How Does Jojo McDodd End In The Novel?

In my fourth year of becoming the wife to Matteo Costa, the Don of the Costa family, as know as La Rosa Nera, I no longer insist on making our relationship public. He has once told me that he will publicly announce my identity as Donna on our wedding anniversary this year. But ever since Vera Barbieri returns to the country, Matteo never brings this up again. He puts all his attention on Vera and always places all her needs first. He even abandons me on the highway because of a single phone call from Vera while my mother is on her deathbed. My mother never gets to see me one last time before she dies. At this moment, I finally give up on him. I prepare the divorce agreement and book a ticket to leave Nevoli. The day after tomorrow, I will leave this place and leave Matteo to his childhood sweetheart.

The most reckless thing I had ever done was turn my back on the Moretti name and leave St. Clair Harbor with Lucian DeLuca when the Commission pushed his family out and he had nothing left. For three years, we lived in a drafty Brooklyn loft and ducked black Chevrolets on winter nights. Then Lucian fought his way back to the East Coast table. Everyone started calling him Mr. DeLuca again,and I became Mrs. DeLuca, the woman he swore he would always protect. Then Clara Voss appeared. She had once saved his life as a night nurse at an underground clinic, and Lucian never forgot it. He bought her a clinic, protected her family, and let her step, inch by inch, into the middle of our marriage. He said he still loved me, but he also said I was spoiled, jealous, and needed to learn my place. So I did. I signed the divorce papers and left New York behind. Mrs. DeLuca was dead. Evelyn Moretti had come back.

When war broke out in Irestan, my fiancé, Everett Jones, caused a scene at the airport and refused to let the evacuation flight take off. He was determined to wait for his precious first love, Annie Scott, who had taken advantage of the chaos to loot a cosmetics counter for luxury goods. By then, the insurgent forces were already closing in. The shriek of explosions grew louder, drawing nearer by the second. With an entire plane full of people in mortal danger, I had no choice. I knocked Everett unconscious and dragged him aboard. After we returned home, far from the battlefield, we lived a period of quiet, comfortable happiness. I truly believed he had finally put that woman behind him. I was wrong. On our wedding day, he tied me up, drove me away, and deliberately crashed the car, killing me. As my life slipped away, I heard his twisted laughter. "Daniela, you're the one who killed my Annie. Because of you, she was killed by an insurgent missile. "She was just a young girl who liked to look pretty. What was so wrong with that? "This is what you owe her. I'm going to make you suffer far more than she ever did." When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the boarding gate, at the exact moment he blocked the plane. This time, I chose to grant his wish and let him stay behind with his beloved first love, together, forever.

Ten years with Don Maximus. I went from the crazy girl who demanded his "undying loyalty" at gunpoint to Chicago's perfect Donna. When Maximus took the casino's hottest stripper to his private room, I didn't lose my mind. Instead, I tossed the woman the keys to a Manhattan penthouse. When Maximus's new flame threw a tantrum at a yacht party, I didn't bat an eye. Instead, after she slapped a waiter in a fit of pique, I made the police problem go away. When Maximus fought with one of his girls, I'd even send her a limited-edition Birkin to smooth things over. And today, Maximus is busy fucking his hot new toy in the study, while another pregnant mistress stands on the estate's rooftop, threatening to jump just to see him. And I'm still the one in my red-bottom heels, calmly going to clean up his mess. The mistress screamed, desperate. "I'm not having this baby! Get Maximus!" I took a sip of my wine, my voice bored. "He's busy today. You have the baby, and I'll make sure seven figures show up in your offshore account." My indifference set her off. She grabbed my wrist, her grip like iron. "You're pathetic, Angelina! There was a time he wouldn't even look at another woman because of you. He slaughtered an entire family for you. When you were shot, he knelt in the pouring rain outside a church, begging God to take his life for yours! But now? You can't even get into his bed. All you can do is stand here and play the gracious Donna!" Her nails left red marks on my skin, but the smile on my face didn't crack. Did she really think a little drama would change anything? I wasn't playing the gracious Donna. I was just done. And I was finally ready to let Maximus go.

My sister Brenda fell in love with Don Joseph Genovese because he saved her life once. She thought a man that dangerous had chosen her. Then she learned the truth. Joseph had only pulled her out of that riot because she looked like his wife, Maria, when Maria was young. Any sane woman would have walked away. Brenda decided Maria had to die. She tracked Maria’s schedule, planned a hit-and-run, and meant to play the heroic bystander after putting Joseph’s wife in the ground. If Maria was gone, Brenda believed she could take her place. In my first life, I stopped her. I knocked her out before she could make her move. I begged her to understand that Joseph was not some lovesick man from her mafia novels. He was a Don. If he found out, he would not just punish her. He would burn our whole family with her. Brenda cried. She nodded. She promised she understood. That night, she poured paraquat into my water glass. As I died, she whispered, “You ruined my shot at the big life, Sharon. So I ruined yours.” Then I opened my eyes again. I was back on the day she made her move. This time, I stayed where I was.

At the Costa family's annual capo banquet, Marco Costa declared the family would extend protection to one woman only: Rosa Frost, his childhood sweetheart, newly divorced and newly returned to the family fold. One by one, the other women slipped away into the night with their money, their dignity, and fresh protectors already lined up. I, Viola Rossi, once his Donna, was severed from the Costa family entirely, with nowhere left to go. Twenty-one years prior, The System ripped me into this life with a brutal mandate: make one of four made men fall irrevocably in love with me, and I'd earn my way back to my real life with a healthy body. I failed. Every single one of them chose Rosa. The system's final mercy: die here, go home. I stood in a rotting Brooklyn dock warehouse, gun in hand, and closed my eyes. Right as darkness closed in, a raw, raging scream of my name tore through the silence, like the man shouting would burn the whole world apart to reach me.