After Tearing Apart the Wedding Dress, I Became the Donna of Ex’s Enemy

Three years as his fiancée, reduced to nothing more than a soulless trinket.

No going out. No friends. No opinions. Every breath I took was measured against Leo's mood.

For three years I obeyed him unconditionally, trying to warm the heart of this mafia tyrant.

Then today, in the fitting room at the atelier, his adoptive sister Alice snatched my couture wedding gown right off the rack. She didn't even have the decency to do it behind my back; she walked straight into Leo's arms while I stood there watching.

Leo barely glanced at me. Just patted her head and said, “It's just a dress. Let her have it.”

Three years of patience, and that's what it came to. A joke.

I looked at the two of them, that smug, triumphant, and I thought: Marciano, did you really think I wouldn't fight back?

That gown was supposed to be mine.

I'd waited six months for it at the most exclusive private atelier in Vienna. Eighteen seamstresses had sewn every inch by hand. The hem was studded with crushed crystal and black swan feathers.

Now it was on Alice.

The Marcianos had taken Alice in two years ago, an orphan, officially Leo's sister with no blood relation. At this moment, she was holding up the skirt and spinning in the middle of the fitting room, her thin heels thudding against the silk carpet.

“Charlotte, you don't mind, do you?” Alice stopped and held up the waist to show me how narrow it was.

She had an angel's face, and those green eyes were full of gloating. “Leo told me last night that fallen noble families like yours are all dried up and broke, and you have no right to wear something this fine.

“Next week at the St. Louis graduation gala, every top school in New York will have their eyes on me. I'm going to walk in wearing the Marciano crest and let everyone know who the real queen of this city is.

“As for you, the Ashford family's survival next month depends on Leo's goodwill anyway. So don't be difficult about something like a dress. It's not worth it. Right?”

I stood by the mirror, hands locked around the spare gown I'd just taken off.

I was the last heir to the Ashford family, and fallen or not, old blood still ran in my veins. I turned and looked at the man sitting in the leather armchair.

Leo Marciano.

Don of the largest crime family in New York, my fiancé. He was wearing a hand-tailored black suit, long legs crossed, a burning cigar pinched between his fingers. Not a flicker of anything in those grey eyes.

“It's just a dress, Charlotte.” Leo's voice was flat.

He exhaled a slow curl of smoke. The acrid scent of tobacco quickly hung thick in the air. “Alice hasn't been well. She just wants one good night at her graduation. We'll charter a flight to Paris and have another one brought over in