His Beautiful Mute Wife

I was the mute fisherman's daughter who married the King of New York, only to become his prisoner.

Dante Vitiello didn't love me; he used my silence as a weapon and let his mistress, Valeria, rule my home.

When Valeria poisoned herself to frame me, Dante didn't look for the truth.

He drained my blood to save her life, then threw me into a freezing dungeon to rot among the rats.

He planned to marry her while I shivered in the dark, telling me I was nothing but gutter trash.

With no voice to scream and no way to fight, I chose the only escape left.

I swallowed a vial of lethal pufferfish toxin, trading my life for a coma that mimicked death.

I wanted to haunt him. I wanted my cold body to be his punishment.

But when I woke up a year later, the world had changed.

I wasn't in hell. I was in a clinic, and Dante was lying on the floor with a bullet in his temple.

He had discovered the truth too late.

To wake me up, he had accepted a deadly game of Russian Roulette.

He signed our divorce papers with a steady hand, then pulled the trigger to buy my freedom.

The monster was dead.

And for the first time, the silence belonged to me.

Chapter 1

Sienna POV

The live feed on the sixty-inch monitor was grainy, yet the image was sharp enough to stop my heart.

My father was on his knees.

My mother was beside him.

They were bound with zip ties, their ankles weighed down by cinder blocks, teetering on the edge of the rusted pier where I had spent my childhood gutting mackerel.

"Look at them, Sienna."

Dante Vitiello didn't shout.

He didn't have to.

As the Capo dei Capi of the New York families, his whisper carried more weight than a gunshot.

I stood in the center of his mahogany office, my hands trembling at my sides.

I couldn't scream.

I hadn't spoken a word since I was six years old, since the day I watched a rival gang cut out my uncle’s tongue.

Dante knew this.

He used my silence like a weapon.

He walked around his desk, his Italian suit cutting a sharp silhouette against the city skyline.

He smelled of expensive bourbon and the cold, metallic tang of violence.

"You have been difficult lately," he said, stopping right in front of me. "Refusing to attend the gala. Refusing to accept Valeria's position in this house."

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

His touch was ice, yet it burned like a brand.

"Valeria is family," he continued, his voice devoid of empathy. "Her father controls the ports. She stays. You accept it. Or the feed goes dark."

He gestured to the screen.

On the monitor, a masked soldier held a pistol to my father's head.

My father, a man who smelled of salt and sweat, who paid Dante protection money every week just to breathe.

I signed frantically, my hands moving in a blur of desperation.

She humiliates me. She treats me like a servant in my own home.

Dante caught my wrists.

His grip was bruising, halting my voice before I could finish the sentence.