Just A Placeholder: Dying For His Mistress

I stood on the tarmac clutching white magnolias, watching the man I loved hand his loyalty to the woman born to destroy me.

Dante Cavallaro, the Ruthless Underboss, didn't just leave me for Sofia Moretti.

He revealed that for two years, I wasn't his lover. I was a human shield.

The heavy iron bangle he forced me to wear wasn't a gift for my protection.

"It's a Malocchio anchor," he sneered as I lay paralyzed on the floor. "It drains the wearer's luck to keep Sofia healthy. You are just the filter."

My body began to rot from the inside out, my nerves dying one by one.

When I was finally on my deathbed, unable to move or speak, Dante didn't cry for me.

He cried because his tool was broken.

He forced the cursed bangle onto his own wrist, begging the universe to keep me alive so I could continue to suffer in Sofia's place.

"Please," he sobbed into my sheets. "Don't leave me alone with the bad luck."

I used my last breath to make a wish—not for him, but for my freedom.

I closed my eyes and died.

Exactly one hour later, Dante's phone rang.

It was his father.

"Sofia just collapsed," he said. "Her heart just stopped."

I was the vessel.

And now that I was gone, the poison had come home to the King.

Chapter 1

Elena POV

I stood on the tarmac, clutching a bouquet of white magnolias for the man who once promised me protection, only to watch him hand his luggage-and his loyalty-to the woman born to destroy me.

The wind on the private airstrip whipped my hair across my face, stinging my eyes, yet I didn't blink.

I couldn't.

My fingers trembled around the stems of the flowers, not from the biting cold, but from the slow, agonizing death of every nerve ending inside my body.

I had waited two years for this moment.

Two years of silence while Dante Cavallaro, the Ruthless Underboss of the Chicago Outfit, expanded the family's cocaine routes in Sicily.

He had told me to wait.

He had told me I was his sanctuary.

But as the Gulfstream jet taxied to a halt, the deafening roar of the engines drowned out the pathetic beat of my heart.

I stood beside a rusted sedan, the only transport I could afford.

Suddenly, the gravel crunched behind me.

A convoy of three black, armored SUVs tore onto the strip, cutting off my line of sight with military precision.

Doors flew open.

Men with earpieces and submachine guns fanned out, creating a perimeter that pushed me back toward the chain-link fence.

Then she stepped out.

Sofia Moretti.

The daughter of the rival Don.

She wore a white fur coat that cost more than my father's life debt.

She didn't look at the plane.

She looked at me.

Her lips curled into a smile that was sharp enough to draw blood.

"You look exposed, Elena," she said, her voice slicing through