You Chose Her, Now Watch Me Disappear

On our fifth anniversary, my husband Dante gave me a unique gift: he burned my business to the ground.

Why? Because a shopkeeper had been rude to Sofia, the fragile ward he swore to protect.

While I waited in our penthouse, he was comforting her in front of the flames.

But that was just the beginning.

When I finally snapped and confronted Sofia for mocking our marriage, she cut her own arm and screamed for help.

Dante didn't hesitate. He shot me.

He put a bullet through my hand to save her.

Then, to "discipline" me, he dragged me to the cellar and waterboarded me—using my deepest trauma against me—until I admitted to a crime I didn't commit.

I endured it all, thinking he still loved me in his twisted way.

Until the day we were ambushed at the docks.

The enemy held a gun to my head and a knife to Sofia’s throat.

"Choose," the gunman said. "The Queen or the Ward?"

Dante looked at me. He calculated that I was strong enough to survive, but Sofia would break.

"Let the girl go," he said.

He watched as the gunman pulled the trigger on me.

As I fell backward into the freezing ocean, bleeding from a chest wound, Dante screamed my name.

He thought he had killed me.

He didn't know I was wearing a Kevlar vest.

He didn't know that while he was mourning his dead wife, I was already planning my escape.

Dante Moretti thinks his Queen is dead.

I intend to keep it that way.

Chapter 1

Elena POV

I was applying the final coat of crimson lipstick in the mirror of the penthouse suite when the news alert flashed across my phone screen.

The headline was a blur, but the reality was sharp: My husband had just reduced a city block to ash in my name.

But as the ashes fell, he wasn't thinking of me. He was holding another woman.

Five years ago, Dante Moretti pulled me out of a cage in a humid, reeking basement in Southeast Asia. Back then, I was cattle. A lot number in an auction.

He slaughtered twenty men to get to me, his bespoke suit stained with their blood as he lifted me from the filth. He told me I belonged to him. He promised that no one would ever touch me again.

Today was our fifth anniversary.

Downstairs, three hundred of New York's most dangerous criminals were drinking champagne, waiting to toast the Don and his Queen. But the Don wasn't here.

I looked at the television mounted on the wall. The news chopper footage was shaky, zooming in on the commercial district of Moretti Avenue. It was the only property I owned independently-my sanctuary.

Now, it was an inferno.

The chyron read: GANG WAR ERUPTS IN LOWER MANHATTAN.

But I knew better. I recognized the black armored SUV parked in front of the flames. I recognized the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette of the man standing by the