The Billionaire Broken Heiress

The city looked different at night.

Or maybe I was the one who'd changed.

I stood at the floor to ceiling glass window of my hotel suite, watching Manhattan shine bright below like broken glass. Somewhere out there, in one of those high towers of steel and ambition, was the man I'd spent seven years trying to forget.

The man I had to destroyed to survive.

My reflection stared back at me sleek beautiful black dress, hair shorter than it used to be, eyes harder. I barely recognized the girl I had been. Soft. Trusting. Stupid enough to believe love could save anyone.

Women need to learn not to depend on Love, i learnt the hard way.

That girl died the night my family did.

"Ms. Sinclair?" My assistant's voice sounded through the phone I'd left on the marble counter. "The car's waiting."

Elena Sinclair. My new name. My new life. A ghost wearing Chanel, secrets and lies.

I pressed my palm against the cold glass, steadying myself. Tonight was the Bennett Foundation Gala five hundred of New York's elite crammed into the Plaza, writing checks they'd never miss to causes they would never think about again.

And he would be there.

Dante Russo.

My chest tightened just thinking his name. I'd seen his face in Forbes, in the Wall Street Journal, on the covers of magazines that treated him like some kind of king. CEO. Philanthropist. Self-made billionaire.

They had no idea what he really was.

What we really were.

I turned from the window and picked up my clutch it was small and expensive, containing nothing but lipstick, a fake ID, and the kind of courage that only comes from having nothing left to lose.

"I'm on my way down," I said.

The Plaza was exactly as I remembered all old money and new secrets, chandeliers dripping crystal like frozen tears. I moved through the crowd with practiced ease, smiling at strangers, accepting champagne I wouldn't drink, playing the part I had practiced a thousand times.

Art consultant. Orphan. Nobody important.

Just another beautiful woman in a room full of rich elites.

Except I wasn't nobody.

I was Aria Moretti. Last surviving daughter of the most powerful mafia family on the East Coast. And I was hunting.

"Elena Sinclair?" A silver-haired man in a tuxedo appeared at my elbow, hand extended. "Richard Chen. I heard you're consulting for the Vanderbilt collection?"

I shook his hand, let him talk, nodded in the right places. But I wasn't listening.

I was scanning the hall.

Searching for the one face that mattered.

And then I saw him, my heart skipped a beat.

Dante stood near the bar, surrounded by men in expensive suits who laughed too loudly at things that probably weren't funny. He looked older sharper somehow, like someone had taken a blade to him and carved away everything soft. His jaw was harder. His eyes colder.

But God, he was still beautifully handsome.

Dark hair pushed back carelessly. A