My Mafia Husband Gave Her Couture—And Me Her Scraps Chapter 08
The night Dante checked Sienna into the hospital, he turned around and bought up an entire season of Paris couture at auction.
The invoice screenshot landed on my phone.
The note attached was a single line:
Restitution for Elena.
Rosa told me that season had been the one Sienna had her eye on.
She’d planned to wear it for her comeback, to stride back into the European art world and the high-society circuit.
For the first time, Dante hadn’t given it to her. He’d bought every piece and sent it to me instead.
I looked at that line of text and laughed.
Seven years, and all I’d gotten was a strip of scrap lace.
Now that I no longer wanted anything, he’d finally learned how to make amends.
Rosa asked:
“Madam, shall we return it?”
“No.”
She stared at me.
I set the phone down.
“Sell it. Every piece. Send the proceeds to a charity for drowning victims—children. Sign the donation Dante Moretti.”
Within half an hour, the story was moving through the circles.
Dante called me himself.
“Do you have to humiliate me like this?”
I answered:
“Isn’t that what you gave to me?”
He had no reply.
I could hear Sienna weeping in the hospital corridor.
“Dante, don’t worry about me. Go find Elena. I’m the one dragging you down.”
Dante’s voice dropped low.
“The doctor says the cut isn’t deep. Stop playing games with your life.”
The line went quiet.
Sienna probably hadn’t expected him, for once, not to fall into step with her.
But only for once.
A nurse came running over to say Sienna wouldn’t cooperate with the examination.
Dante’s breath drew in sharply.
I didn’t need to look at him to know he was already on his way.
Sure enough, he said:
“Elena, I’ll call you later.”
I gave a short laugh.
“Dante. Look at yourself. You still can’t manage otherwise.”
He said nothing.
“You want to make amends, and you can’t even give me one full phone call.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t explain.”
I hung up.
Then I dialed Declan.
“Sienna’s tab. It’s time to put it on the table—in front of both houses.”
On the other end, Declan paused.
“Moretti will push back.”
I looked out the window, at the lights coming on in the direction of the hospital.
“Then we put every one of Moretti’s old debts on the table alongside her. The wedding they allowed. The harm they let her do.”
Declan was silent for a few seconds.
“Elena. Then it’s no longer just about Sienna.”
“I know.”
“I want every family on the East Coast to see, clearly, how Moretti’s protection was turned into a weapon in Sienna’s hands.”
The next day, Declan’s people had every angle locked down.
The nurse who’d been assigned to Sienna spoke off the record.
The wound on Sienna’s wrist had been a shallow cut she’d made in advance herself.
The line she’d said before going into the room—
“Will it leave a scar? Don’t make it too deep.”
—had been recorded word for word.
The wind in the circles turned completely.
Sienna’s side panicked. Overnight, they sent people to Blackwood to negotiate.
The envoy slid a note across the desk.
“Miss Elena, Sienna is willing to publicly own up to her mistakes. But you need to stand down, and confirm publicly that the lake footage was a misunderstanding.”
I flipped to the last page.
The settlement figure: one million.
I looked up.
“Her life is worth one million?”
The envoy’s face darkened.
“Don’t burn every bridge.”
I smiled.
“I’ve left bridges before.”
I dropped the note into the shredder.
“And by the end, all I had left was a strip of scrap lace cut from another woman’s dress.”
After he left, Declan came in.
He set a nurse’s sworn statement in front of me.
“The wire transfers showing Sienna paid her off. All here.”
He paused.
“By the way—her gallery? Back in the day, it burned a Sullivan art-transport line, too.”
“I’ve been watching her for a while.”
I looked at him.
“Declan. Are you this invested in helping me, or in taking a bite out of Moretti?”
He gave a small smile.
“Both.”
I didn’t answer.
Declan let the smile fall. His voice went quieter.
“But I won’t use you as bait.”
It wasn’t a heavy line.
But it was cleaner than every gesture of restitution Dante had ever made.