He Chose His Ex, I Chose Vengeance

He Chose His Ex, I Chose Vengeance

Gavin

5.0
Comment(s)
12.2K
View
21
Chapters

On the day I was supposed to marry Giovanni Moretti, he publicly declared I was his brother's girl. He called off our wedding at the last minute. His ex, Sofia, had amnesia after a car crash, her memory reset to a time when they were still deeply in love. So he cast me aside in my wedding dress to play the part of her devoted boyfriend. For a month, I was forced to live as a "guest" in the Moretti estate, watching him dote on her and rebuild their past, all while promising he would marry me as soon as she recovered. Then I overheard the truth. Giovanni had the cure for her amnesia locked away in his safe. He wasn't trapped. He was indulging, savoring a second chance with the love of his life. He was confident I was his property, that I would simply wait until he was done. He told his men he could have us both. He used his brother's name to humiliate me. Fine. I would use his brother's name to destroy him. I walked into the office of the true power in the family, Don Domenico Moretti. "Your brother said I am your companion," I told him. "Let's make it real. Marry me."

Chapter 1

On the day I was supposed to marry Giovanni Moretti, he publicly declared I was his brother's girl.

He called off our wedding at the last minute. His ex, Sofia, had amnesia after a car crash, her memory reset to a time when they were still deeply in love.

So he cast me aside in my wedding dress to play the part of her devoted boyfriend.

For a month, I was forced to live as a "guest" in the Moretti estate, watching him dote on her and rebuild their past, all while promising he would marry me as soon as she recovered.

Then I overheard the truth. Giovanni had the cure for her amnesia locked away in his safe.

He wasn't trapped. He was indulging, savoring a second chance with the love of his life. He was confident I was his property, that I would simply wait until he was done. He told his men he could have us both.

He used his brother's name to humiliate me. Fine. I would use his brother's name to destroy him.

I walked into the office of the true power in the family, Don Domenico Moretti. "Your brother said I am your companion," I told him. "Let's make it real. Marry me."

Chapter 1

Isabella POV:

The day I was supposed to marry Giovanni Moretti, he publicly declared I was his brother's girl, a convenient lie whispered just loud enough for the whole Family to hear while his true love lay broken in a hospital bed, remembering only him.

The heavy oak doors of the chapel were shut. Guests murmured on the other side, their whispers a dull hum through the wood. My wedding dress felt like a cage of lace and silk.

An hour ago, I was ecstatic. Now, a cold dread was seeping into my bones.

The news had arrived like a bullet. A car accident. Sofia Mancini, Giovanni's ex, the one he never truly got over, was in critical condition.

Worse, she had amnesia. Her memory had reset to five years ago, a time when she and Giovanni were deeply in love.

He had rushed to her side without a second thought for me, his bride.

When he finally returned, his face was a mask of strained composure. He stood before me, not looking at my eyes, but at the wall just over my shoulder.

"The wedding is off," he said, his voice flat.

Don Domenico, his older brother and the head of the Moretti family, stood beside him. Domenico's eyes, cold and dark as a winter night, were fixed on me. He was the true power here, his presence a heavy weight in the room. Giovanni was just a Capo, a captain, but Domenico was the Don. His word was law.

"What do you mean, 'off'?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"Sofia... she only remembers me. The doctors say any shock could be fatal," Giovanni explained, his gaze still avoiding mine. "She thinks we're still together."

He was going to pretend for her. He was going to live in a five-year-old fantasy with her while I was cast aside.

"And me?" My voice was barely a whisper. "What about me, Gio?"

He finally looked at me, but there was no apology in his eyes. Only irritation. "Isabella, this is a family matter. It's complicated."

"We were about to become family," I shot back, a spark of anger cutting through the shock.

That's when he did it. He glanced at the guests waiting outside, then at his brother. A cruel, calculated idea flickered in his eyes.

"For now," he said, his voice loud enough for anyone near the door to hear, "Isabella is Dom's companion for the evening. A guest."

The words hit me like a physical blow. Not his fiancée. Not the woman he was supposed to marry. A guest. His brother's companion. He stripped me of my title, my dignity, with a few careless words.

I stood there, humiliated, while he walked away to play the part of a loving boyfriend to another woman. I was left alone in my wedding dress, a ghost at a wedding that never happened.

That was a month ago.

A month of living in the Moretti estate as a "guest." A month of watching Giovanni dote on Sofia, taking her to all our old spots, rebuilding their shared past while erasing mine.

Every night, he would come to my room and tell me it was temporary. "Just until she's better, Bella. Then we'll get married. I promise."

Lies. All of it.

I found the hope I needed in the most unexpected place: a hushed conversation on the evening news about a Sicilian family renowned for ancient herbal remedies. One in particular was said to restore lost memories.

My heart hammered against my ribs. A solution. A way out of this nightmare.

Clutching the information I'd frantically scribbled down, I ran to find Giovanni. His study door was slightly ajar. I was about to knock when I heard voices from inside.

"You can't keep this up, Gio," said Marco, his most trusted soldier. "The Don is losing patience. You know there's a cure."

My breath hitched. He knew?

"The Mancini family sent word. The Sicilians have the medicine. It could fix her memory in a day," Marco pressed.

A heavy silence followed. Then, Giovanni's voice, low and laced with a selfishness that chilled me to the bone.

"I know," he said. "I have it. It's locked in my safe."

"What?" Marco sounded stunned. "Then why haven't you used it?"

"Because for the first time in five years, she looks at me the way she used to," Giovanni confessed, his voice thick with a twisted kind of joy. "This is my second chance, Marco. I'm not giving that up. Not yet."

"This is insane," Marco argued. "What about Isabella? You think she'll just wait forever? She's your fiancée."

Giovanni laughed, a cold, arrogant sound. "Bella? She loves me. She'd never leave me. She has nowhere else to go. I'll give Sofia the cure eventually. After we've had some time. I'll marry Bella, I'll keep my position. I can have both."

His words were a basin of ice water poured over my soul. He wasn't trapped. He was indulging. He was savoring a dream at the expense of my reality, confident I was his property, a thing that would simply wait.

I felt the blood drain from my face. My body went numb, a deep, consuming cold spreading through my veins. I pressed my hand against the wall to keep from collapsing, my fingers digging into the plaster. Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not for him.

Every shared glance with Sofia, every tender touch I had been forced to witness, replayed in my mind. It wasn't an act of necessity. It was real for him. Our entire relationship, our engagement, what did it mean? Was it just a placeholder until something better came along?

My palm stung. I looked down and saw my nails had broken the skin, tiny beads of blood welling up. I didn't even feel it.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Giovanni.

`Stay in your room tonight. Sofia is feeling down. I'll be with her. Remember, you're Domenico's guest. Play the part.`

Play the part.

The words echoed in the frozen cavern of my heart. The coldness didn't just numb me. It hardened me. The grief began to curdle, twisting into a sharp, clear resolve.

Fine. I would play the part.

He wanted me to be Domenico's companion? He wanted to use his brother's name as a shield for his deceit? I would turn his lie into my weapon.

My fingers trembled as I pulled up my contacts. I scrolled past Giovanni's name to the one listed only as "Don."

My thumb hovered over the call button. I took a deep, shaky breath and pressed it.

He answered on the first ring, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "Isabella."

"I need to see you," I said, my voice surprisingly steady.

"My office. Now."

I walked into the lion's den. Domenico Moretti sat behind a massive mahogany desk, the city lights glittering behind him like a sea of fallen stars. He was everything his brother was not: patient, silent, lethal. His power wasn't loud; it was a suffocating pressure in the air. He watched me, his dark eyes unreadable.

I didn't waste time. "I have a proposal."

He leaned back, gesturing for me to continue.

"Giovanni publicly named me as your companion," I began, the words tasting like ash. "Let's make it real. Marry me, Don Moretti."

A flicker of something-surprise? satisfaction?-crossed his face before it was gone. He steepled his fingers, his gaze intense. "You want to marry me to spite my brother." It wasn't a question.

"I want to secure my position," I countered, my voice hard. "And solidify your family's alliances. A marriage between us does that far more effectively than one with a mere Capo."

He was silent for a long moment, the only sound in the room the ticking of a grandfather clock. His eyes never left mine, searching, assessing.

"And why," he finally asked, his voice a silken threat, "do you think I would agree to this?"

This was my gamble. My one and only card to play. "Because for the past two years, you've kept a photograph of me in the bottom drawer of your desk."

The air crackled. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. I had found it by accident once, while looking for a pen. A candid shot of me laughing in the garden, a photo Giovanni had never even seen. At the time, I had dismissed it as strange. Now, I understood.

He didn't move, but a slow, predatory smile touched his lips. It didn't reach his eyes.

"Alright," he said, the word landing with the finality of a death sentence. "We will be married. But understand this, Isabella. There will be no turning back. Once you are mine, you are mine forever."

A shiver traced its way down my spine. I had traded one cage for another, perhaps a more gilded, more dangerous one. But this one was of my own choosing.

"I understand," I said.

"Good." He stood, his towering frame casting a shadow over me. "And there is one more thing."

"What is it?"

"For the wedding," he said, his voice dropping to a low, possessive growl, "I want Giovanni to be the one to carry you to the car. To give you away. I want him to place your hand in mine."

Continue Reading

Other books by Gavin

More
Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

Mafia

4.3

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him—my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit—watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London—an exile disguised as a severance package—I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

The Alpha's Collared Pet: Rejected and Reborn

The Alpha's Collared Pet: Rejected and Reborn

Werewolf

5.0

For ten years, I lived for Dante Moretti. I waited for my eighteenth birthday, knowing that the Alpha of the Dark Nebula was my fated mate. But when the day finally came, he didn't claim me. He brought Isabella home instead. A warrior. A political asset. "Welcome home, my future Luna," he announced to the pack, shattering my heart in front of everyone. I was just the orphan girl who couldn't Shift. A liability. To ensure I knew my place, Isabella offered me a "gift." A collar made of pure silver. To a human, it is jewelry. To a wolf, it is acid. When she locked it around my neck, the metal sizzled. The smell of my own burning flesh filled the room. I fell to my knees, screaming, looking at Dante with tears in my eyes. I begged him to stop her. But he just looked at me, his face a mask of cold logic. "Wear it," he commanded, ignoring the smoke rising from my skin. "Consider it discipline. If you take it off, you leave the Pack." He thought he was protecting me. He thought making me look weak would save me from his enemies. He didn't realize he was killing the girl who loved him. That night, I didn't just take off the collar. I closed my eyes, found the golden thread of our Mate Bond in my mind, and snapped it in half. Dante collapsed in the hallway, clutching his chest in agony as he felt our connection die. "What did you do?" he whispered into the void. "I set you free, Alpha," I said. Then I ran into the storm. He thought I was a defenseless human. He didn't know I was the lost daughter of the Royal White Wolf bloodline. And when I returned, I wouldn't be kneeling.

You'll also like

HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION(An Erotic Billionaire Romance)

HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION(An Erotic Billionaire Romance)

Viviene
4.9

Trigger/Content Warning: This story contains mature themes and explicit content intended for adult audiences(18+). Reader discretion is advised. It includes elements such as BDSM dynamics, explicit sexual content, toxic family relationships, occasional violence and strong language. This is not a fluffy romance. It is intense, raw and messy, and explores the darker side of desire. ***** "Take off your dress, Meadow." "Why?" "Because your ex is watching," he said, leaning back into his seat. "And I want him to see what he lost." ••••*••••*••••* Meadow Russell was supposed to get married to the love of her life in Vegas. Instead, she walked in on her twin sister riding her fiance. One drink at the bar turned to ten. One drunken mistake turned into reality. And one stranger's offer turned into a contract that she signed with shaking hands and a diamond ring. Alaric Ashford is the devil in a tailored Tom Ford suit. Billionaire CEO, brutal, possessive. A man born into an empire of blood and steel. He also suffers from a neurological condition-he can't feel. Not objects, not pain, not even human touch. Until Meadow touches him, and he feels everything. And now he owns her. On paper and in his bed. She wants him to ruin her. Take what no one else could have. He wants control, obedience... revenge. But what starts as a transaction slowly turns into something Meadow never saw coming. Obsession, secrets that were never meant to surface, and a pain from the past that threatens to break everything. Alaric doesn't share what's his. Not his company. Not his wife. And definitely not his vengeance.

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Dorine Koestler
4.5

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book