No Longer His Donna Chapter 12

No Longer His Donna Chapter 12

Suddenly, an artillery shell landed nearby. When I woke up, I was in a hospital in New York.

My father looked at me coldly. “You were the one who gave up on Tina. And now you go running after her?

See, even fate is punishing you.”

I stared in horror at the empty pant legs where my legs should have been. I couldn’t accept it.

I couldn’t.

Tina used to love me so much. She’d always follow me around.

“Xander, I want a hot latte.”

“Xander, can’t you stay away from other women?”

“Xander… I like you.”

In truth, I had started regretting it the second she came back to New York.

Seeing her, I couldn’t control my heart. I wanted to pull her close, claim her for my own, But I had to pretend I

didn’t love her.

Hearing her say she wanted to end the engagement tore me apart, but I couldn’t show it.

When she left, I wanted to stay more than anything. But she didn’t.

I kept thinking, she used to get upset if I so much as spoke to another woman. Surely, if I married Stephanie,

she would come back and make a scene.

But on my wedding day with Stephanie… she never came.

After thinking for a long time, I had to go find her.

I saw the way she tended to patients-so capable.

I saw the man she loved. I saw the way she looked at her husband.

In that moment, I finally understood what she meant when she said her tastes had changed.

It wasn’t that her tastes had changed.

It was that I was no longer worthy of her.

I’d just listen, never saying a word.

“Don Corleone… he’s something else. The way he handles a problem… cold.”

“Shame he’s married. Word is, he married some civilian girl. No connections, nothing.”

“Wish I had that kind of luck.”

When I was eighteen, Lewis made his intentions clear from the start.

On the first day he confessed, he told me he was looking for a wife. For legitimacy. For an heir.

He gave me a pearl-handled derringer on the spot.

I responded with the full-hearted passion of a girl who knew no better.

We were married within a year.

It was impulsive, intense, and for a time, sweet.

He gave me a kind of fierce, possessive love I’d never imagined. The kind only a Mafia Don can offer- all-consuming, dangerous, and designed to make you forget where he ends and you begin.

If I hadn’t joined his organization, I might have never discovered the truth.

Victoria “The Viper” Blake-Lewis’s Consigliere.

Deadly, elegant, the very definition of a woman forged in the underworld.

She was at his side for every turf negotiation, every tense sit-down with rival families.

She managed the books, the muscle, the secrets. Sometimes, it seemed she knew more about the Corleone

empire than Lewis himself.

Before anyone in the Family knew of my existence, they all assumed Victoria was his woman.

Even in the social halls, I’d hear old-timers who’d ridden with her say, “The Don must be blind. A woman like

Victoria, and he chooses a kitten?”

“She left a high-ranking position with the Gambinos to be his right hand.”

“Just wait. The infatuation will fade. He’ll put her aside and make things right with Victoria.”

The rumors were a constant hum.

I didn’t listen.

After all, in our bed, Lewis and I were still passionately in love, night after night.

Until the celebration after we’d taken a crucial shipping lane from the Irish mob. Victoria, feigning

drunkenness, confronted him in front of his most trusted men.