My Mafia Husband's Split Personality

My husband, Dante, is the most feared Mafia don on the East Coast.

On our wedding day, a car bomb nearly killed him.

He survived. But the doctors told me the trauma had split him in two. He'd developed a second personality.

That other personality called himself Dario. He was false and cruel, his heart full of nothing but his first love, Bianca, and he treated me like an old piece of furniture gathering dust.

And the Dante who loved me was still a madman who would have given his life for me without a second thought.

To hold on to the Dante who loved me, I spent three years taking bullets for Dario and drinking the poisoned wine his enemies handed him.

But the man who loved me came back for shorter and shorter stretches of time.

Until the day the Luca family strung Bianca and me up over the edge of the harbor cliffs.

The sea wind cut to the bone, and the rope squeezed the breath out of me.

My husband stood at the edge of the cliff and lit a cigarette, restless. Then, at the fork between life and death, he chose Bianca.

The moment my body plunged into the freezing sea, I finally let go.

Because Dario doesn't smoke.

Day by day, Dante's heart had been drifting toward Bianca too.

So I stepped aside and let them have each other. And the untouchable Mafia don lost his mind.

They say he pressed a gun under his own chin and wept, begging me to give him back his wife.

•   *   *

For a day and a night I drifted in the icy water, rising and sinking on instinct alone, until I'd burned through the very last of my strength.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see was Dante running to Bianca.

The man who used to get red-eyed if I so much as scraped a finger had chosen someone else when my life was on the line.

The hypothermia was so bad I couldn't even feel my heart breaking.

When I woke up again, I was lying in the Moretti family's private clinic, the sharp smell of antiseptic filling my nose.

Dante's right-hand man, Sean, stood beside the bed, his eyes bloodshot, his face tight.

"Mrs. Moretti, you're finally awake. The boss locked down the whole East Coast. He's been out of his mind looking for you."

"He was out on the water searching for a day and a night. The second he knew you were alive, he passed out cold."

My traitorous heart gave a painful twist.

He was always like this.

Every time I was about to give up, he'd find some insane way to give me hope again.

After the explosion, the first thing Dante did when he got out of the hospital was bring Bianca home to our estate.

That night, I stood outside the master bedroom, pounding on the door while the sounds of the two of them enjoying themselves came through it.

Just when I thought Dante had abandoned me for good, he pulled every string he had, legal and otherwise, and grounded my flight to Europe.

He knelt on the tarmac in the freezing rain and cried like a child who'd lost the only treasure he had.

"Nina, I'm sorry. That wasn't me."

"If it ever happens again, just kill me."

He pressed the Browning pistol he'd carried for ten years into my hand. He even flicked off the safety for me.

I told myself he was just sick. And being sick wasn't his fault.

After that, every time Dario hurt me, Dante punished himself in the most brutal ways imaginable.

When Dario broke my leg for Bianca, Dante stabbed himself in the leg three times. When Dario slammed my head into the corner of a table and split it open, Dante smashed a bottle over his own skull.

Again and again I went back to him. I even threw myself in front of a gun to take a bullet for Dario, all to wait for the Dante who loved me to come back.

But this time, I wasn't going to wait.

The door to the room burst open. The man in the doorway had blue lips and a scruffy, unshaven jaw. When he saw me, his eyes lit with wild joy.

"Nina, you scared me to death... Thank God. Thank God you're okay."

He crushed me against his chest so hard it felt like he wanted to break me, waiting for me to cry and cling to him like I always used to.

I didn't.

I just gave a soft "Mm" and gently pushed him away.

He froze. A flicker of real panic crossed his face. "I'm sorry, Nina. I can't control that bastard."

"It's fine. I'm just a little tired." I forced the corners of my mouth up.

I didn't even have the energy to fight with him anymore. All I wanted was to get out of this hellhole.

He let out a quiet breath of relief and took my hand again.

I used to think the warmth of his palm was the safest thing in the world. Now it just made me feel suffocated.

I was about to pull my hand away when a soft, fragile voice came from the doorway.

"Dario, is that you?"

"Don't leave me. I'm so scared here by myself..."

Dante's face went cold in an instant. He looked toward the door. "Who told you to come here? If you're scared, stay in your room. Didn't I assign you a bodyguard?"

To keep his authority over his men, he only ever let himself look weak in front of me.

At his sharp tone, Bianca flinched, and her eyes filled with tears.

The hand that had been gripping mine so tightly let go all at once.

He was across the room in a heartbeat, gathering her protectively into his arms.

"You're such a handful. Nina fell into the ocean and even she didn't make this much fuss."

He swept Bianca up into his arms, slipped back into that gentle voice I knew so well, and looked over his shoulder at me.

"Nina, get some rest. Bianca's delicate, and she's had a bad scare. I'm going to take her back first."

Then he turned to Sean. "Keep an eye on my wife. Make sure she gets back to the estate safely."

Ever since the first time I'd tried to leave, he'd had me watched like a prisoner.

When I came back to myself, I slipped my backup phone out from under the pillow and sent a message to an encrypted number.

I'm done with him.