The Billionaire's Regret, The Heiress's Revenge

I knew my husband, Alessandro De Luca, was the Don of the most powerful Famiglia on the East Coast. What I didn't know was that our five-year marriage was built on another woman's grave.

On our anniversary, I found his hidden safe. The code wasn't our wedding date or our birthdays. It was August 14th—the day his first love, Isabella, lost her family.

Inside was a shrine to her: photos, dried flowers, and a love letter promising her a "castle in the clouds." There was nothing of me, not a single trace of the five years I'd given him. When he found me, he crushed her locket in his fist and threw it all into the fireplace. "Are you done now?" he asked, as if my heartbreak was a tantrum.

He offered a trip to Sicily to "fix" this, then sneered that I had nothing without his name or money. But it was worse than that. He brought Isabella back, gave her my position at the charity I built, and paraded her at our annual gala, publicly claiming her as his own.

He humiliated me in front of our entire world, siding with her after she staged a scene to make me look jealous and unhinged. He roared at me, "Caterina, what the hell is your problem?" while he comforted her.

So I showed him. I walked over, poured a glass of champagne over his head in front of everyone, and said, "That is my problem."

Then I walked out of the ballroom, out of his life, and sent him the separation papers. This wasn't a fight for his love anymore. It was war.

Chapter 1

Caterina "Cat" POV:

I knew my husband, Alessandro De Luca, was a killer, a king, the Don of the most powerful Famiglia on the East Coast.

What I didn't know, until our fifth wedding anniversary, was that our entire marriage was a monument built over another woman's grave.

His study was the one room in our sprawling estate that felt entirely his. Dark wood, the scent of old leather and his cologne, a silence so heavy it felt like a presence.

I was never supposed to be in here.

But tonight, the silence was a taunt. He was late, as usual. Our anniversary dinner, the one I'd spent all day preparing, sat cold and untouched in the dining room.

My fingers traced the spine of a leather-bound book on the shelf. It didn't move. None of them did.

But a cold knot was tightening in my stomach, a whisper of intuition I'd spent five long years ignoring.

I pushed harder, and a section of the bookshelf swung inward with a soft click, revealing the flat, dark face of a hidden safe.

My breath caught. Alex was a man of secrets, but they were meant to be business secrets-numbers, names, territories. This felt different. Personal.

The keypad glowed, waiting.

A wave of guilt washed over me. This was a violation, a betrayal of the vows