Jilted Mistress? I Am The Mafia Queen

I handed the man I loved a positive pregnancy test, expecting the silver engagement ring I had spent years saving up for.

Instead, Ryan shoved a marriage certificate inscribed with another woman's name in my face.

He told me he needed her mafia family's backing to become a Capo, and our unborn child was a liability.

Before I could even process the betrayal, his hand clamped around my throat.

He slammed me against the fridge and forced a pill down my throat.

As I collapsed in a pool of my own blood, screaming in agony, he pulled out his phone.

He calmly recorded my battered, bleeding body to prove his loyalty to his new wife, Victoria.

Later that night, they dragged me into an exclusive underworld club.

Victoria and her clique poured scalding coffee on me, kicked my ribs, and played the audio of what he did to me for everyone to laugh at.

Ryan watched me bleed with eyes entirely devoid of remorse.

I lay on the cold marble floor, completely broken.

The boy who had protected me from the streets since we were kids had become a monster, trading my life and our child for a taste of real power.

Just as they raised their phones to broadcast my final humiliation to the underworld, the heavy double doors swung open.

Don Victor Vance, the city's most terrifying syndicate boss, parted the sea of abusers.

He fell to his knees, weeping as he pulled my bleeding body into his arms.

I managed a weak smile.

"Dad, you came."

Chapter 1

Lily POV

When I handed the man I loved a positive pregnancy test, expecting a diamond ring in return, he shoved a marriage certificate inscribed with another woman's name in my face.

"Take this," he said, his voice a low rasp devoid of any familiar warmth. "Victoria won't tolerate complications."

I stared at the crisp white paper in his hand. The name Victoria Holt was printed in stark black ink right next to Ryan Holt. Ryan was a known Soldier in the city's most ruthless syndicate. He was the man whose fists and guns had shielded me from the streets since we were kids. I had spent the last two years saving every penny from my waitress job to buy a silver band for our engagement. I had believed the child growing inside me was our beginning.

Ryan looked down at me with a mocking sneer that twisted his handsome features into something unrecognizable.

"I'm already married, Lily. I could never offer you a ring," he stated, the words clipped and without temperature.

I asked him why he would do this to us.

The kitchen counter groaned slightly as he shifted his weight against it, arms folding across his chest.

"Victoria requires a legitimate husband to secure her bloodline," he explained, the words sliding out with unnerving ease. "And I require her family's backing to secure my promotion to Capo." He spoke of Victoria's threats to sever his underworld ties completely if he refused the marriage.

He stepped closer and brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

"I still love you," he murmured, but his touch carried a desperate, almost frantic energy, as if he were pleading with himself rather than me. "But love means sacrifice, Lily."

The silence between us stretched, thick and suffocating, waiting for me to step aside for his new alliance. He told me he had sworn an oath to Victoria that his firstborn heir would be of pure Holt blood.

Tears spilled over my cheeks and dripped onto my collarbone. I looked into the eyes of the man who used to bleed for me and saw nothing but a calculating stranger.

"We're done," I whispered, the words a fragile thread in the air, yet anchored by a resolve I didn't know I possessed. I officially ended our relationship right there in the kitchen.

Ryan let out a dry laugh and agreed to the breakup.

"Your bravado is cute," he sneered, "but we have a problem that needs to be resolved."

He warned me that if I did not comply, there would be consequences.

My nails dug into my palms until I felt the warm slide of my own blood. I held onto a tiny shred of hope and asked him if this was just a sick, twisted joke.

Ryan gently stroked my cheek with his thumb. It was a deceptive tenderness that I leaned into for half a second.

His hand suddenly dropped to my throat, the grip a band of steel cutting off my windpipe. He slammed my back against the refrigerator. I gasped for air, my mouth opening on instinct.

Something cold and bitter touched my tongue.

His palm sealed over my lips before I could scream.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't spit it out.

He held me there until my body betrayed me, until I had no choice but to swallow.

The release was so abrupt that I collapsed to the linoleum floor. Victoria's order, he said. To eliminate the complication.

The first cramp hit me like a knife twisting in my belly. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I crawled away from him and retreated to the cramped bathroom. My muscles gave out and I collapsed, striking the side of my head hard against the porcelain toilet bowl. I lay on the cold tiles, curling into a tight ball as the pain built and built until I thought I would split apart.

Through the open doorway, I could hear the loud, repetitive gunfire of the video game Ryan had just turned on in the living room. He was demonstrating a studied indifference to my suffering.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out with trembling, bloodstained fingers. It was a text message from Elena Vance. She was the woman confirmed by a DNA test just hours ago to be my biological mother. The message was brief but momentous: 'Your father knows. We've been looking for you for twenty-three years. Tonight, the Families will witness your return. A car will come, but you may bring anyone you wish.'

I typed back that we had broken up and I would be attending alone.

I abandoned any thought of ever introducing Ryan to my true bloodline.

I didn't know then that my DNA test results had already reached the Vance family servers-and that Don Victor Vance had been searching for me for twenty-three years.