lvy
Dante Rinaldi, the Don, had one unbreakable rule. After midnight, no one was allowed near the estate's West Wing.
Not even me. Not even on our wedding night, right after we signed our marriage contract.
The moment the clock struck midnight, he'd draw his gun and coldly order his guards to keep me out.
Once, while overseeing an arms shipment at the port on his behalf, I discovered the Russians had set a trap. Desperate, I activated my emergency beacon.
His voice came back over the radio, flat and mocking.
"If you can't even survive a firefight, you have no business being my Donna. I'm hanging up."
I barely made it back to the safe house through a hail of bullets. He never asked if I was okay. Instead, he punished me for losing the shipment.
Then, today, I hacked into the West Wing's top-secret surveillance system.
I watched every midnight recording from the West Wing, three full years of them.
The footage was silent, but there he was—the ruthless Don, spending hours patiently comforting a frightened woman.
The woman with access to that wing was his private doctor, Elena Costa, the widow of his late older brother, Matteo Rinaldi. She was the one he truly wanted to protect.
To keep her safe, he'd made me, his wife on paper, a target for every enemy he had.
My shoulders sagged, and exhaustion washed over me.
I sat there until my legs went numb. Then, without a word, I turned off the footage and filed the papers to end our contract.
The light in that safe house had never burned for me. And I was done being his decoy.