All Chapters of He Let My Brother Die, so I Married Another Don: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

It was long dark by the time I got back.Getting my brother out had left me covered in blood the whole way from the docks to the house. In the end it was men from the family next door who couldn't stand to watch, and they helped me get him to a hospital.Damian was still on the couch, carefully picking out gunmen for his adopted sister. When he saw me come in, he raised a hand and wiped a streak of blood off my face without thinking about it. "Where have you been? Look how filthy you got yourself."I met his eyes. "Saving my brother."He hummed and turned away to prune a potted plant. I looked at that plant, which had never belonged in this house, and something in my chest went dull and heavy. My brother's life mattered less to him than a houseplant.My brother had stood alone to hold the shipment that meant everything to him, holding on until I dragged him out half dead and he was taken to a hospital. Damian said he didn't want to wipe up our messes.And that adopted sister, he sent h

Chapter 2

Damian took my silence for surrender.The next day his adopted sister came back. He was delighted. He even threw her a welcome-home party.The party was grander than a wedding. Vivi stood in the middle of the crowd with him at her side, the two of them looking like a story people would tell. Nobody wondered where I'd gone.At the hospital I found my brother in critical condition, tubes running out of him everywhere, struggling just to breathe.He was still in the clothes he'd bled through the day before. No one had washed him. The bed he was lying on didn't even have a mattress.My eyes went red. I tried to call Damian and demand an answer, and not one call went through.It wasn't until my phone died that he sent me a message: Vivi's welcome party is today, handle whatever it is yourself for now.I sat on the hospital floor, staring at nothing, tears dropping slowly onto the screen.Then a dull pain spread through my stomach, so bad I nearly passed out before a nurse walking by found m

Chapter 3

I changed my brother's dressings myself and washed him. By midnight Damian still hadn't come back.On my way home a message came in from my father. Hold on one more day and his people would be at the docks.But when I pushed the front door open, I smelled something familiar. Vivi was sitting in what used to be my seat, with candles burning across the whole table.My eyes narrowed. I knew at once where those candles had come from. They were what Damian and I had given each other when we first got together, and I had never let myself burn a single one. He'd told me he had them commissioned from a single perfumer overseas, that there was only one set like it in the world. Vivi had burned through all of them.Vivi saw me and stood up right away. "Elena, you're home." That was when I noticed the pajamas she had on. They were half of a matching set I'd given Damian.I held my anger down and stared at her, forcing my voice out of my throat. "Who said you could touch my things?"Damian came ou

Chapter 4

I hit the floor hard. Then a warm, dragging pain spread low in my belly, like something being torn loose from deep inside me. I pressed my hand there. My palm came away wet. I looked down. It was blood.I walked out of the Moretti house alone and flagged down a car to the hospital. The driver kept glancing at me in the mirror like he wanted to say something, and in the end he just drove faster.By the time I got there I couldn't stand up straight. A nurse helped me through the exam, and the doctor frowned. "Early pregnancy. Did you fall? We can't save the baby. You'll need a D and C."I nodded. I didn't have the strength left to cry. "Can I go see my brother first?" The doctor agreed.I pushed open the door of the emergency room. It was empty. The blanket had been thrown back in a heap, and an IV line still hung there with the needle in it.I grabbed a nurse walking past, my voice shaking apart. "Where's my brother? The... the man who was in that bed?"The nurse glanced at me. "The pat

Chapter 5

By the time I got into my father's helicopter, I had nothing left.My father sat beside me and didn't say a word the whole way. He just kept my hand wrapped in his, the way he used to sit by my bed when I ran a fever as a child, saying nothing, only letting me know he was there.The flight was long, long enough that I fell asleep against the window.When I woke up, the car had already stopped in front of an estate. I'd just lost the baby and my body was weak, and the moment my feet touched the ground I nearly went down. My father's arm caught me and held me steady. His voice was low. "Don't be afraid. You're home."The house was lit from end to end, with a dozen staff standing in two rows. My father waved the rest of them off and kept only an older housekeeper, telling her to take me up to my room.I walked to the room at the end of the second floor, pushed the door open, and nothing inside had changed.The curtains were still the color they'd been the day I left. The photo of me and m

Chapter 6

Meanwhile, on the other side of it, Damian spent three days looking for me like a man out of his mind. He went from the hospital to the docks, from the docks to the little apartment we used to rent, from the apartment to the boxing gym Adrian always went to. He called me a hundred times and sent countless messages. I answered none of them.He used every bit of power he had and couldn't turn up a single trace of me. Then one morning he opened his phone and saw the news everywhere on social media."Mafia princess Elena Marchetti to wed Luca Gambino, Don of the Gambino Family, in three days." The photo showed the two of us standing side by side in the garden of the estate, his body turned to block the cameras, covering me completely.Damian sat in his car looking at that notification on the screen, and his fingers clenched hard around the wheel.He enlarged the photo and looked at the way Luca stood in front of me, at the profile of my face that hadn't pulled away, at the relaxed smile at

Chapter 7

The wedding day came quickly. I wore a white gown and walked into the church holding Luca's hand, surrounded by the good wishes of family and friends.At one corner of the hall my eyes caught. Damian was sitting in the shadows with an untouched drink in front of him. He had on the black suit I'd bought him, and the cuff links were still the silver pair I'd picked out. His hair was combed neatly, but his face was a terrible ashen color, his eyes sunken, so thin that his cheekbones jutted out.He looked at me, his lips moved, and no sound came. I looked away and walked on with my arm through Luca's. Luca had seen him too. He didn't say anything, just laid his hand over the back of mine and patted it lightly, then steered me toward the next table.Behind me came the sound of a chair being shoved back. Damian came striding through the crowd toward me. The laughter cut off, and every eye in the room turned."Elena." His voice was hoarse, with a tremor in it you could barely catch. I stopped

Chapter 8

After the wedding Damian shut himself in his study for three straight days. Vivi knocked on the door countless times, and the food sent in came back out untouched.On the morning of the fourth day the door opened and Damian came out. He'd lost so much weight he hardly looked like himself, his eyes hollow, a layer of stubble come in, his shirt hanging off him in wrinkles.Vivi came up and reached for his arm, a sob in her voice. "Boss... don't be like this. It hurts to see you..."Damian turned his body and avoided her hand. He went to the living room, sat down, and lit a cigar, and the smoke rose and blurred his face. Vivi stood to the side biting her lip, tears swimming in her eyes."Boss, are you still thinking about Elena? She's already married someone else, she betrayed you. Can't you look at me? I'm the one who really loves you...""Go clear out the room on the third floor." Damian let out a mouthful of smoke, his voice as flat as if he were giving instructions to some ordinary su

Chapter 9

Three years later, to help me get out from under it all, Luca set his name aside and opened a dessert shop with me. The place was small but warm, with a string of wind chimes over the door that rang whenever the wind blew.I stood behind the counter in an apron, squeezing a pretty cream rosette out of a piping bag. A young couple at the window seat was sharing a strawberry cake, and the sun came in through the tall glass and filled the whole shop with warmth.The door pushed open and the chimes rang. A small round dumpling of a thing came barreling in, all tumbling steps, ran straight into my leg, then tipped his head back and grinned up at me. Round-cheeked and solid, sugar still stuck at the corner of his mouth, one little eyetooth showing on the left. "Mommy! I want strawberry!"I bent down and wiped his mouth with my apron. "Leo, have you been sneaking candy again? Where's your daddy?"Right on cue Luca came through the door with our son's jacket and a little water bottle in his ha

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