Chapter 2

“Elena, I know you’re hurting, but you can’t force someone to love you,” Sasha says, her voice dripping with fake pity.

“Dom loves me now, and you need to accept reality instead of wishing your own husband dead.”

The parasitic bitch clings like a weak vine onto the half-naked body of the man who rules the city's streets.

The silk nightgown she is wearing happens to be an old piece I was planning to throw into the mansion's incinerator last week.

I take a deep breath.

My eyes, cold and entirely stripped of any remaining affection for Dominic, casually glance at the tactical calendar hanging on the wall.

Today is day one of his glitch.

“If you run out of condoms, there’s a fresh box in the second drawer,” I say calmly.

“And if you want to breed his heir, make sure to notify me in advance; I have a lot of family business meetings lately, and I’ll need to clear my schedule to sign the divorce papers.”

“Oh, and one more thing, Sasha—did you remember to buy life insurance?”

I leave that last sentence hanging in the air with a dark, heavy meaning.

Sasha freezes, staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind, her lips curling into a mocking sneer.

“Elena, have you gone completely insane from heartbreak? Is a man really worth losing your damn mind over?”

“Being this obsessed is pathetic, sweetie.”

This is the same "best friend" who used to rage and pull her gun out whenever Dominic stepped out on me in the past, swearing she would kill him for me.

Now, she looks like a victorious alley cat.

She arrogantly snuggles deeper into the chest of a married Don, radiating pure, disgusting pride.

I shrug carelessly, not giving a single shit, and tilt my head.

“It’s nothing, just a friendly warning—good luck surviving fifteen days from now.”

The moment I turn my back to leave, the master bedroom that once belonged to me and Dominic instantly fills with the loud, breathless sounds of their disgusting lust.

The man groans heavily, his deep voice laughing, “Elena is nothing but a political pawn from an arranged marriage, why do you care about her? My heart belongs entirely to you.”

Heh, this hereditary mental disease of the Lucchese family is truly fascinating.

The second he loses his memory, his brain automatically rationalizes me as nothing but a soulless business transaction.

Walking out of the heavily guarded villa, I pull out my encrypted phone and dial my consigliere, giving the order in a flat tone.

“I don’t care what strings you have to pull or how many millions you have to burn—within fifteen days, I want our official divorce decree finalized.”

And since he is the one breaking the sacred mafia vow, he will be stripped of everything and kicked out of my family's territories with absolutely nothing.

Of course, there is an even bigger surprise waiting for Dominic to personally enjoy once he wakes up from his little trance.

I pick one of the hundred safehouses registered under my secret aliases and drive over.

I crawl into bed and sleep peacefully until I naturally wake up the next morning.

But the moment I open my eyes, my muted phone is practically exploding with missed calls from his private line.

“Elena, where the fuck did you hide Sasha?!” Dominic roars the second I hit answer.

“Just because I don’t love your pathetic ass anymore, you’re cruel enough to hurt my fucking angel?!”

“You can’t force love, Elena, and if anything happens to even a single hair on Sasha’s head, I swear to God I will make you pay for the rest of your life!”

The sheer volume of his screaming makes my ears ring.

I roll my eyes in pure annoyance and prepare to hang up the call.

Suddenly, the reinforced steel door of my safehouse is violently breached with a loud crash.

Dominic, phone still gripped in his hand, charges into the room like a rabid beast.

Without a single word, he swings his arm and delivers a brutal, backhanded slap right across my face.

The entire left side of my face goes completely numb, and the corner of my lip immediately splits open, dripping dark crimson blood onto the floor.

“Dominic, you fucking hit me? For Sasha?!”

I let my body collapse weakly onto the floorboards.

Even though I can’t squeeze out a single real tear to save my life, I still force myself to look completely shattered, cradling my bleeding cheek and trembling as if my world has ended.

In the dark corner of the ceiling, the tiny red light of a hidden security camera blinks steadily.

Seeing me like this, the man shoves one hand into his tailored suit pocket, leaning over to look down at me like I'm a piece of garbage.

He lets out a cold sneer, “Are you really that desperate for my love? Elena, you are truly pathetic!”

Before the words even fully leave his mouth, he raises a hand and snaps his fingers.

His massive bratva-trained bodyguards instantly step forward, pinning me roughly to the hard floor with calculated cruelty.

“But kidnapping Sasha means you crossed my fucking line.”

“Beat her,” Dominic orders coldly. “Teach the Don's wife some fucking manners, and don’t stop until she tells us where Sasha is hiding.”

A rain of heavy, iron-like fists begins to pelt my body mercilessly.

In the midst of the pain, my mind flashes back to Dominic’s tenth memory glitch, when he almost gouged out my left eye with a broken bottle.

The exact second the fifteen-day countdown ended and he saw me covered in dried blood, he turned into a literal caged animal.

He locked himself in the mansion's concrete basement and brutally tortured himself for a solid week.

He broke his own arms and legs.

If I hadn't ordered the guards to stop him, he probably would have ripped his own eyes out with his bare hands just to beg for my forgiveness.

As the final heavy punch hits my ribs, my throat tightens, and I cough up a mouthful of thick blood onto the floor.

Suddenly, Dominic’s encrypted phone vibrates violently in his pocket.

The moment his eyes hit the caller ID, his face lights up with frantic excitement, and he answers it immediately.

“Sasha?! Baby, yes, I’m coming right now—don’t be scared, stop crying, it breaks my fucking heart.”

The man storms out of the safehouse in a desperate rush.

Inside the empty, ruined apartment, I am left battered and bleeding on the floor, but I slowly reach out to pull up my laptop.

The security footage has already finished syncing to my secure cloud server in real-time.

I edit the file, save it under lock and key, and type out the title.

Label: [A Gift For My Ex-Husband: Part One—Sent in 15 Days!]