His Mafia Queen, My Substitute Heart

My perfect marriage to Don Dante Moretti, the most powerful man in the New York mob, ended the moment my father died. I was twenty-four, pregnant with his heir, and I believed I was his queen.

But for two days, while I planned a funeral alone, my husband was unreachable. Then a friend sent me a photo. Dante in London, his hand tangled in the hair of the woman beside him.

It was my cousin, Valentina.

He came home with lies about a dead phone and a difficult summit. That night, I found his private journal, and my world disintegrated.

He had married me because I had "Valentina’s eyes." I was a substitute.

Our unborn child wasn't a product of love. It was a project. A girl he planned to name Elena, after Valentina, calling her a "perfect, tiny piece of the woman I can never truly possess."

I wasn't his wife. I was a stand-in. The love I felt for him didn't just die. It was murdered.

The next morning, I slid a folder across the kitchen island. "Donation forms," I said. He didn't even look before scrawling his signature on what were actually our finalized divorce papers.

His arrogance was my weapon. As he slept beside me that night, smelling of lies and my cousin, I made an appointment at a private clinic. He wanted a legacy?

I would give him nothing.

Chapter 1

Isabella POV:

My perfect marriage ended the moment my father died.

At least, that’s when the first crack appeared in the beautiful, gilded cage Don Dante Moretti had built around me. Before that, my life was a fairy tale written in blood and diamonds. I was twenty-four, the wife of the most powerful man in the New York Cosa Nostra, and I believed I was the center of his universe.

Dante was magnetic. He commanded rooms with a glance, his presence a mix of raw power and predatory grace that made men fear him and women desire him. To the world, he was the Don of the Moretti family, a ruthless leader whose empire was built on the bones of his enemies. His name was a weapon. But to me, he was the man who brought me white peonies every week, who traced the line of my jaw with a calloused thumb and whispered that I was his queen.

Our beginning was a whirlwind, a blur of stolen moments in art galleries and passionate nights in his penthouse overlooking the city that was his kingdom. He had pursued me with a relentless intensity that left me breathless. He made me feel seen, cherished, owned. I mistook his possession for love. I wrapped myself in his control and called it safety.

I loved him with a purity that bordered on foolishness. I gave him my body, my heart, and my unwavering trust.

And I was pregnant with his child, our first. The heir to the Moretti throne. I thought we had everything.

Looking back, the