He Betrayed Me, Now He Begs

For seven years, I built a criminal empire for my fiancé, Dante Gallo.

Tomorrow, I was supposed to marry him.

But the night before the wedding, I received a text. The photo showed Dante wearing a wedding band. The message read: "Getting married tomorrow morning. She's safe now."

My eyes dropped to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was an exact replica of the one in the photo. The engraving "DI" didn't stand for Dante and I, but for Dante and his childhood sweetheart, Isabella.

I realized that he had betrayed me, and that I was nothing more than a shield he used to protect his true love.

Isabella sent me their sweet-looking bed photos, expecting me to break down.

They were about to find out just how dead wrong they were.

I forwarded their bed photos to Isabella's fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante.

"Your fiancée is tangled up with a man in a hotel suite," I told him. "I have a plan."

Chapter 1

Serafina's POV:

The phone in my hand felt colder than the engagement ring on my finger. It harbored an infuriating truth: my seven-year love story was a lie, and the man I was supposed to marry tomorrow already belonged to someone else.

For seven years, I had been the shadow behind Dante Gallo's throne.

He wasn't just the godfather of the Gallo family; he was more like a phantom haunting the city's underworld, a figure whose name was synonymous with both violence and absolute power.

His empire was built on blood and laundered through the legitimate front of Gallo Imports-an achievement that belonged just as much to me as it did to him.

I was the mastermind behind his legitimate success, the strategist behind his every move, and the unofficial consigliere who knew his inner workings better than he knew himself.

We were inseparable in everything but name.

Last month, he finally proposed.

The proposal was abrupt, feeling less like a romantic gesture and more like an afterthought, with the ceremony set for the Feast of the Assumption. I foolishly mistook it for a promise of our future. What a fool I had been.

That encrypted message was never meant for me.

Yet there it sat in my inbox, a digital bomb that obliterated the life I had so carefully constructed.

"Getting married tomorrow morning. She's safe now."

Attached was a photo. It showed a man's hand, unmistakably Dante's. I recognized the ring. Engraved on the inside were the letters: DI

My gaze fell to my own hand, to the engagement ring he had slipped onto my finger. It was exactly the same as the one in the photo, just a smaller size. The same platinum, the same diamonds, the same engraving.

DI

Not Dante and I.

Dante and Isabella.

Isabella Falcone. His childhood sweetheart.

The truth hit me like a bolt of lightning, knocking the wind right out of me.

He didn't propose to me out of love. He