Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 06

Betrayed on My Birthday, Crowned By A True Don Chapter 06

The word detonated in Dante’s skull.

Donna.

How was that possible.

Then he remembered what Elena had said, just days ago, casual and exact: “I’m going to become

another family’s Donna.”

He had thought she was bluffing.

Before he could speak, Raphael’s voice cut through the damp silence.

“Dante. Are you aware that Elena has a severe phobia of the dark?”

Dante was still processing, his gaze fixed on Elena and not moving.

One of Raphael’s men barked: “Are you blind and deaf, Caruso?”

Dante flinched back into the room. His lips had gone pale. “I know.”

He looked at me, his voice fractured. “Elena. But if you hadn’t beaten Camilla and caused her to— I

never would have-”

A stack of surveillance drives and a USB hit him square in the face, snapping his head to the side,

before he could finish the sentence.

“Play it,” Raphael said.

The screen came up on a wall monitor. The footage was from the safe house exterior, crystal clear, both image and audio.

Dante watched Camilla arrive at the door. Watched her mouth moving. Watched her lean close, her face bright with evident pleasure as she described each particular cruelty. He watched me shake with rage. He watched me push her once. He watched her get up and run, unharmed, face intact, and

drive away in a waiting car.

He watched her expression the moment she turned from the door: hatred, pure and unmasked, nothing like the victim she’d performed for him.

“And the finale.” Raphael knocked the table. The feed switched.

Camilla, alone. A heavy steel wrench in both hands. The sound of impact, against herself. Her own voice, low and distorted: “You miserable bitch. Let’s see him choose you after this.”

Whatever had been holding Dante together collapsed entirely.

He crossed the room and grabbed Camilla by the hair, wrenching her head back. “You told me Elena beat you into a miscarriage. Tell me the truth.”

She dissolved into shrieking tears, and with the tears came the truth.

“So what if I lied? So what? She can’t give you children anyway! I did it for you. If I hadn’t done something drastic you’d never have let her go. The night before last you were calling her name in your sleep. Do you think I don’t know? What did that woman do to you—”

Two slaps silenced her. One from Dante. One from Raphael’s man.

Raphael turned to me, and the composure he wore in front of everyone else dropped. “You heard everything. He knew exactly what you were most afraid of. He put you there anyway.”

“All these years, Elena. You never told me what you were swallowing down beside that man.”

He took my hand, very gently. “And all these years, I never stopped.” He paused. “Loving you.”

The underworld ran on power and violence, and the Lucchesi family had never been exempt from either. Succession wars, gang wars, illegitimate heirs fighting over the throne; Raphael had seen all

of it before he was fifteen.

That was the year he’d been ambushed. A rival faction and two half-brothers who wanted him gone had left him in an alley, barely breathing.

I had found him. I’d wanted to call the police, useless in his world and potentially fatal. He stopped me. I dragged him somewhere dark and quiet and spent everything in my pockets on a back-alley physician to keep him alive.

Raphael had never forgiven himself for how long it took to stabilize his family afterward. By the time he’d consolidated power and tracked me down, I had already met Dante.

He had always resented Dante’s head start, and even more what Dante had done with it. If he had

known what Elena was living through, he would have removed Dante from the equation years ago.

Dante’s face was hollow. He looked at me.

“Elena.” His voice was almost inaudible. “You can’t get pregnant anymore?”