Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 01

Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 01

Ten minutes later, Dante stood in the darkness outside my door. Bespoke black suit, immovable confidence, a man who looked like he owned this city.

He’d brought his full entourage: his Capo, his crew, even his consigliere, who barely made public

appearances. Every last one of them held a red rose, standing in a row on my front steps like some absurd royal procession.

Dante’s voice was light, almost amused.

“In six months you’ll be the Donna of the Caruso family. What other outfit in Chicago would even dare make a move on you?”

“Sweetheart, if you’re trying to make me jealous, you’ll have to try harder. The whole city knows you can barely stand being in the same room as another man.”

“If Camilla bothers you that much, fine. After the wedding I’ll have her transferred to our operation

in California.”

I looked past him at Camilla, who had been lurking in his shadow. For months she’d let everyone believe she was practically his ward, a helpless younger sister he’d taken under his wing.

The irony was almost funny.

“I’m not joking,” I said. “I will become another family’s Donna.’

The moment that video arrived, I had accepted Raphael Lucchesi’s proposal.

“So I’m supposed to just step aside and hand you to Camilla?”

Something in my voice must have landed. Dante’s fingers went rigid. The rose stem snapped in his

grip. Behind him, his Capo and consigliere dropped their gazes to the ground.

That was when Camilla stepped forward, eyes glistening, lower lip trembling.

The wrap draped around her shoulders was one I had given Dante two Christmases ago.

The light caught her collarbone. I could see the bruises, a constellation of them, all fresh. Evidence of exactly what had been happening in the thirty minutes before this little gathering.

I had always thought that sharing a birthday with Dante was fate. A sign. The universe spelling out our names in the same sentence.

Turns out the date had only ever meant something to me.

Camilla looked at me with wide, liquid eyes. “Do you remember, six months ago, when my ex put

me in the hospital?”

I remembered. I was the one who’d run him off and driven her to the emergency room. I’d sat with

her through the night.

I hadn’t imagined this was how she’d repay me.

She continued: “After that night, I couldn’t feel safe anywhere. Don Dante comforted me. First just

holding me, then kissing me, and then…” A delicate pause. “It happened many times. I was just so

frightened. I didn’t know how to say no.”

“Elena, we’re both women. Shouldn’t you understand better than anyone? Why be so petty about

this?”

The more carefully she spoke, the more my stomach turned.

“Does comfort have to look like that?” I said. “If that’s the kind of comfort you need, I can find you

plenty of men willing to provide it. Why settle for my castoff?”

The words had barely left my mouth when Dante snatched the solid-gold lighter from my hand and

hurled it to the floor.

I watched it shatter and felt something in my chest shatter with it. For three weeks I’d been engraving that lighter: scripture passages, a tiny Madonna figure worked into the gold. A birthday gift meant to keep him safe.

He destroyed it with his own hands.

When I looked up, his face was full of disappointment. Then the corner of his mouth curved into

something cold and mocking.

“You want to know why I ended up with Camilla, Elena?”

“Because you’ve always been like this. Hard. Ruthless. No softness in you, no vulnerability. You talk

the way you just did, without mercy, without an ounce of femininity.”

“Camilla is different. She’s gentle. She understands what a man needs. She doesn’t spend every

evening at the gym training like she’s preparing for war.”

I stood very still.

Dante and I had built everything together from nothing. Every ugly, humiliating, dangerous thing

that came with clawing your way up in this world, we had done it side by side. When we were still

nobodies, enemies had shown up at our door looking for blood. I wasn’t strong enough to take the

hits.

So Dante had taken them for me. Two blows to the skull. He could barely breathe through the pain, but he cradled my face in his hands anyway.

“Thank God you’re not hurt.”

After that night I made myself a promise. I would never be weak again. Weakness was something people devoured.

Maybe he saw the tears forming, because he reached out to wipe them away.

I stepped back from his hand.

“Then isn’t it better that I leave the Caruso family entirely?”

I turned toward the door. Silence behind me.

Then, the moment my hand touched the handle, fingers closed around my wrist.

I turned. Dante’s face was the face of a man who had already decided he’d won.

“Two choices,” he said. “Stay tonight. Pretend none of this happened. I’ll have someone drive

Camilla home, and you go on being the Donna of the Caruso family.”

“Or you walk out with all that junk.” His eyes swept toward the room behind me.