The Mafia Boss’s Secret Lover

"Penthouse. Tonight. 9 PM. Don't be late."

Gabriel's text made my pulse spike.

Ten years sneaking into ground-floor apartments, and suddenly the penthouse?

He's going to announce us. He has to be.

I wore the red dress he bought me last month, the one that made his eyes darken with hunger.

The private elevator rose and rose and rose.

My reflection in the golden doors showed a woman drunk on hope.

Stupid. Stupid girl.

The doors opened to heaven—or what I'd mistaken for it.

"You're here."

Dominic stood silhouetted against floor-to-ceiling windows, New Orleans glittering beneath him like conquered jewels.

He looked like a god.

My god.

"I've never been up here before," I breathed.

"No." He crossed to me in three strides. "You haven't."

His mouth crashed onto mine—possessive, brutal, perfect.

He fucked me against the window overlooking the city, my palms pressed to glass, watching the world I thought would finally be mine.

"Say you're mine," I gasped.

He didn't answer.

He never answered.

---

I lay in his bed afterward, silk sheets cool against my skin.

This bed. HIS bed. Not the ground-floor apartment where he usually kept me.

"Dominic." I traced the eagle tattoo over his heart—my design, my ink, my mark. "Why tonight? Why bring me here?"

He reached for his cigarette case, movements unhurried.

"I'm getting married."

The words were so casual, so simple.

For a moment, I didn't understand the language.

"What did you say?"

"Natalia Volkov. The wedding is in three months."

"No." I sat up. The sheet fell away. "No, you're—this is a joke. Tell me this is—"

"It's a strategic alliance. Her father controls the eastern seaboard."

"STRATEGIC?" My voice shattered. "Dominic, we've been together for ten YEARS—"

"We've fucked for ten years. Don't confuse the transaction."

Transaction.

The word gutted me.

"I love you," I whispered. "You know I love you."

"Love." He said it like a disease. "You love the idea of me. The power. The protection."

"That's not—"

"You think you're special?" He exhaled smoke into my face. "You're convenient. You were always just convenient."

I felt something inside me crack clean through.

"Get out."

"This is YOUR apartment—"

"GET. OUT." He stood, magnificent and monstrous. "Gabriel will send you the weapon commission details. You'll forge Natalia's ceremonial blade. Consider it payment for services rendered."

"You want me to make HER wedding weapons?"

"Unless you'd prefer I terminate our arrangement entirely. Your father's debts to this family aren't fully settled."

There it was. The leash. Always the leash.

"Of course." I grabbed my dress with shaking hands. "Wouldn't want to upset the great Dominic Cavallo."

"Aria—"

"That eagle on your chest?" I yanked my dress on. "I carved it into your skin when you swore you'd never let me go. Funny how permanence works."

"Don't be dramatic."

"Dramatic?" I laughed, and it came out broken. "You just told your lover of a decade to forge weapons for your bride. If I'm dramatic, you're a fucking monster."

His hand shot out, gripping my throat—not hard enough to hurt, hard enough to remind me who owned whom.

"Watch. Your. Mouth."

"Or what? You'll marry someone else? OH WAIT."

He released me with a shove.

I stumbled toward the elevator, vision blurred.

"Aria."

I didn't turn.

"We both knew this day would come."

The elevator doors opened.

"Did we, Dominic?" I stepped inside. "Because I was stupid enough to believe the lies you whispered in the dark."

"They weren't lies. They were what you needed to hear."

The doors began to close.

"I hope she destroys you," I whispered. "The way you just destroyed me."

His face disappeared behind golden metal.

---

I made it to my car before the screaming started.

Raw, animal sounds tearing from my throat.

My hands slammed the steering wheel again and again and again.

Transaction. Convenient. What you needed to hear.

I drove to my studio in the warehouse district, barely seeing the road.

Inside, surrounded by ten years of evidence—love letters I'd written and never sent, photographs I'd stolen from his office, sketches of his face I'd drawn in the 3 AM darkness—I grabbed the lighter fluid.

The first match hit the pile of letters.

Flames ate through "I love you" and "come back to me" and "I'll wait forever."

Forever lasted ten years.

I threw in the photographs. Our bodies tangled in sheets. His rare smile. My stupid, hopeful face.

Burn. Burn. BURN.

The sketches went last. I'd drawn him like a saint, like salvation.

He was neither.

My phone rang. Papa.

"Piccola, it's late—"

"I need you to erase me." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Seven days. Can you do it in seven days?"

Silence. Then: "What happened?"

"He's marrying the Volkov princess. And I just realized I've spent ten years being his whore."

"Aria—"

"SEVEN DAYS, PAPA. Make Aria Moretti disappear. New name. New papers. New life."

At 3 AM, my phone lit up.

Unknown number.

A photo: Dominic and Natalia at a restaurant, his hand on her lower back, his mouth at her ear.

She was blonde. Porcelain. Perfect.

Everything I'd never be.

The message below: This is your replacement. Know your fucking place.

I stared at the image until it burned into my retinas.

Then I texted back: Acknowledged.

And threw the phone against the wall.

Good.

Aria Moretti—the girl who loved Dominic Cavallo—died tonight.