From Discarded Wife To The Don's Successor

I was tightening my husband’s tie for the photographers at the gala when my phone buzzed against my thigh.

A single notification stopped my heart dead.

Julius had just wired five million dollars—capital I had secretly stolen from my father to build his company—to an account named 'K. Drake'.

When I confronted him later that night, he didn't apologize. Instead, he lured me to an empty warehouse and detonated a rigged gas line.

I woke up in a hospital bed, my body broken and my mind racing.

Julius stood over me, checking his watch, looking terrifyingly calm.

"The baby is gone," he said dismissively, referring to the pregnancy I hadn't even told him about yet. "But Kenzie needs a bone marrow transplant. You're a match."

He was holding our daughter, Ava, hostage. He told me if I didn't give his mistress my marrow, I’d never see my child again.

He looked at me with total contempt. To him, I was just a boring, civilian housewife. A prop he had used and was now ready to discard.

He had no idea who I really was.

He didn't know that the "bank loans" I secured for him were actually laundered syndicate money.

He didn't know that the father I "didn't talk to" was Horacio Horton, the most feared Don on the East Coast.

I let them take the marrow. I let them believe they had broken me.

Then, as soon as Julius left the room, I reached for the phone and dialed a number I hadn't used in ten years.

"Papa," I whispered into the receiver. "Send the army."

The civilian Florence died in that bed.

The Mob Princess had just returned to take her throne.

Chapter 1

Florence Horton POV

I tightened the knot of my husband’s silk tie for the photographers, forcing a smile as the flashbulbs flared like lightning storms.

Then, my phone vibrated against my thigh. A single notification.

It stopped my heart dead in my chest: a five-million-dollar wire transfer from our corporate reserve to an account named 'K. Drake'.

I looked up. Across the ballroom, Julius was smiling at his secretary. It wasn't a professional smile. It was a possessive one.

In that second, the air left my lungs. He wasn't just sleeping with her. He was financing my replacement with the very capital I had stolen from my father to build him.

"Smile, Florence," Julius whispered, his hand gripping my waist tight enough to leave a mark. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I have," I said, my voice trembling—not with fear, but with the violent, sudden death of my own naivety. "I'm looking right at him."

He laughed, a charming, hollow sound that the press ate up. He had no idea.

He didn't know that the woman standing next to him, the boring civilian wife he treated like a prop, was the daughter of Horacio Horton. He didn't know that the money he just stole wasn't bank loans, but laundered syndicate capital.

He