He routinely forgot my lethal seafood allergy, bringing me lobster, yet meticulously tracked Serena's menstrual cycle so she wouldn't touch cold water.
On the morning of our Syndicate wedding, my phone lit up with a final message.
"Skip the traditional bridal retrieval. I have to escort Serena on her run to keep her calm."
I had spent years living in a bulletproof cage, acting as a glorified maid while he gave his humanity entirely to another woman.
Why did he build impenetrable security networks for her, but an AI to shut me up?
I didn't cry, and I didn't put on my custom bridal gown.
Instead, I canceled the venue, uploaded his AI code to the underworld's gossip network, and boarded a flight a thousand miles away.
Let him marry his machine.
Chapter 1
Gianna POV
Five days before the ceremony that would make me the Queen of the New York Cosa Nostra, I breached my fiancé's encrypted server. Inside, I did not find state secrets or rival intel, but a custom AI bot, programmed to automate his replies to my text messages.
The monitor cast a sterile, blue geography across my hands as I traced the lines of code that served as my death warrant.
I used to be a computer science major. Two years into a top-tier program, before the Family decided my only value was as a bride. I never graduated. But sitting alone in a penthouse for five years with nothing but time and a chip on your shoulder sharpens certain skills. Dante knew this when he taught me to build ghost servers for the Syndicate. He just never imagined I would use those same skills to crack his own private vault.
Dante is a visionary.
Taking the Family at a mere twenty-two years of age, he dragged an ancient underworld into the modern era. He built impenetrable money-laundering networks and cyber-security systems that could humble a government. He also has a body count that makes rival Capos sweat when his name is spoken above a whisper.
He is lethal, brilliant, and a man whose quietest moments promise violence.
And for the last six months, I have been pouring my heart out to a script he had named, with no apparent irony, Domestic Low Priority.
I scroll through my phone, the screen a catalogue of my own vulnerability: the messages sent while negotiating neutral ground for our syndicate wedding. The texts sent from behind the curtain of a bridal fitting, surrounded by the silent judgment of armed Soldiers. The countless, foolish instances I had typed the words, I miss you.
His replies are always there, immediate and sterile.
"Understood."
"Stay safe."
"Stop causing drama."
I had believed him a man of few words, a man whose station as Boss of the New York underworld afforded him no time for sentiment.
Then I look back at the unencrypted folder on his server.
The folder is labeled with a single name: Serena.
Serena is his childhood ward. She saved him during a mafia war when they were kids, and since that day, he treats her like a sacred object.
I open the chat logs between them.
The messages are not short. They are novels.
He asks if she slept well. He tells her he is sending an extra guard because it is raining and she gets nervous in storms. He promises, with written tenderness, to pick up her favorite pastries from a bakery across town.
I kept scrolling. Then I stopped.
An exchange from the day before his resort trip with her.
Serena: Are you sure you should be gone this close to the wedding? Gianna might actually walk this time.
Dante: She won't. She lacks the courage.
Serena: Good.
A sudden numbness prickled at the tips of my fingers, traveling up my arms until I had to consciously remind myself to inhale.
I close the laptop, the lid shutting with a sound no louder than a sigh, just as the front door of the penthouse opens.
His footfalls, heavy and precise, announced his arrival on the marble floor before Dante walks into the living room. He is wearing a dark, impeccably tailored suit that seemed to absorb the light in the room. He smells of the cold night air, of expensive cologne, and of the ghost of cigar smoke from a Syndicate sit-down.
He stops abruptly when he sees me sitting on the sofa.
The architecture of his face hardened.
"Why are you awake?" he asks, his voice a low rasp of gravel.
"I was waiting for you," I say, my own voice a thread of sound in the cavernous room.
Dante loosens his tie and throws his suit jacket over a chair.
"Use the encrypted app if you need something," he says. "Do not wait up like a civilian. It is a security risk."
I look at his hands-hands that have ended lives and built empires.
"Do you find me too talkative, Dante?" I ask.
He freezes.
The very temperature of the room seemed to fall as he turned his head, the movement slow and deliberate, and fixed his gaze upon me.
"Why are you asking me that?" he demands.
"Just answer the question."
Dante lets out a harsh breath.
"Sometimes, yes," he says irritably.
"Give me an example," I push.
He walks over to the bar and pours himself a glass of whiskey.
"You text me about meaningless civilian trivialities," he says. "You tell me the florist changed the color of the roses. You tell me your dress is heavy. You report your entire life to me."
"Is that not what a husband and wife are to do?" I ask, forcing my throat to swallow back the metallic taste of bile.
Dante takes a drink and sets the glass down hard on the crystal tray, the sound a sharp crack in the silence.
"Running an underworld empire is exhausting, Gianna," he says coldly. "I deal with federal agents and rival cartels all day. I should not have to manage your emotional fragility at home. You need to develop some Mafia stoicism."
I look at him.
I remember the chat logs.
I remember Serena texting him that she chipped a nail, and Dante immediately sending a car to take her to a private salon without a word of complaint.
"Why is Serena never required to be stoic?" I ask.
I didn't fill the silence. The hum of the penthouse's air conditioning suddenly felt abrasive, grinding against the quiet.
Dante's expression darkens into a dangerous scowl, and he takes a step toward me.
"Did you stay up just to pick a fight?" he asks softly, the question less a question than a verdict.
I do not back down. Instead, I stand up and face him, the space between us charged and thin.
"Why do you use an AI to patronize me instead of acting like a man and telling me to be quiet?" I ask, my voice a tightly controlled wire.
The blood drained from Dante's face.
A conflict of guilt and a terrible, rising anger warred in the depths of his dark eyes.
"Did you breach my private server?" he demands, the words not shouted, but they seemed to press against the bulletproof glass of the windows.
I just look at him, offering no quarter.
He sighs heavily and rubs the back of his neck, the caught man vanishing behind the mask of the Don.
"The AI was a gift," he says smoothly, trying to change the narrative. "You always complained that I never use my tech skills for you. I built that specifically for you."
I look at the man I have loved for five years. I watched his chest rise and fall, counting the seconds it took for the absurdity of that excuse to settle into his rigid posture.
He built impenetrable security networks for Serena.
He built an AI to shut me up.
"I am going to sleep," I tell him, and I walk away, leaving him alone in the company of his machine.
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