Too Late, Mr. Capo: Watch Me Shine

For our third wedding anniversary, I wore the thin floral dress my husband demanded and made his favorite traditional broth. I just wanted to be the perfect Mafia wife.

But halfway up a freezing mountain, he played a voice message from his secretary.

"Leave her on the roadside. Take her phone and coat. Let's see if she crawls back begging on her knees."

To my absolute horror, my husband actually pulled over, dragged me out into the dirt, and drove away.

He left me at nine degrees below zero. When I nearly died in the snow instead of begging, he launched a vicious smear campaign. He claimed I abandoned him to sleep with the groundskeeper who saved my life. He filed for a Syndicate divorce, demanding my dowry back and threatening to crush my father's business if I didn't surrender.

While I scrubbed diner floors to survive, his secretary moved into my penthouse and wore my diamond anniversary necklace. They thought the freezing cold and poverty would break my spirit. They thought I was just a fragile, disposable pawn who would eventually cave to his power.

But they didn't know I had the hidden dashcam footage of that night.

As I walked into the Mafia Tribunal, I looked at his arrogant face and prepared to show the Dons exactly what kind of coward my husband truly was.

Chapter 1

Nia POV:

Three months to the day he left me on the mountain, my husband, Franco Vitiello, stepped into the diner. He held a designer bag in one hand and wore a smile that did not touch his eyes, and I knew the truce was over.

If I did not dismantle his public standing here, in this room that smelled of garlic and simmering tomatoes, he would find a way to drag me back to his penthouse in a casket.

Franco Vitiello was a Caporegime in the most ruthless family in the city. He controlled the docks, the politicians, and until recently, me.

The fall of his bespoke suit jacket, the cold weight in his gaze-these were instruments of fear. Men bowed to him. Women whispered about his wild, dangerous charm. He was untouchable.

He stood by the entrance, the failing neon sign casting a buzzing, intermittent violet light over his hair.

"Antonia," he asked, his voice a low murmur that carried the threat of a razor's edge. "Are you done with this foolishness? I am here to take you home."

I stared at his outstretched hand. The memory of that night struck me not as a thought, but as a physical weight, pressing the air from my lungs.

We had been driving up a winding mountain road for our third wedding anniversary. I had spent two days preparing a traditional family broth for him, the chill of the evening already seeping through the thin white floral dress he had demanded I wear. I had wanted nothing more than to be the perfect Mafia wife.

Halfway up the mountain, a black SUV had pulled up close behind us, its horn splitting the quiet of the pines.

The dashboard screen of his phone lit up. It was a voice message in his 'Brothers in Blood' syndicate group chat.

Franco tapped the screen with an indifferent finger, expecting a routine status report, but instead, the saccharine voice of Mia, his secretary, filled the car's interior. A muscle jumped in his jaw-a flicker of something uncontrolled-before his expression settled into practiced annoyance.

"A wager, Boss," Mia purred through the speakers. "Leave her on the roadside. Take her telephone and her coat. Let us see if she crawls back to the city to beg on her knees."

The soldiers in the chat chimed in immediately with a chorus of coarse laughter. They called it a ruthless test of a wife's loyalty to her Capo.

I turned to Franco, a cold dread coiling in my stomach. "Who is Mia?" I asked, my voice thin and tight. "Why is she speaking to you this way?"

Franco kept his eyes fixed on the road. "A girl from the office. It is a joke, Nia. Nothing more."

But a moment later, he pulled the car over to the jagged edge of the cliff and killed the engine.

Before I could speak, he reached across the console, his fingers digging into the flesh of my upper arm, and dragged me out of the passenger seat.

The freezing wind hit me instantly, a sheet of ice against my bare skin. I stumbled on the loose gravel, my knees scraping raw against the sharp rocks as the thin fabric of my dress tore.

Franco leaned back into the car and grabbed my phone, my wallet, and my heavy winter coat.

Carlo, the soldier driving the SUV behind us, rolled down his window. "Boss, there are wolves in these woods."

Franco pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette, his face impassive in the brief flare of the flame as he looked down at me shivering in the dirt.

"Give her half an hour," Franco said, his voice devoid of all warmth. "She will be on her knees by the road, begging."

Mia leaned out of the SUV window from fifty feet away. "Call the Capo and confess your sins, Nia!" she shouted, her laughter a sharp, ugly sound in the darkness.

Franco crushed his cigarette under his expensive leather shoe. The heavy steel axe 'thumped' into a log by the shed, startling a raven from the pines. He did not look at me, but turned and walked back toward the cabin. His red taillights disappeared into the dark, swallowing me in the freezing blackness.

The scrape of a wooden chair leg on the linoleum floor snapped me back to the present. The thick, savory scent of roasted garlic and simmering tomatoes anchored me, a bulwark against the phantom chill of the mountain.

I took a deliberate step back from Franco, my shoulders squaring.

At that moment, Dante stepped out of the kitchen. He wore a faded apron over his broad chest, his arms lightly dusted with white flour. His dark eyes moved from my face and settled, hard, on Franco.

I reached out and hooked my arm through Dante's, the solid warmth of his body a grounding weight.

I looked calmly at the Capo who had tried to kill me.

"I am sorry, but my husband made me broth," I said, each word a carefully placed stone. "I have no time to entertain animals."

Franco let his outstretched hand drop. The arrogant smile vanished from his face.

"Who are you calling an animal?" Franco demanded, taking a step toward the counter.