Divorcing The Don: Rise Of The Queen

For seven years, I was the dutiful wife of the city's most ruthless Mafia Don, enduring his coldness and his family's constant disdain.

Until a text from his new protégé lit up my phone during a syndicate dinner.

She was moving her exotic pet into my dead child's locked nursery.

When I confronted him, Dante didn't care. He publicly shattered a crystal glass just because my fingers had brushed it, treating my touch like a contagion.

His mother mocked my inferior bloodline in front of the hardened Capos, threatening to destroy my mother's diner if I didn't submit to the protégé.

Even worse, I soon discovered the devastating truth.

This very protégé had tampered with my pregnancy medication three years ago, causing my agonizing miscarriage. And when faced with the undeniable evidence, Dante still chose to protect her over our dead heir.

He thought I was just a powerless, barren civilian who would swallow her grief and bow to his mafia empire forever.

He didn't know I was actually the Boss of the Haven Syndicate-the untouchable shadow board that controlled the lifelines of his entire operation.

I stared at the man who had reduced our child's memory to an inconvenience, and calmly pulled out my phone.

"Initiate the formal severing of my marriage," I ordered my men. "We are burning his whole operation to the ground."

Chapter 1

Sera POV

My phone vibrated in my lap, the screen illuminating with a text from my husband's new protégé: I am moving my pet into the nursery tomorrow. Do not make a scene.

A cold stillness settled in my limbs.

Before I could process the calculated cruelty of replacing my dead child with an animal, I blindly handed Dante his crystal tumbler at the head of the syndicate table.

My fingers brushed the rim.

Without a second of hesitation, Dante hurled the glass I had just touched straight into the roaring fireplace.

The act was not one of rage, but of cold, sterile protocol; a final, public declaration that I was a contamination. He had been this way since our wedding night-when his hands trembled as he touched my skin, and he whispered that he could not bear to taint me with the filth of his world. Somewhere along the way, his fear of contaminating me had twisted into a fear of being contaminated by me.

The splintering crash of the tumbler echoed off the high, vaulted ceiling.

The flames flared up, consuming the amber liquid and the remnants of the glass.

The vast dining hall fell so quiet that the only sound was the hiss of amber liquid vaporizing in the hearth's heat.

Twenty of the city's most hardened Capos ceased their dining.

They lowered their silver forks and stared at the dark mahogany grain of the table.

Dante sat at the head of it all, a man who had painted the streets red to claim the title of Don.

He was a man who calculated the cost of a human life with the same casual air he might use to consult his watch, fashioned from equal parts violence and cold stone.

His gaze remained fixed on the fire. I heard the dull grind of his molars, and a vein pulsed along the hard line of his neck.

He pulled a pristine white handkerchief from his tailored suit pocket and wiped the fingers I had briefly brushed against.

He wiped them as if my touch was a contagion.

It was his protocol.

A dark, paranoid cleanliness that dictated he could not consume anything that was not exclusively his, anything he deemed tainted by hands outside his control.

But I was his wife of seven years.

I swallowed the lump of ash that had formed in my throat.

I manufactured a calm smile and addressed the unnerved men around us.

"The Don has strict security protocols regarding his glassware," I said, my voice steady despite the physical ache in my chest.

"Please, continue your meal."

Dante did not look at me.

He simply tossed the soiled handkerchief onto his empty porcelain plate.

My mother, Rosa, pushed her chair back.

The legs of the chair scraped against the marble floor with a sound like a muffled shriek.

She stood up, her hands trembling as she clutched her worn napkin.

"It is my fault, Don Dante," she whispered, her voice cracking under the heavy weight of the room.

"My daughter comes from an inferior bloodline. She forgets her place. She is unworthy of serving you."

I looked at my mother.

I saw the gray strands in her hair, the permanent stoop in her shoulders from years of bowing to this ruthless family.

A wave of nausea washed over me.

Dante finally shifted his gaze.

He looked at my mother with the kind of blank detachment a person reserves for a stain on the floor.

"Do not be hysterical, Rosa," he said, his voice a low, smooth baritone that offered zero comfort.

"It is a minor infraction," a woman seated to his right declared.

Carmela.

The matriarch of the family.

She waved her hand dismissively, the diamonds on her fingers catching the chandelier light.

"Sit down, Rosa," Carmela ordered. "You are ruining the dinner with your whining."

My mother bowed her head and whispered apology after apology as she sank back into her seat.

I stared at my empty hands in my lap.

I was done.

The ride home in the armored motorcar was a descent into a pressurized silence.

The tinted windows blocked out the city lights, leaving us in a heavy, leather-scented darkness.

My phone lit up in my purse.

It was a text from my mother.

Are you suffering, Sera? I do not want you to bow your head to these people anymore.

A single tear burned a hot track down my cheek.

I locked the screen and shoved the phone away.

Dante sat beside me, staring at his tablet, reviewing illicit shipping manifests.

"I am sorry about the dinner," he said without looking up.

His tone was as level as an automated announcement reporting a delayed flight.

"But you and your mother need to stop blowing family business out of proportion. You know my rules."

I turned my head to look at his impenetrable profile.

"I want to sever our marriage vows, Dante."

His finger paused on the screen for a fraction of a second.

Then he swiped to the next page.

"I have a meeting with my Underboss in twenty minutes," he said, his tone flat. "Stop being dramatic."

The motorcar slowed, passing through the wrought-iron gates of our fortified estate.

The moment the doors opened, Dante stepped out and walked straight into the house.

I followed him up the grand staircase.

He did not go to his study.

He walked down the west corridor and stopped in front of the sealed nursery.

The room that had been locked for three years.

The room where my baby was supposed to sleep.

The door was wide open.

Dante stood inside, holding his phone up, taking a picture of an expensive velvet pet bed resting right where the crib used to be.

"Are you actually going through with her message?" I asked, stepping into the doorway. The pretense of ignorance I had maintained all evening fell away.

Dante lowered his phone and typed a message.

"Sending a photo to Lucia," he replied smoothly. "She wanted to ensure the climate control was adequate for her pet."

My lungs stopped working.

"You are letting an Associate move an animal into our dead child's room?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper, thin and sharp as a shard of glass. The sheer audacity of the act pierced the numbness that had encased me.

Dante frowned, at last turning to me, his expression one of pure, undiluted annoyance.

"You should not be in here, Seraphina."

He said it as if I were the intruder. As if my grief was the inconvenience, and her cat was the priority. In that moment, something inside me calcified-a final, irreversible hardening of the heart.