Escaping The Cage: I Married His Worst Enemy

My husband, the Capo of New York, gripped my hand as we walked into the soundproofed room.

He wasn't there to save me.

He was there to watch the family doctor carve out my mind.

A stranger named Sofia claimed I had sold her to a brothel twelve years ago.

It was a lie.

But Dante looked at me with cold marble eyes, believing the woman sobbing in his arms over the wife he had vowed to protect.

"Sit, Elena," he ordered.

He strapped me into the chair. He watched as they injected liquid fire into my veins to force a confession.

He dragged me to the kennels, forcing me to feed the dogs I was terrified of, and watched as they tore into my flesh.

He even locked me in a freezer to "cool off" my jealousy.

The final straw wasn't the pain.

It was hearing him plan a Vow Renewal with Sofia, intending to parade me as her Maid of Honor to teach me humility.

I realized then that Elena Moretti had to die.

So, I set the hospital room on fire.

I left my wedding ring in the ashes and vanished into the night.

Six months later, Dante found me in Paris.

He fell to his knees, begging for forgiveness.

I looked at him with dead eyes and handed him a knife.

"Kill yourself," I said.

"That is the only way I will believe you are sorry."

Chapter 1

My husband, the Capo dei Capi of the New York mafia, gripped my hand as I walked into the soundproofed room. It was a touch I once craved, but he wasn't there to save me.

He was there to watch the family doctor carve out my mind.

According to the woman sobbing in the shadows, I had sold her to a brothel twelve years ago. A lie. It had to be.

I looked at the chair in the center of the room. Heavy oak. Restraints made of thick, worn leather.

Then I looked at Dante.

His face was a mask of cold marble, void of the warmth that had greeted me at the altar only two years ago. The man who looked back at me now was a stranger wearing my husband’s skin.

"Sit, Elena," he said.

His voice was low, vibrating with the same lethal authority that commanded legions of soldiers and made rival Dons in Chicago and Las Vegas tremble. It wasn't a request. It was a verdict.

"Dante, please," I whispered, my legs turning to water beneath me. "She is lying. I don't know her. My sister died in the fire. We saw the body."

"That body was a decoy," the woman named Sofia choked out. She was curled in the armchair, wrapped in a blanket—my blanket, I realized with a sick jolt. She looked up, her eyes red and swollen. "You knew, Elena. You watched them drag me away. You wanted to be the only one. You wanted the Moretti fortune for yourself."

She