After My Mafia Ex Buried Me

I'm going to die.

In the eyes of the underworld, I was a sinner. My death would be a final, cursed dishonor.

But even with the Ricci family in ruins, I was still the noble Principessa.

The Ricci pride in my blood would not allow my body to fall into the hands of a rival Family.

Humiliation. Desecration. Photographs flaunted for all to see.

I didn't much care if my body became a trophy to celebrate their victory.

But if the world knew the last of the Ricci bloodline had become a plaything for our enemies, it would be a disgrace to the entire Family.

After weighing my options, I dragged my broken body to the turf of my ex-boyfriend, the man I'd left seven years ago, now the Don of the Falcone family.

"After I die, I need you to handle my body."

He was silent for a long moment, then let out a cold laugh.

"Of course. I'll sink you in the Hudson River with a tombstone tied to your feet, engraved with the name of your filthy family."

To think I'd lived my entire life as a princess, only to end up begging my ex-boyfriend to dispose of my corpse.

It was late autumn in New York, and the night wind carried a biting chill.

Standing before the private club owned by the Falcone family, I took a deep breath of air thick with the smell of cigars and whiskey.

My emotions were a tangled mess.

These days, you could find hitmen, money launderers, and arms smugglers, but no one specializing in dignified disposals for fallen royalty.

You would think with so many families falling, someone would have already cornered that market.

A new Family might even make its fortune from it.

I was dying. ALS.

After the shock, despair, anger, and a complete breakdown, I had calmly accepted my fate.

My Family was long gone, and I had filed for divorce from Julian, the heir to the Thorne family, and my husband in name only.

I had no one left anyway.

Death would just be another empty room in my lonely existence.

But I absolutely could not let myself die in this damned, cheap apartment, only to be discovered by some landlord or neighbor and become a case file for the FBI.

Worse yet, being carried off by those bastards from a rival Family, becoming another tool for them to disgrace the Ricci name.

Once those bastards found my body, they would surely take pictures to commemorate the occasion, parading their prize through the underworld.

By then, it would be too late.

I was vain in life. I refused to let my death become a grotesque public spectacle.

I still had some shred of the Family's dignity left.

I would not become a joke to our rivals, a final stain on the Ricci name.

I especially didn't want to become the butt of their jokes at the dinner table.

Rotting, turning black, festering, swarming with maggots.