Runaway Mistress: The Mafia Boss Begs On His Knees

The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in at four degrees below zero.

Ten minutes ago, I was the woman Dante Moretti promised to burn the world for.

Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir.

Dante didn’t just lock me in. He looked at me with eyes devoid of warmth and said, "Evidence says otherwise."

He chose the lie of his arranged wife, Sofia, over my truth.

For months, I endured the price of loving the Underboss.

I watched him marry Sofia in a grand ceremony to secure a family alliance.

I let him force me onto a table to drain my blood to save her life when she was injured.

I took twenty lashes from his family’s enforcers, all while he stood by and watched, claiming it was necessary to "protect" me.

He told me to wait. He told me the marriage was a sham.

But when I finally escaped and he came chasing after me, revealing that Sofia was a fraud and he wanted me back, I didn't feel relief.

I felt nothing.

Even after he threw his body over mine to save me from a collapsing building, taking a jagged shard of timber through his chest, I couldn't forgive him.

In the hospital, his mother handed me his journal.

It was filled with entries about his undying love for me, written on the very same days he allowed me to be tortured.

"Tell him the debt is paid," I told his mother as I handed the book back.

"He saved my life. I saved his child. We are even."

I turned my back on the ICU and walked out into the rain.

Dante Moretti might have been willing to die for me, but he never knew how to live for me.

Chapter 1

The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in with the hanging carcasses of cattle.

But the mechanical click of the lock hurt less than the look in Dante Moretti's eyes just before the darkness swallowed me.

Ten minutes ago, I was the woman he'd promised to burn the world for.

Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir.

My breath formed plumes of crystallized ice in the air, the temperature hovering dangerously at four degrees below zero.

I wrapped my arms around my shivering body, the thin silk dress I had worn for the christening offering no protection against the biting cold of the Moretti family's favorite torture chamber.

This was the price of loving the Underboss of the New York outfit.

Dante Moretti wasn't just a man.

He was a force of nature, a predator in a bespoke Italian suit who ruled the city's underworld with a blood-soaked fist.

Three years ago, he had knelt on cobblestones for three days, taking the Discipline from his father's enforcers just to keep me-a fishmonger's daughter-by his side.

He had sworn that the arranged marriage to Sofia Genovese was