I Left The Jester For The King

"Little Siren: I miss the way you used to touch my hand."

The wedding was about to happen, but that message lit up my fiancé's phone screen while he was in the shower.

Franco Moretti. The rising star of the Vitielo crime family. He treated me like a fragile glass doll, claiming he wanted to 'save himself' for our wedding night out of 'respect'.

The message on his phone told a different story.

I unlocked it and discovered three years of them betraying me.

Her name was Camilla. A girl I'd befriended in high school out of pity.

Then I saw the receipt.

He'd bought two identical pink diamond engagement rings. One for me. One for her.

He'd stolen my grandmother's heirloom jade bracelet and given it to his mistress.

He'd texted Camilla: I need her name to get the chair. You're my real queen.

I didn't cry. I didn't scream.

Leaving him would be too easy. I wanted to punish him.

I walked to my laptop and opened a new document. I wasn't just going to cancel the wedding. I was going to expose his scandal to the entire underworld. And our wedding was going to be the stage.

Then, I picked up the phone and dialed the number my father had forbidden me to call.

"I accept," I said into the low, deep voice on the other end.

"Giana, do you understand what you're agreeing to?" Enzo Falcone asked.

"I understand." It meant I'd marry the most feared man in the mafia world.

You want an alliance. I want a weapon.

Chapter 1

Giana

The words came out, raw and scraping against my throat. I spoke them, and felt the click of destiny's gears.

"Giana, do you understand what you're agreeing to?"

The voice on the other end was low, deep.

Lorenzo 'Enzo' Falcone.

Head of the Falcone crime family. The man my father called The Butcher. A figure of rumor and shadow throughout my entire childhood.

"I understand," I said. "You want an alliance. I want a weapon."

"I'm not a weapon you can just put away when you're done using me," Enzo replied. It wasn't a threat. It was a promise. "If I come back to New York, I'm staying. And I'm coming to collect."

"Then come get me," I said, my voice flat, hollow. "But remember, Enzo. My engagement to Franco Moretti is over."

Silence on the other end. I could almost hear the smile in his voice, the predator scenting blood in the water.

"No backing out once I'm on that plane," he warned, voice low. "I'll be in New York in a month. Be ready."

The line went dead.

I put the phone down, my hand trembling slightly.

Not from fear of Enzo. But from the sheer, irrevocable act of destroying the eight-year life I had built.

I walked to my laptop and opened an encrypted browser.

The "Mafia Gossip" forum was buzzing.

A thread titled "The Wedding of the Century" had thousands