The betrayed king

I was sitting in the obstetrics clinic, rubbing my four-month bump, when a livestream popped up on my phone.

It was my husband, Xander, exchanging vows with my illegitimate half-sister, Rissa.

The caption read: "The Commission never ratified your marriage. You're just the incubator."

My husband and my father had sworn they were at a critical mafia sit-down. But there they were on the screen, laughing.

I called Xander. He answered, thinking he was slick, but he forgot to mute the room.

"Two more years of acting like a saint," I heard him sneer to his men. "Fucking her is a chore. But she's worth fifty million in clean assets."

My marriage was void. My child was considered a bastard by the Mafia code.

When I confronted them later at the gala, Rissa threw herself to the ground, screaming that I attacked her.

Xander shoved me. Hard.

I hit the table, and as blood trickled down my legs, he didn't even look at me. He scooped Rissa up and stepped over my bleeding body like I was trash.

They froze my accounts. They hunted me down to a cheap motel, planning to kill me once I signed over the trust fund.

I was cornered by a mob in a dirty clinic, waiting for the final blow.

But it never came.

A hand caught the metal chair mid-air.

Killian Qiro, the most dangerous man in Chicago, stood over me.

"Who dares?" he growled, his eyes dark with lethal promise. "Who dares call a Qiro child a bastard?"

He picked me up from the dirt.

"Xander is a dead man walking," he whispered against my hair. "He just doesn't know it yet."

Chapter 1

Nessa POV

I was sitting in the oppressively sterile waiting room of the obstetrics clinic, absently rubbing my four-month bump, when a video message from an unknown number landed in my inbox.

It was a livestream of my husband and my sister exchanging vows at the altar I had paid for.

The caption read: The Commission never ratified your marriage, Principessa. You're just the incubator.

My phone slipped from my sweaty palm and clattered onto the linoleum floor.

The sound was like a gunshot in the hushed room.

A nurse looked up, startled.

"Mrs. Vane? The doctor is ready for you."

Mrs. Vane.

The name tasted like ash in my mouth.

I bent down to retrieve the phone, my fingers trembling so hard I could barely grip the sleek metal.

On the screen, the video had paused.

Xander Vane-the man who had supposedly saved me from a break-in two years ago, the man who washed my hair when I was tired-was kissing Rissa.

Rissa. My illegitimate half-sister. The woman who had always looked at my life with a hunger that unsettled me.

I stood up, my legs feeling like they were made of water.

"I have to go," I whispered to the nurse.

"But the ultrasound... your husband said he was on his way," she stammered.

"My husband is busy," I said, my voice sounding hollow, foreign to my own ears. "He has family business."

I walked out of the clinic and into the humid Chicago afternoon.

My car was waiting, but I didn't get in. I needed to walk. I needed the noise of the city to drown out the ringing in my ears.

Xander and my father, Salvo Lino, had promised to be here today.

Salvo, a high-ranking Capo in the Outfit, had sworn on my mother's grave he would never miss a milestone for his first grandchild.

"Family first, Nessa," Salvo always said.

Lies.

I looked at my phone again. The anonymous sender had sent a second file.

It was a document. A scan of a marriage license.

Groom: Xander Vane. Bride: Clarissa 'Rissa' Lino.

Date: Two years ago.

Before he married me.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. People bumped into me, grumbling, but I was frozen.

If he was already married to Rissa, then my marriage... our vows...

Void.