Chapter 2I Left the Don, Then Married the Head of the Five Families

Saying those words was like ripping open a ten-year-old scar, raw and bleeding.

But more than the pain, there was an indescribable sense of relief.

Cassian took the papers, read through them with a deepening frown, and then laughed. "Valentina, you were the one who turned down the original arrangement and begged to marry me. Do you really think you get to decide when this ends?"

He reached out and gripped my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. "You decided we would marry, and now you think you can decide we're done? Valentina, what do you take me for?

"Something you can toy with?"

Cassian stood bare-chested, and the scar on his left shoulder from the bullet he had taken for me by accident all those years ago had almost faded away.

Now, a fresh hickey marked the same patch of skin.

Bianca's heavy perfume clung to his skin as he moved closer.

The sharp scent made my pregnancy nausea surge. I shoved him away and doubled over, coughing and retching, unable to make out anything else he said.

Cassian stiffened for a moment, then pulled me upright. "What? Disgusted by me?

"When are you going to get over this jealousy of yours?"

My head was spinning from the smell, but I looked him dead in the eye and shot back, "You don't deserve..."

Cassian scoffed. "Valentina, you don't get to say that. I never needed this marriage. You're the one who barged into my life using the Moretti name. Because of you, I made enemies of the Five Families. I'm not letting you walk away."

With that, he tore the divorce papers in half. The scraps fluttered to the floor like snowflakes before my eyes.

"And don't think I don't know. Your Family won't take you back either. They froze your trust fund ten years ago. Your father hasn't picked up a single one of your calls in a decade. He's not going to turn on the Don of Philadelphia for a disobedient daughter."

He was right.

I had refused my father's arrangement to marry Alessio Bellini, the head of the most powerful of the Five Families, and insisted on marrying Cassian instead. My father had been furious.

He had even stripped me of the right to divorce.

He had issued a blackout order on me across the entire East Coast: unless the Moretti Family publicly took me back, the Commission would not recognize my separation from the Russos.

Outside the estate walls, I could only ever be Cassian's wife, never a Moretti.

Ten years ago, I hadn't seen it as punishment.

A love that had survived impossible odds had only seemed stronger to me.

But that very ban now gave Cassian's voice an even crueler edge. "Valentina, once you walk out of this estate, you have nowhere to go.

"You're nothing but a castoff with no family to return to."

I lowered my head and laughed bitterly.

What he didn't know was that my father had set one final, secret condition.

He had given me ten years to prove Cassian was worth it.

If I failed, all I had to do was admit to my parents that I had been wrong, and the Moretti Family would take me back.

Now, I had lost.

I accepted it.

I didn't argue any further with Cassian.

I simply gathered my belongings, walked to the door, and turned back. "I'll print a new copy of the papers and leave them in your study. Don't forget to sign."

This time, I wasn't bluffing.