The Don’s Fallen Queen Chapter 08

The Don’s Fallen Queen Chapter 08

The words hit Dante like gunfire.

He staggered backward so hard he nearly lost his footing.

“Call a doctor,” one of his advisors urged immediately.

“No.” Dante’s voice came out raw. “Find the truth.”

His breathing turned uneven.

“All of it. Right now.”

He locked himself inside Sierra’s old room again and sat there clutching her diary in both hands, waiting.

By the time the reports finally came back, he could barely endure hearing them.

“Elena lied to you,” his consigliere said coldly. “She didn’t sell herself to save you.”

He placed the files down carefully.

“She attended those auctions because she was trying to seduce a coal billionaire. When he got tired of her and threw her away, his wife decided to have her killed.”

The room fell silent.

“She used you to protect herself.”

Dante sucked in a sharp breath.

Sierra had told him the truth before.

She’d laughed in his face. “You really think a mistress can sleep with one man and suddenly make an entire board fall in love with her?”

And he—

He’d wrapped his hand around her throat for saying it.

Called her filthy.

Shameless.

Suddenly, Dante couldn’t breathe.

“There’s more,” the consigliere said carefully. “Elena arranged the fireworks that burned the balloon.”

His expression hardened.

“She also leaked the photographs.”

“She paid people to spread them across the entire country.”

Dante didn’t react.

He sat there motionless, looking completely numb.

A long silence stretched through the room before he finally spoke.

“The wedding goes on as planned,” he said quietly.

His consigliere froze.

“Invite everyone.”

Dante slowly lifted his eyes.

“Three days from now… I’m marrying Elena.”

Church bells rang across the estate, and white silk ribbons draped every column in sight.

Inside a white Rolls-Royce, Elena sat beneath her veil with a faint smile on her lips.

With Sierra gone, everything had finally fallen into place.

She was about to become the queen of the Moretti family.

But the moment she stepped into the estate, every man in the room stared past her shoulder instead.

The projection screen on the wall flickered to life.

Elena’s naked body filled the screen.

Drunk.

Spread across a table.

Begging.

Performing for the same men she once swore she’d never touched.

Her scream tore through the ballroom as she lunged toward the screen.

Dante caught her wrist before she could reach it.

“I thought you liked having your picture taken,” he said softly. “Consider this my wedding gift.”

All the color drained from Elena’s face.

“Wh—what do you mean—”

“You’re not marrying me,” Dante said flatly. “You’re going back to the coal tycoon’s estate.”

She shrieked and clawed at him desperately.

“I’m pregnant! It’s your child!”

Dante paused briefly.

Then he turned away, expression completely empty.

“You’re right,” he said calmly. “My child shouldn’t be born in another man’s house.”

His voice turned cold.

“Cancel the wedding.”

“And send her there.”

Elena’s screams echoed through the estate as the soldiers dragged her away.

Dante remained standing alone in the middle of the wedding hall.

Everyone who hurt Sierra was dead now.

But Sierra herself was gone forever.

And without hatred to keep him standing, all that remained inside him was emptiness—and grief so deep it felt endless.

Three years later.

Rumors surfaced about a woman in the South who looked like Sierra.

Dante drove for two straight days without stopping.

He showed her photograph to everyone he met.

Finally, someone nodded.

“When they pulled her out of the water, she was barely alive,” the doctor said quietly. “She died at the hospital.”

Dante went silent for a long moment.

Then he asked hoarsely, “Where’s the body?”

The doctor hesitated.

“After the floods, many of the bodies were… difficult to preserve. Most weren’t kept long-term.”

Dante’s eyes darkened.

“Then where was she buried?”

No one answered.

The air in the room seemed to turn colder and colder.