The Scapegoat Fiancée: I Am No Substitute

Alessia POV

The grease in the pot was stubborn, a cloying, gray film that coated my hands and smelled of old garlic and scorched onions.

"Scrub harder, Princess," the head cook barked, tossing another stainless-steel tray onto the metal counter with a deafening clang. "We don't pay you to stare at the bubbles."

"I'm scrubbing," I muttered, digging the steel wool into the metal until my knuckles turned white.

I was at Sal's Trattoria, a patch of neutral ground in the Bronx where the Five Families rarely conducted business because the marinara was too cheap and the fluorescent lighting too honest.

Sal, the owner, was an old man who knew better than to ask why a Salinas girl was washing his dishes for minimum wage. He had simply handed me a stained apron and told me to keep my head down.

It had been three days since I walked out of the estate.

My flight had been grounded due to a hurricane tearing through the Caribbean. I needed cash, and more importantly, I needed to stay off the grid until the runway cleared.

The back door swung open.

The kitchen didn't just go silent; it froze.

I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. I knew that heavy, commanding presence. I felt it in the way the air suddenly grew too thin to breathe, the oxygen sucked out of the room by a gravitational force.

"Out," a deep voice commanded.

It wasn't a shout. It was a low rumble, absolute and terrifying.

The cooks and dishwashers scrambled, abandoning their stations, boots skidding on the tile as they fled.

I kept scrubbing.

Swish, scrape, swish.

"Alessia."

Dante's voice was right behind my ear, a dark caress.

"You're getting suds on your suit, Don Moretti," I said, not pausing in my rhythm.

He grabbed my wrist, his fingers curling around my wet skin to pull my hand out of the soapy water. His grip was firm, possessive, scorching.

He turned me around.

He looked wrecked.

There were dark, bruise-like circles under his eyes that his aviators usually hid. In his free hand, he was holding a white bakery box.

"I brought you something," he said, his voice rough.

He placed the box on the dirty metal counter, right next to a pile of vegetable peelings, and opened it.

Coconut cake.

My throat tightened, a sudden, painful constriction. It was the cake we used to share on the fire escape when we were teenagers-before he was the Don, before I was the convict. Before the blood and the lies stained everything we touched.

"I remember," he said softly, watching my face. "It's your favorite."

I looked at the pristine white frosting, then up at him.

"You think sugar fixes this?" I asked, my voice trembling with suppressed rage. "You think a slice of cake erases seven years of sleeping on a concrete slab?"

"I'm trying, Alessia," he said, the mask slipping, his voice cracking with frustration. "I'm trying to fix this. But you... you ran away. You're washing dishes like a peasant. You are a Capo's daughter. You are my fiancé."

"I am a dishwasher," I said, wiping my wet, red hands on my apron. "And it's the first honest work I've ever done."

"Come home," he demanded, stepping closer. He boxed me in against the industrial sink, trapping me.

His body heat radiated against mine, a familiar fire that now only burned.

"Your parents are furious. But I can handle them. We can get married next month. I'll buy you a gallery. You can paint again."

"I sold my paints," I said flatly. "To buy you that armored SUV when the Russians were hunting you. Remember?"

He flinched as if I'd slapped him.

"I will buy you a thousand studios. Just... stop this. Come home."

He leaned in, his lips inches from mine. His scent-sandalwood and gunpowder-filled my senses.

For a second, just a split second, I wanted to give in. It would be so easy to be taken care of. To be the Don's wife. To be safe.

Then his phone rang.

The specific ringtone. The one for her.

He pulled back instantly, the spell shattered. He answered, his jaw tight.

"Chiara? What? Slow down."

I watched the color drain from his face.

"She's on the roof," he said to me, his eyes wide with panic. "She says she's going to jump if I don't come back right now to read her a bedtime story."

I stared at him. The absurdity of it was almost funny, in a dark, twisted way.

"Go," I said cold as ice.

"Alessia, I-"

"Go!" I yelled, shoving him hard in the chest. "Go save the princess. Go peel her grapes and read her stories."

"I have to," he said, looking torn, a fissure of conflict cracking his composure. "If she jumps... the truce with the Falcones... everything falls apart if the family looks chaotic."

"It's always politics, isn't it?" I said bitterly. "Or maybe you just like being her hero."

He looked at me with anguish, a silent plea in his eyes, before he turned and ran out the back door.

I stood alone in the silent kitchen.

I looked at the coconut cake. Perfect, white, sweet.

I picked it up and dumped it into the trash can, right on top of the fish guts.

Then I turned back to the sink and plunged my hands into the scalding water.