Losing My Queen: The Don's Downfall

My husband, Dante, is the cold-blooded mafia boss of New York whose very name makes people tremble. For four whole years, I devoted myself heart and soul to being his wife.

Yet after I lost my forty-seventh underground poker game—a game they'd rigged—his first love, Talia, deliberately proposed that I sign a marriage-nullification agreement as my punishment.

Not only that. She also converted my late parents' safe house into her private art studio without asking anyone.

I stormed over in fury to confront her, but she got one step ahead of me and faked an arm injury.

Dante rushed to comfort her and shoved me aside without a thought.

I slipped on the wet paint and crashed hard into the marble console.

I lay crumpled on the floor, gasping in pain, unable to move, while he looked down at me with nothing but pure disgust in his eyes.

"It's just a few bumps and bruises. Do you really have to throw a tantrum like a lunatic?"

Then one day I found his top-secret notebook, which stated in black and white:

One more glance at her, he had written, was almost more than he could bear. But her eyes carried a hint of Talia, and that was enough.

My heart froze into ice in an instant. From beginning to end, I had been nothing but a cheap stand-in for the woman he truly longed for.

Snapping my phone's SIM card in half, I boarded a one-way flight to our mortal enemy, the Southern Syndicate.

This time, I would never look back.