The Don's Forgotten Brooklyn Vow
At eighteen, Dante and I were fighting for scraps on the streets of Brooklyn.
I stormed a rival gang’s hideout alone and dragged him out, beaten to within an inch of his life.
We clawed our way out together, and I helped him rise to become the Don of the Falcone family.
Isabella, the Moretti principessa, proposed a marriage alliance to unite our families.
But he defied the entire Moretti family, telling the New York underworld that I was his one and only queen.
From that day on, Dante’s war with the Moretti family began.
They seized his docks; he beat Isabella's right-hand man half to death.
He annexed their territory; she lured him into a trap that nearly cost him his life.
Throughout their bloody feud, he kept me perfectly safe.
Everyone said he loved me more than life itself, willing to make an enemy of the Morettis, one of New York's five great families.
Until Isabella ran my car off the highway.
I was recovering in a private clinic when I stumbled upon a scene in the next room: Dante, his eyes bloodshot, slamming Isabella against the wall.
"You can mess with me all you want," he snarled, "but don't you dare touch her. You know what I'm capable of."
But the woman he had pinned against the wall simply traced circles on his chest, her laughter low and seductive.
"What good is a queen who's nothing but an empty shell, unable to even give you an heir?"
"Only I am worthy of being your queen!"
He didn't object. Instead, he kissed her savagely.
Only then did I realize the bloody war waged in my name was nothing more than a twisted game of cat and mouse between them.