Chapter 5 Revenge on a platter

Gianna 

I had no idea what was going on in the outside world until I pulled my phone out from the room Dante had put me inside yesternight.

Almost a thousand notifications buzzed on my phone.

"Whore... bitch, shameless..." They all read.

"I've always known she was a slut, good that he cancelled the wedding and Is finally getting married to someone who's good, no wonder she's nothing now," the insults dragged on.

Beneath the post was his wedding invitation paper of Luca and Sophia.

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. My fingers tightened on the phone until my knuckles whitened, and I thought the glass might crack. My chest squeezed like someone had dropped a stone inside me.

Not because I loved him—God, no. Love had died months before the engagement ring ever touched my finger. What burned me alive was the humiliation. The audacity. He hadn’t just replaced me, he’d paraded it—fed me to the wolves of the internet, knowing they’d devour me whole.

I scrolled lower, my thumb trembling, desperate to see something, anything, that could prove his hypocrisy. A slip of evidence. A photo. A timeline. But there was nothing. Nothing except strangers feasting on my reputation.

I typed into the search bar, “Luca Vitale exposed”, but the screen laughed at me with silence. All polished headlines and glowing praise for his new “true love.”

I clenched my teeth until pain shot down my jaw. If I said a word now, I’d look bitter, desperate, jealous. And that was the knife twisted deepest—he’d planned this. He knew I had no proof.

My mind spun, running through memories—his late nights, the vague excuses, the phone always turned face down. The pieces were there, but none of them fit into something I could throw at the world.

My throat ached with the words I wanted to scream. Liar. Cheater. Coward. But if I screamed now, no one would listen.

The phone buzzed again in my palm. Hundreds of notifications pouring in by the second. For a moment, I thought it was more hate, more poison. But when I opened them, my breath caught.

It wasn’t Luca. It wasn’t Sophia.

It was Dante.

His name was stamped across every headline like a brand seared into flesh.

“Dante Russo Marries Former Fiancée of Luca Vitale.”

“Russo Declares Gianna Not a Scandal, but His Wife.”

“Evidence of Luca’s Infidelity Surfaces—More to Come.”

I froze, staring at the bold letters as if they might rearrange into something else. My pulse thundered in my ears. I clicked the first article with shaking hands.

There it was—our courthouse photo. My hand in his, the signature pen still in his grip, his towering frame beside me. He looked like a man who owned the world. I looked… broken, but alive.

And beneath it, screenshots. Dates, messages. Blurred names but enough to paint the picture: Luca with Sophia. Years. Not weeks. Not months. Years.

My stomach flipped, heat rushing up my spine. The proof I couldn’t find—Dante already had it.

My chest heaved as I read line after line, the article dripping with precision. The world wasn’t laughing at me anymore. They were turning. Slowly, but turning.

The comments were shifting too.

“Wait, so Luca was cheating the whole time?”

“If this is true, then Gianna’s the victim here.”

“Dante Russo doesn’t move without evidence. If he says it, it’s fact.”

My phone nearly slipped from my hands.

What the hell had he done?

Before I could breathe, the door opened. The quiet sound of leather shoes against polished floorboards filled the silence, and I didn’t need to look up to know who it was.

Dante.

He leaned against the frame like he had all the time in the world, jacket draped across his arm, tie loosened just enough to suggest he’d undone it himself—casual, calculated. His gaze swept the room, landed on me, and for a moment, the world shrank to the weight of those dark, steady eyes.

“You’ve seen it,” he said simply. Not a question.

I swallowed hard, my phone still buzzing. “You—” My voice cracked, and I forced it steady. “You told the world?”

“I corrected the world,” he replied, stepping inside. “I don’t let anyone tarnish what’s mine.”

The word hit me square in the chest—mine. Heat prickled across my skin, anger and something else tangled deep in my ribs.

I pushed to my feet. “You can’t just—”

“I can.” His tone was calm, almost dangerous in its softness. “And I did.”

I stared at him, heart racing. “You exposed him. You made it public. Do you have any idea what you’ve started?”

Dante’s mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “War. The kind he won’t win.”

My knees felt weak, but I held his gaze. “Why? Why go this far?”

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate, until the space between us was filled with his presence, his scent—cedar and smoke and something sharper.

“Because you were standing alone in front of a crowd waiting to devour you,” he murmured, eyes burning into mine. “And I don’t let anyone touch what belongs to me.”

My chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. The phone buzzed again in my palm, headlines flashing, comments turning, Luca’s name slowly being dragged through the mud.

I should have felt relief. Justice. Vindication.

But instead, all I felt was the ground shifting under me, the realization that whatever Dante had set in motion was only the beginning.

And I had no idea where it would end.