Jilted By The Heir, Married The Don

Isabella POV

The Presidential Suite at The Pierre Hotel was designed to be a palace, but today, it was nothing more than a gilded cage. The air was thick with the suffocating scent of expensive French perfume and dying white roses. I sat rigid at the vanity, staring at the heavy diamond necklace resting against my collarbones. It wasn't jewelry; it was a collar.

The heavy mahogany door clicked open. Caterina, my loyal assistant, practically stumbled into the room. All the color had drained from her face.

"Signorina," she whispered, her hands trembling violently as she held out a folded, ink-smelling tabloid.

I took it. The front page featured a grainy, black-and-white photograph taken inside a smoke-filled Parisian speakeasy. There, amidst the decadent haze of the Prohibition era, was my fiancé, Marco Moretti. He was laughing, his arm wrapped tightly around the waist of a half-dressed chorus girl.

The headline screamed in bold, jagged letters: *MORETTI HEIR TRADES CROWN FOR CHORUS GIRL!*

Beneath it, a quote from Marco himself: *"To Hell with the chains. I choose life."*

A cold numbness washed over me. Marco had run. The marriage that was supposed to pay off my father's insurmountable debts and secure the Rossi family's survival under the Moretti umbrella was dead. I was no longer a bride. I was collateral that had just lost all its value.

Before I could process the sheer magnitude of the humiliation, the suite door slammed open again. My father, Riccardo Rossi, burst in. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his eyes were wild with the raw, animalistic terror of a man who knew he was about to be slaughtered.

"Where is he?!" Riccardo roared, his gaze darting around the empty suite as if Marco might be hiding behind the silk drapes. He lunged at me, his clammy fingers digging painfully into my bare arm. "Without this wedding, we are dead, Isabella! The rival families will wipe us out by midnight! You will go down there and beg Don Dante for mercy. You will offer him anything!"

The sheer cowardice radiating from him turned my blood to ice. I yanked my arm out of his grip. "Don't touch me."

He blinked, stunned by the venom in my voice. In that single moment, the last fragile illusion of my father shattered. He didn't care about my ruined dignity; he only cared about his own neck. The seed of *Vendetta* took root in my chest.

"Panicking won't save you, Riccardo," a sharp, clipped voice interrupted.

Sharon, the Moretti family's Advisor and notorious 'Fixer', stepped into the room. Her tailored suit was immaculate, her expression devoid of any human empathy. She looked at me not as a person, but as a mess to be cleaned up.

"The Moretti honor cannot be compromised," Sharon stated coldly. "We will release a statement to the press. We will claim that at the final hour, the Rossi bride was found impure—unsuitable for the future Don. We canceled the wedding. It preserves our strength."