My Don Mistook Survival for Greed Chapter 01

My Don Mistook Survival for Greed Chapter 01

I was a gold digger.

When I dated Dante, the young heir of the Italian Caruso Mafia family in Chicago, I always asked him for money.

So he dumped me.

He found himself a noble girl who never accepted expensive gifts.

Even his Capo and crew were sending their blessings.

[Congrats to Don Dante for getting rid of that gold digger.]

[The new Donna is way better than that Renee girl!]

Why did they have to drag me like that?

But I was busy.

Busy making money.

Busy paying off my lifelong debts.

Too busy to ask Dante why he’d sworn he’d protect me, then turned around and changed his mind.

Later on.

At my job—an underground jazz bar under the Caruso Family’s protection—I kept running into Dante.

He chased after me, begging.

“Renee, all my money is yours, my entire empire is yours. Please just come back to me, okay?”

No.

Hell no.

He fooled me once.

He wasn’t getting a second chance.

……

Twelve hours had passed since Dante announced his new girlfriend on Instagram when I saw his story.

I just got back from my tutoring gig.

Only people who could afford private tutoring lived in the fancy high-rises of the Gold Coast, which was a world away from the slum I called home.

After tutoring physics to some Northwestern prep student, I drove my beat-up Ford back to my basement apartment in Brownsville midnight.

In the dead of night.

Making a freshly-dumped college girl watch her ex show off his new romance—that was just cruel.

Yet I still couldn’t help it.

I clicked.

In the photo, Dante was holding hands with a gorgeous girl, grinning like he was on cloud nine.

Damn!

He actually managed to land Celina, the principal dancer from Joffrey Ballet.

The comments section shared a similar sentiment to mine, but not exactly.

Among all the congratulations and envy, I saw my name.

[Congratulations to Don Dante for dumping that gold-digging ex Renee!]

[Not only got rid of gold-digger Renee, but bagged an actual good girl!]

[Yeah! I was there today! Dante bought a whole bunch of Hermès and Van Cleef for the new Donna, and she sent all of them back! She even said, “Dante, I don’t want any of this. I only want you.”]

[Oh my god!]

[They’re perfect! I’m obsessed!]

[The new Donna is so much better! Miles above that Renee girl!]

Didn’t these people have anything else to talk about?

Why did they have to throw me under the bus like that?

Couldn’t they at least block me from seeing this?

Or… was this all meant for me to see from the start?

But they weren’t wrong.

All I ever did was ask Dante for money.

Six months together, and I’d asked him for three hundred grand.

They had every right to hate me.

I tapped open that announcement photo again.

Celina’s head rested on Dante’s shoulder, her smile glowing bright.

Nothing like the gold-digging mess I was.

My run-down basement had faulty wiring that shorted out all the time.

The lights flickered suddenly.

Great.

Shit.

Why did the flicker have to knock the tears right out of me?

It hit so hard.

Even my eyes couldn’t take it.

Why else would tears keep streaming down?

I couldn’t wipe them off no matter how hard I tried.

Hey, me. Didn’t we promise ourselves when we escaped that alley at eighteen—no more crying?

Why was I crying again?

So why was I crying again?

Damn you, love.