Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 04

Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 04

I knelt on the cold concrete. Again and again, I bent and pressed my lips to Camilla’s shoe.

My body trembled with something that had nothing to do with cold.

The boy who had once knelt at my mother’s grave and promised to protect me for the rest of my life was already gone. I had lost count of how many times I had surrendered some piece of myself. My dignity was bleeding out on the floor, and Dante kept saying it wasn’t enough.

My phone rang continuously in the pocket of my coat. Raphael’s distinctive ringtone, unmistakable.

Dante heard it.

“Smash it.”

His Capo hesitated, then obeyed. The phone hit the floor and went dark.

When I finally collapsed, too exhausted to kneel anymore, Dante called a stop.

Camilla started sobbing again immediately. “What does it matter how many times she bows? Our

baby isn’t coming back because of her groveling.”

She took Dante’s hand and pressed it to her flat stomach. “He was kicking just last night.” She

looked up at him with devastated eyes. “My Don, when she was hitting me I kept calling your name.

She just hit me harder. I was so scared.”

Dante stroked her hair with one hand and gave his order with the other.

“There’s a meat locker at the end of the hall. Put Elena in it.”

My head came up. “No.”

Dante knew. He had always known. My phobia of the dark wasn’t a quirk I exaggerated; it was

absolute. In a dimly lit movie theater I needed to hold someone’s hand to keep my heart rate out of the danger zone. A pitch-black, blood-smelling industrial freezer would be something else

entirely.

The irony. Years ago I had been taken by a rival family and locked in their basement. I’d been seizing by the time Dante found me, foam at my lips, body in crisis. He hadn’t left my hospital bedside for two days.

Now he was the one putting me there.

My fingers found the hem of his trousers. Dante closed his eyes.

“Camilla, maybe we should let this go-”

“Our dead child says otherwise.” Camilla’s voice broke with theatrical precision. “Was I not allowed to be afraid when she was beating me?”

Dante’s jaw set. He jerked his chin at the men holding me.

Inside the locker, the cold was absolute. The dark was complete. I crawled to the farthest corner and pressed my spine against the frost-coated wall, the only thing that kept the panic from consuming me entirely. My mind produced images I couldn’t stop or name. I don’t know how long I was in

there.

When they dragged me out, I had no color left in my face.

Dante crouched down and touched my cold cheek gently. “Hopefully you’ve learned your lesson.

Behave, and you’re still my Donna.”

Camilla leaned in.

I caught her across the face with the back of my hand, knocking her flat, then turned and slapped

Dante hard enough to draw blood from his lip.

Two pieces of human garbage.

Camilla burst into tears. Dante touched the corner of his mouth, looked at the blood on his finger,

and his smile went flinty and cold.

“You still haven’t learned.” He stepped back. “Put her back in. Three hours this time.”

His men had me off the floor before I could react. Dante watched me struggle and smiled.

“She’s still got too much fight in her. Chain her wrists to the meat hooks before you put her in. Keep her off the floor. Hang her next to the frozen bodies of the traitors, let her think about her choices.”

The words rang in my ears like a bell struck too close to the skull.

Then I watched the largest man nearest to me get lifted off the ground by his collar, as if he weighed

nothing, and thrown into the wall.

A voice, deep and unhurried and absolute with authority, filled the corridor.

“Who gave you permission to touch her?”