My Mafia Husband Only Fucks Virgins. So I Married The Don. Chapter 08
The Match
I don’t scream.
I don’t cry.
I don’t even blink.
I stand there in the driveway with the wind in my hair and let the sentence settle into me like a bullet finding its mark.
It didn’t take the rest of you with it.
I turn around. Walk back into the house. Close the door.
Then I go to Dante.
—
The evidence folder is already waiting for me in his study.
Marco has been busy. So has my private investigator. So has every asset Dante quietly put behind me the night he claimed me.
Wire fraud. Money laundering. Bribery. Off-book contracts with three sitting officials. Tax evasion in four jurisdictions.
And the fire.
Insurance fraud. Arson-for-hire. The name of the man Lorenzo paid. The bar he paid him in. The offshore account the money moved through. The date. The hour.
Everything.
Enough to bury Lorenzo Moretti under a federal prison for the rest of his miserable life.
Dante slides the folder across the desk. Doesn’t open it.
“This is your kill.”
His voice is even. Level.
“You call it.”
I pick up the folder. I don’t hesitate.
The next morning, before Lorenzo is even awake, the file walks itself into the offices of the FBI’s organized crime task force. No press. No leaks. Nothing loud.
Just clean.
By noon, the storm hits.
Moretti’s front companies crater. Their legitimate holdings tank forty percent in an hour. Then sixty. Then trading halts.
Every associate the Moretti family has ever done a handshake deal with disappears. Phones off. Doors locked. Cars pulling out of driveways at three in the afternoon like there’s a fire.
Because there is.
My brother calls, laughing, breathless, the same little boy who screamed at me for burning the family down two nights ago.
“Elena! Elena, oh my God — every single one of the guys who wouldn’t take my calls last week — they’re lined up at the door! They want meetings! They want in!”
I hang up on him.
—
Lorenzo comes for me.
Of course he does. Where else does a dying man go?
He shows up at the Salvatore Tower on foot, tie crooked, suit filthy, hair sticking to his forehead. Screaming my name from the sidewalk.
I watch him from the top floor window.
Six of Dante’s men take him down on the marble outside the lobby. Nothing gentle. His cheek meets the ground twice.
The reporters get there before the police do.
“That’s Elena Ricci!”
He points a shaking finger up at the glass tower, straight at the floor where I’m standing.
“That heartless little bitch! She used me! She used my family! I made her — I made her! Everything she has, everything she is—”
Flashbulbs.
“I should have never married her! I should have left her in that fire!”
The last line is on every livestream in the country before dinner.
I pull out my phone. Scroll the comments.
Lol didn’t seem to have a problem with her when he was fucking teenagers on her dime.
Translation: “I gave you an allowance, how DARE you have a spine.”
Wife-beating mafia husband gets clapped by his wife on national TV. iconic.
I lock the screen.
Lorenzo Moretti. Your run is over.
—
Three days later, the headline drops.
LORENZO MORETTI, HEAD OF THE MORETTI CRIME FAMILY, INDICTED UNDER RICO ACT — FEDERAL CUSTODY, NO BAIL.
The clip is thirty seconds long. Lorenzo in cuffs. Two feds walking him toward a black SUV. His hair in his eyes. His face gray. His mouth open, screaming something the cameras can’t pick up.
I watch it once. Then again. Then a third time.
Behind me, Dante walks up. Sets a glass of champagne in my hand. Rests his chin lightly against the top of my head.
“So?”
His voice is low. Warm at the edges.
“Was it worth it?”
I turn. Look up at him.
For the first time in eight years, my chest is quiet. No knot. No fire. No fear.
I tilt my head. Consider it.
“That’s it?”
He laughs. Chest-deep. Real.
“That’s the good part about the ones who thought they were kings, tesoro. They break so quietly at the end.”
He tips my chin up with one finger.
“The Moretti name is done. But there are five families in this city hungry to swallow what he left behind.”
His thumb brushes my lower lip.
“The game hasn’t even started, Elena.”
His eyes drop to mine. Dark. Steady. Certain.
“You ready, partner?”