Breaking The Mafia Lord's Golden Cage

I stood next to the most dangerous man in Chicago, smiling for the cameras while my phone vibrated against my leg. I was the perfect mafia wife-a well-dressed pet in a gilded cage.

But the message on my screen shattered everything. It was a photo of my husband, Dante, with his assistant, Jade. She wasn't just straddling him; she was wearing the shark tooth bracelet-a sacred war trophy Dante swore was locked in our safe.

He lied to my face when I asked about it. Then came the video.

I watched as he told her I was "barren" and a "failing appliance" he planned to shelf once she gave him a son. After two years of trying for a baby, he was mocking my pain to his mistress.

He thought I would just cry. He thought a black Amex card and a trip to Paris would buy my silence. He believed I was too weak to survive without his protection.

He was wrong.

I didn't just leave. I took his grandmother's wedding ring to a jeweler and made him melt it down with a blowtorch until it was nothing but an ugly lump of gold.

Then, I sent his darkest secrets to the FBI.

It was time for Elena Paletti to die.

Chapter 1

Elena POV

I smiled for the cameras, my hand resting lightly on the arm of the most dangerous man in Chicago, just as my phone vibrated against my thigh-digital proof that I was nothing more than a well-dressed pet.

The flashbulbs were blinding, a stroboscopic assault that synchronized perfectly with the throbbing headache behind my eyes.

"Beautiful, Mrs. Paletti! Look this way!"

I turned my head. I tilted my chin. I offered the porcelain smile that had been conditioned into me since I was old enough to understand the price of being a mafia wife.

Beside me, Dante Paletti, the Don of the Chicago Outfit, tightened his grip on my waist.

To the world, it was a gesture of possession and protection. To me, it felt like the iron bars of a cage snapping shut.

"You look stunning, Elena," Dante whispered against my ear, his breath heavy with expensive scotch and mint. "The perfect accessory for tonight."

Accessory. Not partner. Not wife. Accessory.

We moved through the charity gala's ballroom like royalty. Men feared him. Women wanted him. And I was the gleaming hood ornament on his life, signaling to the public that his domestic affairs were as tightly controlled as his criminal empire.

But my phone continued to burn against my leg.

I waited until Dante was distracted by a councilman who looked as though he were about to wet himself. Seizing the moment, I slipped into the ladies' room, the heavy silk of my gown rustling like a whisper of warning.

I locked the stall door and pulled out my phone.

It was an unknown number. Just a single image.

My breath hitched, calcifying into a sharp pain in my chest.

It was Dante. He was lounging on a leather sofa I didn't recognize, his shirt unbuttoned. And straddling him, staring directly into the lens with a smirk that could cut glass, was Jade Santoro.

I knew Jade. She was his "executive assistant." The one he spent late nights with at the warehouse, allegedly "going over the books."

But it wasn't the intimacy that made my stomach churn. It was the object resting on her wrist.

A shark tooth bracelet.

It wasn't jewelry. It was a war trophy.

Dante had torn that tooth from a rival in Miami three years ago, a violent night he had returned from with blood caked on his knuckles. He had told me it was a symbol of our family's survival. He kept it locked in his private safe.

Now, it was dangling from his mistress's wrist.

She was wearing our survival like a cheap trinket.

I stared at the photo until the pixels blurred. The disrespect was so loud it was deafening. In our world, affairs happened. We looked the other way. That was the deal. But to give her a trophy? To let her document it?

That was a violation of the Omertà of marriage. It was a public declaration that I didn't matter.

I composed myself. I went back out. I finished the night. I let Dante touch me. I let him parade me around. I felt like a hollowed-out doll.

Later, in the oppressive silence of our penthouse, Dante loosened his tie. He looked at me with that heavy-lidded gaze that used to make my knees weak.

"You were quiet tonight," he said, pouring himself a drink. "But you looked good. That's what matters."

He didn't ask how I was. He didn't ask about the art gallery I had been trying to open for months-the one he kept telling me to delay.

"Dante," I said, my voice steady despite the trembling in my hands. "Where is the Miami souvenir? The shark tooth."

He paused, the glass halfway to his mouth. His eyes narrowed, just a fraction. "In the safe. Why?"

"Just checking," I said.

He lied. He lied so easily.

It wasn't the lie that hurt; it was the lack of effort. He didn't even care enough to construct a convincing one.

Three days later, the video arrived.

I was standing in the kitchen, staring at a blank canvas I hadn't touched in weeks, when the message pinged.

It was Jade again. This time, she spoke.

The camera work was shaky. Dante was visible in the background, on the phone, his back turned to her. Jade whispered to the camera, her hand rubbing her stomach.

"He says once the new territory is secure, he's going to put her on the shelf for good. She's barren anyway. I'm carrying the bloodline now."

The phone slipped from my fingers and clattered onto the marble counter.

Barren.

We had been trying for two years. Every negative test had been a knife twisting in my heart. Dante had told me it was fine, that we had time.

But behind my back, he was discussing my failure with her. He was replacing me.

I wasn't his moral compass. I wasn't his sanctuary. I was a failing appliance.

I snatched up the phone and dialed Sofia, my roommate from college, the only person in my life who wasn't tethered to the mob.

"Elena?" she answered, her voice tight. "What's wrong? You sound... you sound like you're dying."

"I think I am," I whispered, looking down at the massive diamond on my finger. It felt heavy. Like a shackle.

"But I'm not going to die here, Sofia. I need to leave. And I need to do it so cleanly that he won't find a single fingerprint."

I looked at the wedding band on my left hand. I didn't just want to take it off. I wanted to destroy what it represented.

I walked to the bedroom, opened the safe, and took out my passport.

It was time for Elena Paletti to die, so that I could finally breathe.