My Mafia Husband Only Fucks Virgins. So I Married The Don. Chapter 11
Blank Check
Dante’s family moves faster than I thought.
Three days after that night in my office, a Rolls-Royce with tinted windows pulls up outside The Sanctuary Fund headquarters.
Out steps Nonna Salvatore. Black couture skirt suit. Pearls the size of grapes. Silver hair pulled back so tight it looks painful. Face carved from marble.
Behind her, a butler in gloves.
They walk into my office without knocking.
“Miss Ricci.”
Her voice is old. Cold. The kind of voice that’s been giving orders since before I was born.
“The Salvatore family isn’t short on money. What we’re short on is a woman who knows her place.”
The butler steps forward. Places a leather portfolio on my desk. Flips it open.
A blank check.
The Salvatore family crest at the bottom.
“Miss Ricci is a smart girl. Name your price.”
I look down at the check.
For a full second, I laugh.
Not out loud. Just in my chest.
Six months ago, I was scrubbing my husband’s mistresses off my life with a black card. Now the most powerful bloodline on the East Coast is trying to erase me with a check.
Same script. Different price tag.
I pick up the check between two fingers.
Before I can open my mouth, the door swings open.
Dante.
He doesn’t look at the old woman. Doesn’t look at the butler. He walks straight to my desk. Takes the check out of my fingers.
And rips it in half.
Then in half again.
Then again.
He lets the pieces fall on the marble at the butler’s feet.
“Out.”
One word.
The butler’s face goes the color of raw meat. He gathers the shreds off the floor like a man picking up his own teeth. Nonna’s cane trembles once against the marble.
She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t have to.
She turns and walks out with the kind of straight back that says this isn’t over.
Dante watches the door close.
Then he turns to me.
Something’s different in his eyes.
“You tired?”
I open my mouth to answer.
He doesn’t wait.
“Come with me.”
He takes my hand and pulls me out of my chair. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t explain. Marco is already in the hallway with our coats.
By the time I’m processing what just happened, we’re on the roof of the Salvatore Tower and a private jet is waiting on the pad.
“Storm’s coming.”
Dante buckles my seatbelt himself. Slow. Careful.
“You catch your breath first.”
—
The jet lands on a private island that isn’t on any map.
Nothing but white sand, black rock, and one house tucked into the cliffs. Staff so quiet you forget they’re there. No press. No phones. No family.
Just us.
And Dante — the Don of the East Coast — becomes someone I’ve never seen.
He walks me barefoot down the shoreline. Rolls his sleeves up. Points at fish he can’t name. He tries to grill snapper on the beach the second night and burns it black on both sides. Throws the whole thing into the ocean. Starts over. Curses under his breath in Italian when the second one burns too.
When I nap in the afternoons, he sits by the window in a linen shirt and works through a stack of files. Every time I open my eyes, his are already on me. Just watching. Like he needs to keep checking I’m real.
For the first time in eight years, I sleep through the night.
—
The fourth evening, we sit on the sand and watch the sun bleed into the water.
Red sky. Warm wind. My hair everywhere.
I feel him move beside me.
He stands up. Straightens his shirt. His hands are shaking.
Dante Salvatore’s hands are shaking.
He drops to one knee in the sand.
I stop breathing.
He pulls a velvet box from his pocket. Opens it. A single diamond. Clean. Simple. Sharp enough to cut glass.
“I’m not the guy who’s good with words.”
His voice is low. Rough at the edges.
“But I want the rest of my life to have you in it.”
Tears hit my eyes before I can stop them.
Eight years ago, an eighteen-year-old girl in a black dress signed her life over to a man at her father’s bedside because she was drowning and thought he was a rope.
Tonight, the King of the East Coast is on one knee in the sand asking to walk beside me.
I have to know.
I look him in the eyes.
“Dante.”
My voice doesn’t shake.
“Do you love me — or do you love who I am now?”
The girl who had nothing and would’ve clung to anything. Or the woman who walked into a Don’s world and made him her equal.
He smiles.
No hesitation. No calculation. Just something clean and hot behind his eyes.
“I love the woman who never bowed to me. Who never bowed to Lorenzo. Who won’t bow to anyone in this world.”
My tears come. Ugly and fast.
Not because I’m moved.
Because for the first time, someone sees every sharp, ambitious, ruthless piece of me — and doesn’t ask me to be smaller.
I nod.
He slides the diamond onto my finger. Cold metal. A perfect fit.
He stands and pulls me into his chest and kisses the top of my head like he’s been waiting his whole life to do it.
Then his phone rings on the sand.
Marco.
Dante picks up. Listens to one sentence. Hangs up.
The temperature in his eyes drops twenty degrees.
“Vacation’s over.”
He looks down at me.
“They just landed on the island.”