The Runaway Wife: Never Forgiving You

My husband, the Mad Prince of the underworld, once burned down a city block just because a rival looked at me wrong.

Now, he forces me to kneel in the freezing New York snow, clad only in thin silk.

In his hand, he holds a tablet controlling my comatose brother's life support, threatening to kill him unless I confess to bullying his new mistress.

To save my brother, I swallow my pride and confess to a crime I didn't commit.

But the stress is too much.

I miscarry our child right there, staining the pristine white snow crimson.

Dante doesn't even blink.

He steps over my bleeding body to comfort his crying mistress, leaving me to scream for our lost baby alone.

He thinks he taught me a lesson.

He forces me to apologize to the woman who mocked me, even as my stitches tear.

He doesn't know that while he was guarding the door to keep doctors out, my brother actually died.

He doesn't know I buried the only family I had left in a pauper's grave while he slept with the woman who framed me.

On our tenth anniversary, he fills the house with lilies, expecting reconciliation.

Instead, I leave the signed divorce papers on the bed, take a handful of grave soil, and vanish into the night.

By the time he realizes the truth, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

Chapter 1

My husband-the man who had once burned down an entire city block simply because a rival looked at me wrong-was now the one forcing me to my knees in the freezing snow, clad in nothing but my silk nightgown.

The New York winter bit into my skin like a thousand tiny needles.

My knees were numb, buried in the white drift of the Vitiello estate courtyard, but I did not shiver.

I dared not shiver.

Dante Vitiello stood above me.

He was the Don of the Vitiello Crime Family, known to the underworld as the Mad Prince for a reason.

He wore a wool coat that cost more than the house I grew up in, looking every inch the reaper the world feared.

He held a tablet in his gloved hand.

The screen glowed, casting a ghostly blue light on his sharp, cruel jawline.

On the screen was a live feed of a hospital room.

My brother, Luca, lay there, the ventilator's rhythmic hiss breathing for him.

A soldier's hand hovered over the power cord of Luca's life support.

"Tell me the truth, Elena," Dante said.

His voice was a low rumble, devoid of the warmth that used to make my blood sing.

"Did you threaten Sofia?"

I looked up at him.

Ten years ago, I had saved his life in an alleyway, fighting just like the rats I used to run with.

He had taken me in.

He had molded me.

He had crowned me his Queen.

Now, he looked at me like I was something he had stepped in.