At last it was you 2

On our seventh anniversary, my husband Dante tossed divorce papers onto the desk.

He looked at me with cold indifference, his hand resting on the swollen belly of his nineteen-year-old mistress.

"You are barren, Seraphina," he spat. "She carries my legacy. You carry nothing but ghosts."

When I tried to argue, he shoved me.

I fell hard, my back slamming against the concrete floor of the studio.

Pain tore through my abdomen, and warm blood began to pool beneath my red dress.

The tragedy wasn't just the violence; it was the truth he didn't know.

The IVF hadn't failed. I was pregnant with the son he had desperately prayed for.

And in his rage to protect a mistress carrying a stranger's baby, he had just killed his own flesh and blood.

He stepped over my bleeding body and took her to the Commission Auction to celebrate.

He thought I was broken. He thought I was finished.

But he forgot that I knew all his secrets.

I woke up in the hospital, signed the papers that froze his entire fortune, and walked straight into the gala.

I stood before the most dangerous men in New York and threw a medical file onto Dante's table.

"You killed your real son today when you pushed me," I said, my voice slicing through the silence.

"As for hers? It can't be yours, Dante."

"Because according to this, you have been sterile for seven years."

Chapter 1

Seraphina Vitiello POV

I was sliding the magazine into the grip of my grandmother's vintage pistol when the text came through from the clinic.

It told me my final round of IVF had failed.

That message was followed immediately by another-a photo from my private investigator showing my husband's hand resting possessively on the swollen belly of a nineteen-year-old girl.

If I didn't walk downstairs and end our marriage right now, the man who ruled New York with an iron fist would kill me simply to clear the path for his bastard heir.

I didn't load the gun to kill him.

Death was too easy for Dante Vitiello.

I loaded it to remind myself that before I was a wife, before I was a victim, I was a daughter of blood and ash.

I smoothed the black silk of my gown over my flat, empty stomach.

Downstairs, three hundred guests were waiting to celebrate our seventh anniversary.

They were waiting to toast the perfect union of the Vitiello crime family.

I walked out of the bedroom that had been my prison and descended the grand staircase.

Dante was waiting in his study, sequestered away from the prying eyes of the guests.

He looked up as I entered, his tuxedo sharp against his broad shoulders, the very image of the lethal predator I had fallen in love with at sixteen.

He didn't smile.

He checked his watch, a diamond-encrusted piece that cost more than most people earned in a lifetime.

"You are late, Seraphina," he said, his voice a low rumble that used to make my knees weak.

I didn't apologize.

I walked to his mahogany desk and placed a single manila envelope on the leather surface.

It wasn't the anniversary gift he was expecting.

He frowned, his dark eyes narrowing as he reached for the envelope.

"What is this?"

I watched his fingers-the same fingers that had once wiped away my tears after my first miscarriage-open the seal.

"Divorce papers," I said, my voice steady, though my heart hammered against my ribs like a bird thrashing in a cage.

Dante froze.

The air in the room grew heavy, charged with the violence he kept on a tight leash.