I Proposed to the Don 52 Times Before I Died

Raffaele watched the letters curl and blacken in the flames.

Then, with no thought for his own safety, he tore off his jacket and beat out the fire.

His eyes were red when he shoved me down onto the sofa strewn with white rose petals, in full view of the thousands still watching the livestream.

"What the heck is this, Sofia?"

"You called me here just to humiliate me in front of the whole world?"

His underboss Marco immediately killed the stream.

Silence fell over the room. I said nothing.

Raffaele stood so close that I caught the faint scent of gardenia clinging to his suit.

Gianna's favorite perfume.

And suddenly, I was thinking about seven years ago.

Back then, Raffaele hadn't been the untouchable Don he was today. He had been the Moretti family's unwanted bastard son.

When an ambush left him with two bullets in his body, I had dragged him from a burning car under a hail of gunfire.

After that, I helped him purge traitors, seize territory, and put every man who stood in his way into the ground.

When he finally took control of the family, he held my hand and made me a solemn promise.

"Once my position is secure, Sofia, all of Sicily will know you're my Donna."

But once the Moretti family was truly his, he replaced that promise with a ridiculous condition.

He claimed that a man in his position couldn't announce his marriage quietly. It had to be an event—something grand enough for the whole world to witness.

If I proposed to him fifty-one times on livestream, he said, he would show up for fifty-second and make me his Donna.

So I put on a beautiful dress, gathered an armful of roses, and asked him to marry me again and again in front of thousands of strangers.

But Raffaele always had something more important to do.

The first time, Gianna had just returned from France, and he went to meet her at the airport.

The seventeenth time, she fell in love with a sapphire necklace at an auction, and he rushed across the city to bid on it for her.

The thirty-sixth time, her horse was injured during a race. Raffaele booked the best private veterinary clinic on the island and stayed beside her all night.

By the fifty-second, all Gianna had to do was tell him she was feeling low. He forgot our promise and flew her to the Maldives.

Everything I had spent years begging for seemed to fall into her hands before she even had to ask.

A bitter smile tugged at my mouth.

"There won't be a fifty-third proposal, Raffaele."

"I'm tired. Whatever this was between us, it's over."

For two full seconds, he simply stared at me, disbelief flashing across his face.

Then something seemed to click, and he gave a cold laugh.

"So this is revenge? I miss one proposal, and you burn every letter you've ever written me?"

"I walked out of a family meeting to be here, Sofia, and you humiliated me in front of thousands of people. Did you stop for one second to think about what that does to a man in my position?"

I didn't understand him. Wasn't freedom from me what he had always wanted?

So why didn't he look relieved?

In the past, that tone would have sent me scrambling to explain myself. I would have apologized, soothed him, done anything to make his anger disappear.

Now my heart had been broken so many times that even speaking felt like too much effort.

Besides, I had little enough life left. I wasn't going to waste it on him.

"The fifty-second proposal is over," I said. "And so are we."

At that, the tension left Raffaele's face. He looked utterly certain that I could never bring myself to leave him.

"Enough, Sofia. We've been together seven years. You really think you can walk away from that?"

"I told you I'll accept your fifty-third proposal. You'll become my Donna, officially and publicly."

I didn't answer.

I slipped off the black onyx ring he had once placed on my finger and dropped it into the trash right in front of him.

Then I turned and walked away.

Marco hesitated before speaking. "Don... don’t you think she is serious this time?"

Raffaele watched me leave, absolute confidence in his voice.

"In three days, she'll come back in tears, begging me to marry her."