Escaping The Mafia Don's Golden Cage

I stood over the fresh dirt of my four-year-old son's grave. My husband, the Don of the Stark family, didn't hold my hand for comfort. He only adjusted his cuffs and checked that the diamond necklace he forced on me looked good for the cameras.

"Stop crying," he whispered into my hair. "You're making a scene."

Two days later, I woke up to the sound of shattering glass in the nursery.

A strange boy stood there, smiling over the broken remains of my son's favorite snow globe.

"This is Cody," my mother-in-law said coldly. "He's family. He stays."

When I demanded he leave, Eli looked at me with dead eyes.

"Material things can be replaced, Harper. The boy stays."

Suspicion led me to the library door, where I heard the impossible truth. Cody wasn't a distant cousin. He was Eli's illegitimate son.

And worse—while my son was drowning alone in the pool, Eli hadn't been at a business meeting. He had been in bed with his mistress.

I realized then that the silver bracelet he had gifted me wasn't jewelry. I pried it open and found the blinking red light of a tracker.

I was a prisoner in a cage of gold.

So, I decided to die.

I staged my suicide at the bridge, vanished into the night, and paid a shadow doctor to wipe my memories clean.

I became Avery. I was happy. I was free.

Until six months later, when a man in a black suit walked into my small-town cafe and looked at me with the eyes of a wolf.

"Harper," he growled. "Come home."

Chapter 1

Harper POV

I stood over the fresh dirt of my four-year-old son's grave, and the only thing I could feel was the suffocating weight of the diamond necklace my husband had forced around my throat this morning. He had insisted on it to ensure I looked presentable for the press.

The rain fell in sheets, soaking through my black dress and plastering my hair to my skull.

I didn't shiver. I didn't blink. The freezing water felt like nothing against the hollow, frozen wasteland inside my chest.

People say losing a child breaks your heart. They are wrong. It doesn't break it; it evaporates it.

It leaves you with a hollow cavity where an organ used to beat, echoing with the phantom sounds of a laughter you will never hear again.

A line of black SUVs rolled up the cemetery path. They moved like predators-silent, heavy, and inevitable.

The door of the lead car opened. A bodyguard stepped out first, snapping a black umbrella open with military precision. Then, Eli stepped out.

My husband. The Don of the Stark crime family.

He adjusted his cuffs, the movement sharp and practiced. His suit was impeccable, not a wrinkle in sight, tailored to fit the broad shoulders that carried the weight of a criminal empire. His face was a mask of solemn grief, but his eyes were dry. They were always dry.