The Discarded Wife's Revenge On The Don

I stood outside the mahogany doors, balancing a tray of espresso, when I heard my husband promise his sister that my reign as the Queen of Chicago was over.

I thought being the Don's wife meant safety. I was wrong.

In a warehouse reeking of rust, faced with an ultimatum from our enemies to choose who lives, Brennan made his choice.

"Alyssa is strong," he justified, shielding his mistress, Debbi, who was faking a pregnancy. "She knows the life."

He walked out into the sunlight with her, leaving me in the dark with a gun to my head.

He abandoned me to be tortured and murdered by his rivals, weaponizing my resilience to absolve his guilt.

He thought I died that day. He even mourned me after he eventually found out Debbi was a traitor.

But he didn't know the new security guard was an undercover FBI agent who pulled me from the edge.

Two years later, I've built a quiet life running a bistro in Maine under a new name.

But then the bell above the door chimes during the lunch rush.

I look up, and there he is. The husband who sacrificed me.

He's looking at me not with guilt, but with a terrifying, obsessive hope.

He says he burned down the world to fix his mistake. He says he won't let me go again.

I smile, but my hand is already reaching for the wire the FBI gave me.

I'm not a wife anymore, Brennan. I'm the executioner.

Chapter 1

I stood outside the towering mahogany doors of the inner sanctum, balancing a tray of espresso, when I heard my husband promise his sister that my reign as the Queen of Chicago was over.

The tray didn't shake.

I didn't gasp.

I had been groomed for this life since birth, raised in the shadow of the Sterling Syndicate to be decorative, silent, and composed-even while the world burned down around me.

But the heat flushing through my veins wasn't fear.

It was the sudden, violent death of hope.

Brennan Johnson was not just a man.

He was the Don.

He was the predator who had clawed his way up from the gutter, stepping over bodies to claim the throne of the city, and then he had claimed me to legitimize it.

I thought I was his partner.

I thought the way he looked at me-with those dark, possessive eyes that promised murder to anyone who touched me-meant something.

"She's complicated, Breann," Brennan's voice drifted through the crack in the door, deep and rough like gravel grinding against steel. "Alyssa thinks this is a partnership. She thinks she has a say."

"Debbi knows her place," his sister's voice sneered back. "She is pure. She doesn't have that Sterling arrogance. She just wants you."

"Debbi is safe," Brennan said, his tone dismissive. "I promised I would keep Alyssa safe. The Family comes first, but my happiness... I am tired of the ice queen. Tonight, at the gala, we make