He Faked Death, I Married The Don

I was arranging white lilies on the cold marble of my husband's grave when I saw a ghost.

Walking through the cemetery gates was a man who looked exactly like my dead husband, Dante.

Logic said it was his twin brother, Matteo. But a wife knows the slope of a man's shoulders. She knows the arrogant tilt of his chin.

My husband hadn't been blown up in a car bomb three years ago.

He had faked his death to steal his brother's rank, his fortune, and his mistress.

For three years, I had forced our son, Leo, to kiss a photograph goodnight. We lived in a damp, peeling apartment, surviving on the "charity" of the Family.

Meanwhile, Dante was living in a mansion, driving cars that cost more than my life, playing house with another woman.

When he came to our cramped apartment to drop off the monthly "pension" money, pretending to be Uncle Matteo, he didn't look at me with love. He looked at his watch.

When Leo ran to hug him, shouting "Papa," Dante peeled the boy's small arms off his expensive suit like he was removing a piece of lint.

"Don't call me that," he snapped. "I am your Uncle."

My grief turned into ice. He chose another woman's comfort over his own son's hunger.

I grabbed Leo's hand and walked out the door.

"You walk away, and you get nothing!" Dante shouted after me. "You'll be on the street!"

I didn't stop. I walked straight to the black SUV idling at the curb.

The window rolled down, revealing Salvatore Vitiello. The Don. The most lethal man in the city.

"Get in, Elena," he commanded.

I opened the door and slid onto the leather seat next to the devil himself.

As we drove away, leaving my husband in the dust, I realized I had just traded a liar for a killer.

And I didn't regret it for a second.

Chapter 1

Elena POV

I was standing over the grave of the man I loved, carefully arranging white lilies on the cold marble, when I saw the ghost of my dead husband walking through the cemetery gates with his arm around another woman.

The logic in my brain fractured before my heart did.

My husband, Dante, had been blown to pieces in a car bomb three years ago. The man striding toward the exit was supposed to be his twin brother, Matteo.

Or at least, that was the lie designed to break me.

But a wife knows the slope of a man's shoulders. She knows the way he favors his left leg when it rains. She knows the specific, arrogant tilt of his chin when he thinks he owns the world.

I watched them get into a car that cost more than the apartment the Family allowed me to live in.

My grief, which had been my constant companion, my shadow, my very skin for three years, suddenly felt like a costume I had been forced to wear