The Lawyer Who Left the MafiaChapter 1
When I was eighteen, I gave myself to Dante Falcone like a gift, wrapped in blind devotion.
That night, tipsy and aloof, he slid my clothes off without hesitation.
The next morning, he looked utterly composed. "Adriana, I'll take responsibility for you." And he did exactly that.
Dante kept his promise. He kept me close, treated me well, and eventually married me.
I became a Falcone bride, blood-bound before God and the Family in a church ceremony the entire syndicate attended.
Everyone envied me for it.
I had risen from orphan ward to the inner circle, the sworn wife of the Falcone heir, the man the capos already addressed as Underboss.
Every feast-night dinner, every formal sit-down, I sat at his right hand. I believed in the dream, too.
Until that night, at the Family's annual tribute dinner at the social club on Mulberry Street. Dante lost control in public, throwing punches to defend his personal courier from a handsy associate who'd had too much wine. He made a scene.
The local heat showed up.
He got taken in. I bailed him out, using the Falcone name to keep things quiet with the bought precinct captain.
Outside the holding cell, I overheard him laughing with a friend, still half-drunk and unaware I was there.
His friend joked, "If you like her that much, just keep her on the side.
Adriana's obsessed with you. Even if it blows up, she wouldn't dare leave."
Dante let out a helpless chuckle. "She's different," he said. "She's not like Adriana… not that low.
She didn't throw herself at me." He continued, "She has nothing to do with me on paper. I couldn't make her look cheap."
So that's what he thought of me.
That I was cheap. From eighteen to twenty-eight, ten years of my life, I had lived as his wife, his woman.
But in his eyes, I had always been the desperate girl who threw herself into his bed.
A cold draft swept through the hallway outside the precinct, curling around my ankles and slipping beneath my coat like icy fingers.
I had been trembling before, but now the chill seemed to sink straight into my bones, freezing me from the inside out. My hands, already cold, felt numb as I clenched them at my sides.