9 Chapter 9
“No… impossible,” he whispered, shaking his head. “It’s a lie. Isabella, this is a punishment, isn’t it? I was wrong. God, I was so wrong!”
At that moment, the large screens in the banquet hall flickered and came to life, hacked. Dante’s own voice echoed through the hall, a recorded conversation playing on a loop.
“I’ll just deceive her this one time. Just let me have a little more fun at my club, and then I’ll marry her.”
“Find me some wilder ones! Three a day!”
It was the recording of him and his men.
Dante, panicking, signaled wildly for his men to shut it down.
In that instant, a memory slammed into him–the doctor’s urgent call, begging him to come sign the papers. To save their child. And he had hung up, sneering, “Who the fuck even knows if the kid is mine?”
“Isabella…” Dante fell to his knees, his face a mask of anguish and regret.
It dawned on him–that wasn’t just their child.
It was the last bond between them.
He frantically called the hospital, finally learning that I had collapsed in the emergency room that night from blood loss, that I had nearly died.
He could no longer contain his grief. A raw, animalistic cry of pain tore from him, echoing through the silent hall.
The guests, once respectful, now watched with open mockery. Some snickered quietly at the sight of the once–mighty Underboss brought so low.
Dante clutched the glass bottle, his right hand striking his own face in a brutal slap. Half his face. turned red and swollen from the force.
His parents, their faces ashen, tried to shut down the livestream, but Dante shoved them away.
“Don’t touch it! No one turns off the cameras!
“This is my fault. All of it! I’ll repent right here, in front of God and everyone!”
He paid no mind to his swelling face and knelt squarely before the camera,
“Isabella, I know you’re watching, I am damned! I shouldn’t have used such a pathetic excuse to hurt you!
“I was a complete asshole, but Isabella, I truly love you, I can’t imagine a life without you! “Isabella, come back! The Moretti family needs you as my wife! I love you! I’ve forgotten all those other women! I only remember us.
For the sake of our families, please, come back!”
9 Chapter 9
I scoffed.
This belated, pathetic repentance was cheap.
Without me, he had been living it up, as if nothing had happened.
Even after I blocked Carina, she sent me taunting messages from burner phones.
She would tell me how many times she and Dante had slept together in a day, or how he had unlocked new positions that were extra thrilling.
Or how he had left her exhausted and bedridden for three days.
She even described in lurid detail how she had drained him dry.
If he had just been honest and broken up with me before sleeping with a hundred other women,
I wouldn’t have thought him a scumbag. I wouldn’t have regretted loving him.
But he didn’t. He chose to humiliate and disgust me.
For six years, I had been so blind.
Dante was still weeping to the camera, but I had no desire to watch his performance.
I took Siobhan out for a meal at Boston’s finest restaurant.
But Siobhan wouldn’t let it go, relentlessly slamming Dante even as we ate.
When she mentioned he had cried so hard he’d nearly passed out, I just felt numb.
What was the point? The outcome was obvious.
His public apology had earned him nothing but a tidal wave of online abuse and a formal inquiry from his own family.
Even Carina was caught in the storm, vilified from all sides.
But Carina felt no shame.
Instead, she saw an opportunity.
She picked up her soiled gown and approached Dante with a smile. She knelt before him, confessing her love with deep emotion.
“Dante, my love, she whispered, kneeling beside him. “Isabella ran away. Let me take her place. She never loved you–she killed your child! This proves she was never worthy of you!”
Dante, lost in his private hell, looked up and saw her.
The tenderness he once felt was gone, replaced by an icy rage.
“You fucking whore!” he hissed, his band clamping around her throat. “This is all your fault! If
you hadn’t crawled into my bed, none of this would have happened!”
“If I had known Isabella knew the truth, I would have had a thousand chances to make it right.
Now, I don’t even know where she is?
Carina’s eyes bulged from the pressure, but he refused to let go.
The livestream, overwhelmed by the violence, was abruptly shut down.
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9 Chapter 9
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