Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 10

Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 10

The news detonated across the city within hours. The dead heir had risen. The Vitale empire had a Don again. By nightfall, half the underworld was scrambling to realign, and the other half was placing bets on how long Lorenzo would last against Alessio Conti.

But inside the compound, Lorenzo was on the floor of his study—not from weakness. From rage.

He’d just finished going through the full audit his attorneys had assembled overnight. Ottavia hadn’t merely stolen. She’d dismantled. Subsidiaries sold off to shells she controlled. Pension funds gutted. The legitimate businesses Lorenzo’s father had spent decades building—the ones that laundered the family’s reputation into respectability—hollowed out and handed, piece by piece, to Alessio.

Total theft: over three billion.

And his father, Cesare—the man Lorenzo had grieved for four years—was alive in a private facility in the mountains, suffering from early dementia. Ottavia had committed him under a false name and paid in cash to bury the records.

“She told me he died in the ambush,” Lorenzo said, his voice barely controlled. “She stood over my bed—while I was paralyzed—and described his funeral. The flowers. Who cried. She invented his eulogy.” His hands curled into fists. “I grieved a man who was alive.”

I sat across from him on the floor, close but giving him room. “We’ll get him back. I’ve already contacted the facility.”

They’re cooperating.”

“Cooperating because they’re terrified of prosecution.”

“Whatever the reason, your father transfers to a real hospital tomorrow. I’ve arranged for the best neurology team in the country.”

He looked at me, and something in his expression softened—just barely, like light through a crack. “You already did that?”

“While you were reading the audit.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Who are you, Adriana Greco?”

“Your wife. Your doctor. Currently your crisis manager.” I paused. “Would you like me to add anything to the list?”

The ghost of a smile. “I’ll let you know.”

But the reprieve was brief. His phone rang—his reinstated personal line. He listened for thirty seconds. His face went cold.

“My father’s annulment filing went through Alessio’s lawyers this morning. The hearing’s set for Thursday.”

“That’s in three days.”

“My team will counter-file. But if your father testifies that the marriage was a strategic arrangement—not real—a judge could grant it. And if it dissolves before my birthday—”

“Alessio argues you were manipulated by an opportunistic wife. The competency review gets pushed past the deadline. He wins.” I stood. “Then we prove the marriage is real.”

We looked at each other. The implication hung between us like a live wire.

“We could provide testimony,” I offered, keeping my voice clinical. “Cohabitation, shared decisions, emotional—”

“Or,” Lorenzo said quietly, “we could stop pretending it isn’t.”

The room went very still.

“Lorenzo—”

“I’m not asking you to perform for a judge.” He stepped closer, his gaze unflinching. “I’m asking you to be honest. With yourself.”

My pulse raced. “This isn’t the time—”

“It’s exactly the time. In three days a courtroom decides whether our marriage is real. And I need to know—when you broke into a locked study with my stepmother’s stolen fingerprint, when you climbed into my bed to save my life, when you risked everything to free a man the world had written off—was any of that just obligation?”

My throat tightened. Every defense I’d built over twenty-six years of being traded and dismissed screamed at me to deflect.

But there he stood—a man who’d been buried alive, who had

every reason to trust no one—asking me for the truth.

“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t just obligation.”

He closed the distance between us. His hand rose to my face, his thumb brushing my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicted everything dangerous about him.

“Then we fight this together. Not as partners. Not as a contract. As us.”

He kissed me. Careful at first—as though half-expecting me to pull away. I didn’t. My hands found his chest, his heartbeat hammering beneath my palms. He was shaking, I realized. Not from weakness. From feeling something for the first time in four years.

When we broke apart, I pressed my forehead to his. “If we lose Thursday—”

“We won’t.”

“But if we do—”

“Then I’ll still choose you.” His voice was absolute. “Every version of this. Every outcome. I choose you.”

My eyes burned. “You barely know me.”

“I know you snore. I know you talk to yourself when you’re calculating doses. I know you climbed into a murderer’s bed without a flicker of fear because saving my life mattered more than your own.” His thumb traced my jaw. “I know you’re the only person in four years who looked at me and didn’t see something broken.”

“That’s not knowing someone.”

“It’s a start.”

I let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost a sob.

“Fine. Then let’s go win a court case.”

His phone buzzed again. He glanced down, and his whole body went rigid.

A photo. The hospital. My father’s room—the one Cesare was being transferred to tomorrow.

And beneath it, three words from Alessio:

“Nice security. — A”