The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 08

The Don’s Secret Wife Was Mafia Royalty Chapter 08

Capis

He arrived at nine sharp. Gray suit, no tie, no watch – and no armor I could detect. Katya sat to my right with her tablet recording. Grandfather had made himself scarce – “This is your war council, vnuchka” – but I knew he was watching from the study through the house system, probably with tea and the patience of a glacier.

“Before we begin,” I said, “understand something. I’m not doing this because lawyers advised it, or because my grandfather suggested it, or because I owe you anything. I’m doing this because my daughters deserve a father who at least tries. And so far, you haven’t tried at all.”

Dante opened his mouth. I held up my hand.

“I’m not finished.”

He closed his mouth. Something flickered across his face – shock, maybe. The Aria he remembered had never interrupted him. Never held up a hand and commanded silence. That Aria had been trained by three years of invisibility to take up as little space as possible.

That Aria was gone.

“You will not see Luna and Stella today. Not tomorrow either. First, you’re going to sit in that chair and answer every question I ask. Honestly. Completely. Without deflection, without your boardroom voice, without treating me like a problem to be managed. And if I believe – even for a second – that you’re lying, this ends. Permanently. Do you understand?”

Five seconds. Ten.

He nodded.

“Good. First question.” I sat back. “Why did you marry Camilla Russo while you were married to me?”

His jaw worked. His fingers gripped the armrests.

“Because I thought you didn’t matter.”

The words dropped into the room like stones into still water. Katya’s stylus paused. I kept my face neutral. I

had asked for honesty. I couldn’t flinch from it now.

“Explain.”

“The marriage to you was a formality. A dying man’s command. I resented it from the first day – not you specifically. The leash. The idea that my grandfather could control me from his deathbed the way he controlled me his whole life.” He exhaled. “And the Russo alliance was supposed to end a war before it started. Their territory, our routes. Camilla understood my world. She wanted what I wanted – the throne, the performance, the empire. Marrying her was strategy.”

“And bigamy.”

“My consigliere assured me the annulment had been processed.” His laugh was bitter. “He assured me of a

lot of things. He’s been on the Russo payroll for two years. I found out last week.”

“So you married the idea of a queen,” I said, “while your actual wife delivered your children alone.”

“Yes.”

“Say it properly, Dante. I want it on the recording.”

He looked at me, and something in him visibly broke and re-set, like a bone.

“While my wife nearly bled to death giving birth to my daughters,” he said, each word costing him, “I was on

wás

an altar in Palermo, marrying a woman who was already planning my funeral. Because I had decided – coldly. deliberately that the quiet girl in my guest room was nobody. Because if you were nobody, I didn’t have to feel what I was doing to you.”

The room rang with silence.

“And the night the twins were conceived?” My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that. “Did you even remember

it?”

A long pause.

“Every day,” he said quietly. “I remembered it every day for nine months. It was the only night of my life I ever felt he stopped, searching, and landed on a word I never expected from Dante Moretti – “safe. And it

terrified me so badly I never came home drunk again. I never let myself be in a room with you again. I thought

distance was control.”

He met my eyes.

“It wasn’t control, Aria. It was cowardice. Everything I did to you was cowardice wearing a crown.”

I sat very still, my heart slamming against three years of scar tissue.

“Next question,” I said. “Tell me about Camilla. Everything. Because my grandfather thinks she tried to have

you killed at that sit-down -”

“She did,” Dante said. “And that’s not the worst of it.”

He leaned forward.

“Aria – she knows where you live.”