No More His Callista

They say Mafia Don Luca loves me. He loved me when I was his brother's wife. He loves me now as he locks me in his estate and showers me with blood-bought diamonds.

But his love is a poison.

Four years ago, he put a gun to his temple, forcing me to save his bastard son while my four-year-old daughter was reduced to ashes on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now, he lets that same mistress smash my baby’s urn. He hands me over to a rival syndicate to keep his fake family safe.

He thinks he's making the hard choices to keep us together.

What he doesn't know is that I've already made mine.

Long Island, New York, the sprawling Byers family mafia estate.

The deafening roar of a helicopter rips apart the quiet night sky. The cabin door gets kicked open violently, and a squad of gun-toting bodyguards march a frail woman down the steps at gunpoint.

“Let go of me! Don’t you dare touch me!”

I thrash wildly, silver handcuffs digging raw, bleeding gashes into my wrists.

“Callista. You ran off for four whole years. Did you honestly think you’d ever slip out of my reach?”

A drawl echoes out from the shadows up ahead. Luca stands draped in a custom all-black overcoat.

He advances slow, a lone wolf zeroing in on its prey, then lunges forward and wraps a crushing hand around my throat. His grip’s brutal, nearly crushing my windpipe, yet his voice trembles beneath the rage.

“Four years. You’d rather scrub dishes in a rat-infested slum than come back to me. How much longer are you gonna keep punishing me like this?”

I tilt my chin upward, staring blankly at the mafia don who rules New York’s underground. Nothing but cold, dead emptiness lives in my eyes.

“Come back? Return to this hellhole soaked in Nancy’s blood?”

Luca freezes rigid, pupils blowing wide, his eyes instantly flooding red.

“It was nothing more than a horrible accident! I locked Sylvia away behind bars to atone for everything. What else do you want me to do?”

I jerk free of his chokehold with a bitter laugh.

“An accident? You forced me to sacrifice my own daughter for Sylvia’s brat, and you dare call that an accident?”

My mind snaps back to four years prior, the bitter wind whipping off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Rival gang the Vipers had strapped two masked kids to opposite sides of the span, each rigged with complex C4 explosive devices.

Back then, I was one of the military’s top EOD specialists. I bolted straight to the scene to assess the bombs.

The little girl’s countdown clock had just sixty seconds left. The boy’s had a full three minutes. By every professional rule, every logical instinct, I had to disarm her bomb first.

I’d barely grabbed my wire cutters when Sylvia drops to her knees, wailing at the top of her lungs.

“Luca, that’s Jasper! He’s your flesh and blood, your only son! You can’t let him die—save him first!”

My heart skips a beat. Her side profile is extremely similar to me.

Luca recovers from his shock in an instant, presses the barrel of his handgun firm against his own temple, red-rimmed eyes locked hard on mine.

“I only just found out about him, I’ll explain everything later. Just save Jasper. I’m begging you. If you won’t, I’ll pull this trigger right now.”

My hands shake so bad I can barely hold my tools.

He’s my late husband’s little brother—the man he’d given every piece of his heart to me after his brother, Marco, died.

Seeing my hesitation, Luca’s eyes flash with ruthless desperation.

Click. He flicks off the safety and presses the iron barrel so hard into his temple that the skin breaks.

"Save him, Callista! Or watch me die!" he roars.

"No!" I lunge forward, my trembling hands grabbing his wrist to stop him.

The sight of his blood shatters the last of my resolve. I had already lost Marco; I couldn't watch the only other man I loved blow his own brains out right in front of me. I caved.

Against every fiber of my being, I spin around and shakily snip the wires securing Jasper’s bomb.

The second the device disarms, the gangster cackles and yanks the hood off the little girl across the bridge.

I recognize that small, tear-streaked face instantly. It’s Nancy—my baby girl!!! Her mouth gagged tight as she sobs silently.

The gang leader roars with mocking laughter.

“Look at that! The niece you raised like your own means jack squat next to your own son. Luca! You wanna show your wife exactly what kind of monster you are?”

“Mommy—”

A tiny, broken cry carries across the wind.

A split second later, a deafening blast tears through the air, fire swallowing everything in sight.

I watch, helpless, as my four-year-old daughter dissolves into a cloud of blood and ash less than thirty feet away from me.

The scorching heat of the blast hit my face, but my blood ran completely cold. I had made the choice; the very hands I used to save his bastard were now dripping with my daughter's invisible blood.

I yank myself back to the present, my stomach churning with violent nausea.

“It’s only been four years since Nancy died. How could I ever stop hating you? I wish I could tear you limb from limb.”

“Enough!” Luca snarls, cut deep by my words, rage boiling over. He heaves me over his shoulder in one rough motion and storms toward the mansion’s front doors.

“You’re mine for life—alive or dead. Lock her in the master bedroom, and nobody gets clearance to let her out, not under any circumstances.”

The estate’s massive gate slams shut with a thunderous boom.

For the entire next week, Luca had been acting like a deranged zealot, trying to mend the irreparable rift between us with suffocating, grotesque displays of affection.

Racks of one-of-a-kind Parisian haute couture were flown in by private jets daily, turning my bedroom into a suffocating warehouse of luxury.

A legendary 50-carat pink diamond—auctioned for a staggering hundred million. Luca had placed it around my neck himself, his fingers lingering on my collarbone as though the cold stone could somehow warm the ice between us.

He'd commissioned a portrait artist to paint us together, hired a renowned chef to prepare every meal I'd ever mentioned liking in passing.

Fresh orchids appeared in every room each morning, their cloying sweetness making me nauseous.

He'd even tracked down the out-of-print children's books I used to read to Nancy, stacking them on the nightstand as though their presence could resurrect what he'd helped destroy.

But no amount of wealth could buy a dead woman’s forgiveness.

My suffocating, icy silence only drove him to the brink of insanity. That night, his fragile patience finally snapped.

"You're being stubborn." Luca said. "I'm trying to show you how much you mean to me."

"By keeping me prisoner?"

"Not a prisoner. My wife. Where you belong."

I finally turned to face him, and his eyes darkened with an intent I recognized too well......

"Luca, don't—"

But he was already backing me against the wall, one hand braced beside my head while the other slid down to grip my waist. "Four years, Callista. Four years I've waited for you to come back to me."

His mouth found the curve of my neck, teeth grazing skin. "Do you have any idea what that does to a man?"