North Shore transport line out from under the Sullivans, I don’t recall you mentioning honor either.”
Dante’s face went colder.
Declan came and stood beside me. He set a leather folder in front of me.
“The backup footage from the lake ceremony that night. We’ve recovered it.”
He paused.
“The Sullivans will take over Blackwood’s three safe lines. The East Coast Families’ Council has already received our joint filing.”
I took the folder and signed.
Sienna spoke up abruptly.
“Elena, why drag Blackwood into some quarrel with Dante?”
Her eyes reddened at the corners, her voice thin as tissue paper.
“Your father is still ill. If he knew you were letting some grudge pull the Blackwood docks into a war between our houses, how it would break his heart?”
I looked at the emerald over her heart.
“Sienna.”
“What you borrowed—give it back.”
Her face stiffened. Her hand went instinctively to cover the pin.
Dante stepped between us.
“It’s a brooch, Elena. Are you really going to make a scene over it?”
“You never used to be like this.”
I smiled. “I used to think patience bought me dignity. That it would make you see me.”
I pushed the signed transfer papers over to Rosa.
“Now I know how staggeringly wrong I was.”
Dante’s face finally shifted.
“Do you have any idea how many houses will move on Moretti the moment Blackwood pulls out?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“That’s why I pulled out today.”
Rage churned behind his eyes.
“You’ve had this planned.”
I closed my father’s ledger of the port districts.
“Dante. These are my rules. Not the Morettis’.”