I Built Your Empire, Now It Burns

I realized my husband did not love me the moment he stepped over my broken heart to answer a text from his mistress.

Caleb was the "Architect," a feared Capo in New York, but he forgot that I was the one who funded his rise from the gutter with my inheritance.

He brought his assistant, Kimberly, into our private penthouse. She wore my silk robe, mocked my past trauma, and snapped my dead mother’s rosary right in front of my eyes.

When I lashed out in grief, Caleb didn't defend me.

He pinned me against the wall, comforting her while calling me "unstable" and "violent."

He gaslighted me, claiming I would be eaten alive without his protection. He thought I was just a fragile princess who would crumble without him.

He truly believed he was the king, forgetting that I was the one who built the castle.

I didn't cry. I simply wiped the blood from my arm and walked out the door.

He didn't know that I owned thirty percent of his laundering front and the land beneath his precious casino.

I picked up the phone and dialed the number of his deadliest rival, the Irish mob.

"The bank is closed, Caleb. I’m selling my shares to the enemy."

Chapter 1

Azalea Vitiello POV

I realized my husband did not love me the moment he figuratively stepped over my broken heart to answer a text from his mistress, but I knew our marriage was truly dead when he told me I was too emotional to understand the business I had funded.

Caleb Garner sat behind the mahogany desk that cost more than most people earned in a year. He was typing with lethal precision on his encrypted laptop.

He did not look up when I walked in.

He did not look up when I placed my wedding ring on the dark wood.

The diamond made a sharp click against the surface, a sound that echoed in the vast, cold silence of the penthouse.

"I am busy, Azalea," he said. His voice was a low rumble, the kind that usually made my knees weak. Now, it just made my stomach turn.

"We need to talk," I said.

He finally stopped typing. He looked at me with those ice-blue eyes that had terrified half the criminal underworld of New York. He was the Architect. The Capo who had transmuted street violence into corporate strategy. He was the man who had once beaten a corrupt city official into a coma because the man dared to touch my arm without permission.

"Not now," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "I have the laundering reports for the Nexus opening. If we do not wash this cash by midnight, the Commission will have my head."

I watched him. He was beautiful in a terrifying way. Sharp jaw, broad shoulders strained against a custom suit, a lethal grace that screamed predator. But I was not his prey. I was supposed to be his Queen.

"Your phone