All Chapters of You Married Mafia Princess, I Became the Don: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

"'Mistress.' Christ, Vera, does it have to sound that ugly?""I know you're angry. Breaking my word to you was wrong, I'll own that. But think about it. You've got no family name, no connections, no one to open doors for you. Tell me yourself, what part of you stacks up against Camilla?""I'm Marlowe's golden boy now. You really still dreaming about marrying me?"Dreaming.Every one of those promises he'd spelled out for me, word by word, and now, in his mouth, they'd turned into some delusion of mine.I wanted to laugh, and I couldn't.Three years of my life, and Adrian had already forgotten. All the time it took him to climb from a bastard everyone stepped on to a man who stood at the front of the room, every shootout, every hit, every bullet that came for his head, I was the one who took it for him.Without me, he'd have been carried out of some alley feetfirst a hundred times over.I stared at him, my voice gone cold. "So that's it. Because I've got no name and no pull, I'm suppose

Chapter 2

Three years ago, Adrian was the first face I saw when I woke up with no memory.He told me we'd grown up together on the block, that we'd promised ourselves to each other long ago, that I'd taken a bullet protecting him and cracked my head, and that was how I'd lost it all.The Vance name was old money, but Adrian was a servant's bastard, low on the ladder, the kind anyone in that house could step on.He refused to stay down. He took every opening he got, until finally the Don of the Vance family looked at him straight, just once.And I stayed at his side, handling the ugly business under the table, keeping him whole through every flash of gunfire and steel.I always thought we were lovers who'd been through hell together, comrades who held each other up. Then yesterday I learned the truth. The childhood sweethearts, the falling for each other young, none of it was real.My name is Hale. An old Sicilian family, generations deep, every last one of us hard as nails. My Family and the Mar

Chapter 3

I shook my head and backed away on instinct, caught my foot on the table, and went down hard onto the floor.The sedative still had me, and I couldn't summon a scrap of fight. All I could do was watch him come on, knife raised, step by step, looking like something out of hell."You can't do this, Adrian!"My eyes were red, my voice hard. "If you finish these hands today, I swear I will never let you go."He didn't hear a word of the threat. He just looked at me, then raised a shaking hand to cover my eyes, and said it low."Don't be scared, Vera. It'll be over in a second. Don't be scared."The world went black. Then came the sound of a blade opening flesh. The tendons in my wrist were severed clean through, and the pain drowned me whole, a wave I couldn't get out from under.I bit down on my lip, my throat filling with the taste of blood. The pain came in waves, one after another, and cold sweat beaded on my forehead and soaked into my hair.I don't know how long it lasted. When the d

Chapter 4

When I came to again, the wounds had been seen to, both hands wrapped tight.Adrian had come at some point. He was sitting at the head of the bed, watching me in silence."How are you? Anything still hurting?"He asked it gently, then got up, brought a bowl of medicine from the table, and blew on it to cool it before holding it to my mouth.The whole scene was almost exactly like the days after I'd lost my memory, when he'd nursed me so carefully.A pity none of it could be taken back.I turned my head from the bowl and gave a thin, scornful smile. "Drop the act. What's the point?""This place is full of your people. Camilla came. Don't tell me you didn't know.""Well? You feel better, seeing me like this?"Adrian lowered his eyes. "Camilla meant well by you. She's the Don's daughter, and she came in person to teach you manners. That's her bending down a long way.""Oh. So now I'm supposed to be grateful to her?"The mockery in my voice pulled his brows tight, and his fingers went whit

Chapter 5

I slid down the cliff face, and the will to live wrung one last burst of strength out of me. I jammed the gun I'd grabbed into a crack in the rock and barely caught my fall.Hanging off the gun, I felt for a jutting ledge with the toe of my shoe and worked my way down, inch by inch.I looked down once and went dizzy, then bit the tip of my tongue to stay clear, to keep from blacking out.But I'd overrated the shape I was in. Halfway down, my head swam and my foot missed, and I dropped hard.In the last possible second a figure came down out of nowhere and caught me clean. I was wrung dry, no strength even to look at who it was, and I went under completely.The next thing I knew, voices were coming to me through a fog."How is the Boss on Marlowe ground, and hurt this bad?""Right. If the Boss is alive, why three years with no sign? What the hell happened?""All of it gets answered when the Boss wakes up."I opened my eyes onto a face both strange and familiar."Marcus?" I said the name

Chapter 6

(God's POV)After Vera went off the cliff, Adrian shut himself in a room for three full days.Search parties went up the mountain in waves and turned up nothing.He sat there gripping a scrap of bloodied cloth, his eyes unreadable, no telling what was running through his head.His men had brought it back, snagged on a branch at the foot of the cliff, and he'd known it at a glance, a piece of what Vera had been wearing.They reported clumps of animal hair on the ground, drag marks, blood everywhere. Vera had likely been dragged off and torn apart by something in the wild.Adrian sat at the head of the table and listened without expression, like none of it touched him. Only once everyone had gone did he reach a shaking hand toward the cloth.He'd barely stood when his legs nearly went out from under him. That was when he realized they'd already gone weak enough that he could hardly hold himself up.The smell of blood kept crawling into his nose, forcing him to picture the state she'd bee

Chapter 7

The two months ran out fast, and the day of Adrian and Camilla's wedding arrived.The Family's territory had been anything but quiet of late. Word was the masked Boss who'd once beaten Marlowe back on every front had risen from the dead, and the moment that figure surfaced, the Hale people moved, taking back several lost stretches of turf before anyone could blink.It threw the Marlowe outfit into open argument. Nearly every word out of their mouths was about that Hale Boss.The Don was old, and these last couple of years he'd cared for nothing but his own pleasures, leaving the outfit's business to rot. Real power had long since fallen to Camilla's mother's people, and the whole thing was hollowed out inside, the rank and file full of complaints.Adrian read the situation clearly. That was the whole reason he'd schemed his way to Camilla, the only way to carve himself a real piece of it.The day the princess married, flower streamed the length of the street, fireworks filled the sky,

Chapter 8

(Vera's POV)Even Adrian hadn't expected the Hales to come this fast. There'd been no time to react at all. Everything he'd clawed out of that outfit, every inch of standing he'd bled for, gone in one stroke.He ground his teeth until they ached, sick with it, and could do nothing.He looked at Camilla where she'd fallen, and hesitated. The strongpoint was already breached, and dragging this woman along now was pure dead weight.But the Don's side was a question mark, and there was no telling whether the Donna had something held in reserve. Camilla was her daughter. Keeping her might still be worth something later.He weighed it a few ways and decided to take her. He hauled the dazed Camilla up by the arm and ran.He pulled her toward the back door, but before they cleared the front hall a round came straight at them and buried itself in the stone wall a hair from his head.Then a few black gun barrels were at their throats, and the people who'd just bolted out the front were marched b

Chapter 9

The hall emptied out, and only Adrian was left standing where he was.He looked at me, the corner of his mouth lifting. "When did your memory come back? And here I never knew, you were the Hale Boss all along.""No wonder you were covered in wounds when I found you. No wonder a woman like you fought the way you did. I just never let my mind go there.""If I'd known, the two of us never should have met at all."He dropped his head and laughed softly, half rueful, half lost.I raised the gun and looked at him without expression. "You're right. The two of us meeting was a mistake from the start. So now I'm here to end it myself.""The day you ruined my hands, cut my tendons, I told you. One day I'd kill you with my own hands and settle what you did to me.""That it's come to this, you brought on yourself.""Brought it on myself?" He looked up, and a laugh broke out of him. "Vera. You're telling me I brought this on myself?""Fine, I lied to you. But the last three years between us weren't

Chapter 10

I carried out Adrian's last wish and buried him under the peach tree in the little courtyard.Spring was at its height, the tree heavy with blossom, petals drifting down and settling in no time over the small mound of earth.We'd promised each other once that we'd come back to see it bloom. In the end it had come true, just not the way either of us meant.I laid the knife in the coffin with him, and buried the whole of the past along with it.Adrian. I'd loved him, and hated him, and at the very end all that was left was letting go.Camilla and the rest of her mother's people were handed over to Sean Boyd. He was no gentle soul. Anyone who threatened his standing, he'd sooner kill by mistake than let slip.Word was Camilla's whole crowd had charges pinned on them, every one, and were cleared away one after another.The Marlowe line had thrown its weight around for years, treating lives as nothing, and the people under them had long been at the end of their rope. Boyd's move actually ea

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