You Can't Buy My Heart, Mr. Vitiello

My father sold me to the Vitiello Crime Family to settle a three-million-dollar gambling debt.

For three years, I was Dante Vitiello’s property. I warmed his bed, tended his wounds, and let him own every part of me.

I thought I was earning my freedom. I thought I mattered.

Then his "true queen," the Mafia Princess Sofia, returned to the city.

Dante pushed me off his lap the moment she walked into the room. He ordered me to leave because, in the presence of his equal, I was nothing more than "the help."

The humiliation didn't stop there.

He evicted me from the penthouse to renovate it for her.

At a gala, he outbid me for my grandmother’s heirloom bracelet—my family's last scrap of dignity—just to gift it to Sofia in front of the entire city.

But the final blow came when he came to my bed drunk one last time.

He kissed me with a desperate hunger, whispering that he was only "practicing" his technique on me so he would be perfect for her.

I realized then that I wasn't a person to him. I was a training dummy. A debt with a pulse.

He told me to wait for him while he took her to Paris. He thought I would stay in the kennel like a good pet.

He was wrong.

While he was gone, I accepted a surgical fellowship in Switzerland.

I snapped my SIM card in half, left his millions on the floor, and boarded a one-way flight.

By the time the Wolf comes home to find his cage empty, I will be gone.

Chapter 1

Elena Rossi POV

I was scanning the final clause of my witness protection application when the phone buzzed against my palm. It was a message from the man who held the deed to my soul, and reading it made my blood run cold.

"Five minutes. Azure. Don't make me come get you."

My heart hammered against my ribs, wild and frantic, like a bird throwing itself against the bars of a cage.

On the surface, I was Elena Rossi, a scholarship student at Caltech with a mysterious, wealthy benefactor. In reality, I was a line item in a ledger, a debt repayment plan with a pulse and a womb.

"He's so romantic," my roommate Rory sighed, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the screen. She didn't see the threat. She only saw the name attached to it.

Dante.

"Most guys wait three days to text. He demands you in five minutes. That is some serious alpha energy."

She reached out and traced the diamond necklace resting against my collarbone. It was cold, heavy, and sharp. To her, it was a gift worth a year's tuition. To me, it was a collar.

"It's not romance, Rory," I said, grabbing my coat with trembling fingers. "It's inventory management."

I didn't have time to explain that my father’s gambling addiction had cost three million dollars, and I was the currency used to