The Mafia King's Betrayed Wife

I stared at the polished marble floor, watching the dark red wine spread like blood across its surface. The party guests stepped around me, their laughter echoing in the grand foyer of the Moretti mansion. Some deliberately avoided looking at me, while others watched with barely concealed amusement.

"Isabella!" The sharp voice of Mrs. Albright, the head housekeeper, cut through the chatter. "Clean this up immediately!"

I looked up at her, searching for any trace of the woman who had once slipped me extra food when I was hungry or offered a kind word when Dante was particularly cruel. Her eyes, once soft with pity, now held the same contempt as everyone else in this house.

"Yes, Mrs. Albright," I whispered, rising from where I'd been sitting.

She thrust a bucket and rag into my hands, the harsh scent of bleach burning my nostrils. "Don't just stand there. The Don is watching."

I glanced toward Dante, who stood across the room with his arm around Sophia's waist. He raised his champagne glass slightly in my direction, his lips curving into a smirk as he watched me kneel on the cold marble.

"Such a shame about the wine," Sophia called out, her voice carrying deliberately. "Though I suppose it's good training for our resident maid."

Laughter rippled through the room. I dipped the rag into the bucket and began scrubbing at the stain, trying to ignore the burning in my knees and the humiliation burning hotter in my chest.

---

"Your things have been moved," Dante announced two days later, not bothering to look up from his newspaper as I entered his study.

I froze in the doorway. "Moved? To where?"

"Where you belong now." He folded the newspaper and finally looked at me, his eyes cold. "The east wing servant's quarters. Sophia will be moving into the master suite tonight."

The words hit me like physical blows. The east wing servant's quarters were in the basement—cold, damp rooms reserved for the lowest-ranked staff.

"But... that's where the temporary help stays," I protested weakly.

"And that's all you are now." Dante stood, straightening his jacket. "Temporary. Until I decide otherwise."

He brushed past me without another word, leaving me standing alone in his study, the scent of his cologne lingering like a ghost.

---

The basement room was barely larger than a closet. A narrow bed with a thin mattress took up most of the space. The concrete floor was cold beneath my bare feet, and water dripped somewhere in the corner, creating a small puddle that reflected the single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I had just finished arranging my few belongings when my phone buzzed with a text message. Unknown number.

"Master bathroom. Now."

I recognized Sophia's style immediately—imperious, demanding, cruel.

It was 3 a.m. The house was silent as I made my way up to the master suite, my footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. When I knocked softly on the bathroom door, Sophia's voice called out.

"Finally. I was beginning to think you were deaf as well as stupid."

I pushed open the door and immediately recoiled at the smell. Vomit splattered the toilet bowl and floor, the acrid stench making my stomach turn.

"There was a hair in my wine," Sophia complained from where she reclined on the edge of the bathtub. She wore one of Dante's shirts, nothing else. "I've been throwing up for hours."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said automatically, the words hollow even to my own ears.

"Well, I'm not sorry about this." She gestured to the mess. "Clean it up. Dante says the smell is bothering him."

I knelt beside the toilet, trying not to breathe through my nose as I scrubbed at the mess with a brush I found in the cleaning cabinet.

"Harder," Sophia commanded, lighting a cigarette. "You missed a spot."

---

"More wine, Mrs. Moretti?" Marco Rinaldi asked during dinner a week later.

I hesitated, surprised by the title. It had been days since anyone had addressed me with any respect.

"Just Isabella now," Dante corrected sharply from the head of the table. "Or perhaps 'servant' would be more appropriate."

Marco's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. For a brief moment, something flashed in his eyes—disgust, perhaps—before he masked it with a polite smile.

"Of course, Don Moretti," he replied, but his gaze lingered on me a moment longer than necessary.

I felt a strange flutter in my chest. Was it possible that someone in Dante's inner circle might actually see his cruelty for what it was?

---

"Isabella!" Dante's voice boomed through the mansion. "We have guests for dinner!"

I hurried to the dining room, where Dante sat at the head of the table with a woman I'd never seen before draped across his lap. Her red dress was barely more than lingerie, her laughter shrill as Dante whispered something in her ear.

"Ah, here she is," Dante announced as I entered. "My former wife."

The woman looked me up and down, her lips curling into a sneer. "So this is the famous Isabella Moretti? She looks like a ghost."

"Serve our guests," Dante ordered me, ignoring her comment. "And make sure their glasses stay full."

I moved around the table with the wine bottle, feeling their eyes on me—assessing, judging, mocking.

"She doesn't even have tits," one of them whispered loudly enough for me to hear.

Another laughed. "Maybe that's why he replaced her."

As I poured their wine, I felt something shift inside me—a tiny spark of anger igniting in the cold emptiness that had become my heart.

I caught Marco watching me again from across the table, his expression unreadable. But this time, when our eyes met briefly, he gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

And for the first time in months, I wondered if I wasn't entirely alone after all.