The Discarded Wife Is A Mafia Queen

Isabella POV

The soot-stained air of Grand Central Terminal bit through my thin coat. October 14th. I stood on the freezing stone steps of the private pickup zone, watching a parade of idling armored Cadillacs and Lincolns spirit away the city's elite.

None bore the Moretti crest. Marco, my husband’s driver, was absent.

It wasn't an oversight. Dante Moretti, the Underboss of the New York syndicate, didn't make mistakes. This was a calculated humiliation, a public stripping of my status as his wife. I pulled my sleeve down, concealing the jagged scar on my wrist—a permanent reminder of his "family law"—and slipped into the anonymity of the crowd like a ghost. I hailed a yellow Ford Model T cab. The driver, Tariq, didn't know he was carrying a woman whose very existence was being erased.

The private elevator to the Moretti penthouse on Fifth Avenue felt like a gilded cage ascending to the heavens. When the polished brass doors parted, I stepped into the foyer. The black-and-white marble floor was littered with colorful tissue paper and curling ribbons, a jarring contrast to the usual sterile perfection of my prison.

Behind the massive black lacquer screen—inlaid with a mother-of-pearl phoenix trapped in a cage—I heard them.

"Look, *Principessa*(Princess)," Dante’s deep, gravelly voice drifted from the living room. "Do you think she'll like it?"

"Auntie Adriana is going to love it!" Elena, my five-year-old daughter, squealed with delight.

I peered around the edge of the screen. Dante was holding a massive plush unicorn with a tacky pink ribbon tied around its neck. My breath hitched, the air suddenly turning to glass in my lungs. Three months ago, I had tried to buy that exact toy for Elena. Dante had slapped it out of my hands, snarling that *Moretti blood doesn't need such weakness*.

Now, he was gifting it to Adriana Rizzo—my half-sister, his mistress.