The Mafia Heir Called Me a Gold Digger, Then He Lost Everything

The day Victor Moretti told me he was the Sicilian Don's heir, he also handed me a bill for everything he had spent on me over the years. "Elena, the Family will never let a woman who came to me for money become its next Donna." He pushed the ledger across the table to me. From the hot dogs we shared when we first got together to the condoms we used the first time we slept together. From the mattress-cleaning bill he had fronted to the hospital bill for my miscarriage. Thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars in total. Every single item, down to the cent. I looked at the man I had loved for five years, swallowed the taste of blood rising in my throat, and kept my voice low. "I have to settle my mother's surgery bill first. I'll pay you back next month." Victor frowned at once. "Camilla was right about you. Women who come from nothing, like you, always have an excuse. I should have listened to her. I never should have broken the rules and gotten involved with you at all. Fine. One month. But you'll pay the same interest rate the Family charges its borrowers." I gritted my teeth but didn't argue. I silently accepted the condition. But the hospital's billing desk had another shock waiting for me. A clerk told me the balance in my account was down to one dollar. The hundred and fifty thousand I had scraped together from every corner of my life to save her was gone. Shaking all over, I called Victor. His tone was as condescending as ever. "I hacked into your account. Camilla Marchetti wanted an antique jeweled necklace, and she was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars short." "It comes to more than what you owe me. Consider the difference payment for the damage you did to my Family's name." With two casual sentences, he had turned my mother's life into a bauble at the throat of a mafia boss's daughter. The call ended. Then a nurse behind me said, "Miss Hayes... you don't need to pay. Your mother... she just took her own life... She said she didn't want to be a bur 第1章 I buried my mother and came home in a daze. The moment I opened the door I saw that the living room had been done over. There were white tulips everywhere, and two bottles of red wine on the table. Victor was setting out the plates. He looked up at me and his face darkened at once. "So you finally decided to come home? You didn't say a word to anyone, and you've been gone for days. Elena, do you have any idea how worried I was?" He said he was worried, but there wasn't one call or one message on my phone. I didn't want to fight with him. I went into my room without a word and started packing. Victor's eyes went wide. He seemed unable to believe I was genuinely angry over the money he had taken from my mother's surgery fund. "Elena, are you done with this tantrum? You're really walking out over that hundred and fifty thousand? You should be in the kitchen making dinner. Maybe after we eat I'll forgive you." Coming from the Sicilian Don's heir apparent, a man who placed himself above everyone else, that counted as backing down. But the man I had loved was Victor, the penniless boyfriend I thought I knew. "I'm not walking out, Victor. I'm breaking up with you!" I threw my clothes into the suitcase, met his gaze, and enunciated every word. For a second Victor looked rattled, then he pulled himself back together. He frowned at me. "This is a bluff, isn't it? You threaten to break up so I'll beg you to stay, and then you squeeze more money out of me. Elena, you're doing exactly what Camilla predicted. She was right about you. You're a gold digger!" Even though I already knew what he had always thought of me, hearing him say it out loud still made my heart lurch. He hadn't been like this five years ago, when we first got together. Back then Victor told me his family was poor and that he might never be able to give me a comfortable life. I didn't care at all. He was gentle and thoughtful, careful and polite in everything he did, and he took extraordinary care of my mother and me. Once she got sick out of nowhere while I was away on a business trip. Victor found her in time and got her to the hospital. He spent every cent of his savings on her bills and sat by her bed for two full days and nights. He didn't call me until she was out of danger, because he didn't want it to affect my work. I decided then that this was the man for me. Rich or poor, I was willing to face all of it with him. What I didn't know was that Victor was really the Sicilian Don's heir apparent. He had played poor on purpose, afraid that I was after his position and his money. His act wasn't even that good. The arrogance in him kept slipping out. He looked down on my taste and complained that I had no manners. He kept bringing home expensive bespoke suits, watches, and jewelry, claiming he had found them at thrift stores. He assumed someone who had grown up poor, like me, wouldn't recognize luxury goods. He was right. I was blind with love, and I never once doubted him. Thinking about five whole years of suspicion and lies, I finally started to cry. The moment the tears fell, Victor panicked. He reached up and wiped them away. Then he pulled a delicate bracelet from his pocket and slipped it onto my wrist. "It's only a hundred and fifty thousand. Why are you crying? Come on, you've been saying for years how much you love this bracelet. I bought it just for you. Happy now?" I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist. It cost three thousand dollars, and I had wanted it for five whole years. Every time I passed the display window I would stop and look at it for a while. And every time, Victor would look guilty. "Elena, wait a little longer. When I have money, I'll buy it for you!" Now the wait was over, and I didn't want it. He could buy me fifty of those bracelets, but that still wouldn't bring my mother back. I was about to take it off when the door swung open. Camilla walked in. The antique jeweled necklace at her throat threw off light and made her look even more beautiful. That beauty had been paid for with my mother's life. "Elena, what are you doing here?" I looked at her coldly. "Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?" Camilla's face shifted into a wounded look and she edged behind Victor. "Why are you being so aggressive? I assumed you'd have the sense to leave. What Victor and I need to discuss is strictly confidential. No outsider can hear any of it." Sure enough, Victor stepped forward and shielded her behind him, his voice turning sharp. "Elena, don't take it out on Camilla. I invited her. Her housekeeper is on leave, so I told her to come eat here and we could go over Family business while we were at it." The excuse was so flimsy I couldn't help scoffing. A wealthy heiress without her housekeeper and a rich heir planning dinner together. It was obvious who they expected to cook. Camilla picked her moment. "Victor, I can't believe you've been living somewhere this small and filthy for a woman like her!" Victor went still for a second. Camilla kept going. "And after everything you sacrificed for her, she isn't the least bit grateful. She should pay you for all the emotional distress she's put you through." Victor's gaze slowly turned cold. She had clearly convinced him. "She's right, Elena. For five years I gave up a comfortable life for you. I put up with all this mess and filth, and I had none of the Family's men protecting me. I was exposed the whole time. You owe me compensation for that." He looked around, found a pen and paper on the coffee table, and held them out to me. "I know you don't have money. I won't make it hard on you. Just write me an IOU. Thirty thousand for the emotional distress will do." 第2章 "Mess? Filth? And... emotional distress?" I repeated his words under my breath, and something twisted in my chest. This house had been bought for Victor. We had looked at a lot of places together. Some were cheaper. Some were bigger. This one was smaller, yet it cost far more than the others because of its location. It was far more than my mother and I could afford. But after we had seen every one of them, Victor said in a subdued voice, "This house looks like the one I grew up in. Living here would feel like home." Because of that one sentence, my mother sold our old family house and bought this one. The mortgage was heavy enough to crush the two of us. Her illness got worse because she worked herself into the ground to keep up with the payments. I clenched my fists and tried to steady myself. But the tears came faster and faster, and my body started to shake on its own. Victor panicked again. "Elena, I was only joking. I didn't really mean to..." Camilla cut him off with a sneer. "Elena, do you think a few tears can erase everything Victor has suffered being with you all these years? Victor, the woman you picked is a real pro. She knows when to threaten and when to cry. She's even better at milking a man for money than I thought." The concern in Victor's eyes hardened into suspicion. "Elena, threats didn't work, so now it's the sob story? How did I never know you were this scheming?" Behind him, Camilla let a satisfied little smile show. Watching the two of them play off each other, I suddenly felt calm. Once people had decided to smear you, explanations and arguments meant nothing. I was done tangling with them. "Victor, I don't owe you anything. You're not getting a cent of that so-called compensation. What you're going to do is put back every cent of the hundred and fifty thousand you took out of my account. Every cent! Or I'll ask the Sicilian Don whether his heir apparent is so broke he can't repay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars!" Victor's face went ashen. "Elena, you're threatening me over pocket change like that?" Looking at that face, so familiar and so strange, I thought of what my mother had asked of me before she died. "Elena, Victor is a man you can trust your life to. The two of you should build a good life together." Back then he really was. When my fever wouldn't break, he sat up by my bed all night, changing the cloth on my forehead over and over. When my mother broke a bone, he cooked for her himself and simmered bone broth for her. What she never knew was that she had trusted penniless Victor, not Victor, the Sicilian Don's heir apparent. "Victor, let's break up." Saying those words out loud myself made me feel much lighter. His face changed and he grabbed my hand. "Break up? You're saying that to me? I don't accept it. Who are you to dump me?" He had always placed himself above me. As if being with me were a favor he was doing me. I simply met his gaze calmly. "Victor, in your eyes, I've always been some schemer trying to climb my way up to you. So go find a woman you think is worthy of the Don's heir apparent, and have the kind of romance you think he deserves." I didn't want to say another word to him. I picked up my suitcase, went around him, opened the door, and left. The door slammed, and Victor roared after me, "Elena, you'll regret this." I ignored the threat, and I cared even less about who he would be having dinner with that night. The moment he moved the hundred and fifty thousand dollars meant for my mother's treatment out of my account, we were finished. 第3章 I lay on the hotel bed and couldn't sleep. Going back over everything left me restless. For myself, and even more for my mother. We had both misjudged him. First thing the next morning, I went to the office and handed in my resignation. I had wanted out of that job for a long time. It was steady, but it didn't pay well. Even though I was the top performer, the promotions and the raises always went to other people. I put up with it because my mother needed treatment. Then I checked my pay records and discovered that only a third of my salary had ever been deposited into my account each month. The other two thirds had gone to an account I didn't recognize. I went straight to HR. "Why is my salary split between two accounts? Who owns the other one?" The HR manager, Dana Brooks, looked at me in confusion. "It was the boss's order. Elena, you really didn't know?" I understood less and less. "The boss? Why would he do that?" Then Dana told me Victor was the company's real owner. "Mr. Moretti told me to set it up on your first day. He said it was a fund for your future together, and that you were too proud to spend a cent of his money! Elena, be honest with me. Are you quitting because you're going to marry the boss and become the next Donna?" she asked, openly curious. I just stared at the account that wasn't mine. There was a full hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it. Back then, I had been trying to put together a hundred and fifty thousand for my mother's surgery. I borrowed from everyone I could, and of course I went to Victor. He turned me down without a second of hesitation. "I can't accept a girlfriend who's with me for money. Elena, a hundred and fifty thousand isn't much. I believe in you. You can handle it yourself." I had no choice. In the end I borrowed from a loan shark and picked up side jobs after work. At the worst of it, I slept less than three hours a day, and I passed out from exhaustion more than once. Victor watched all of it and never said a word about the money waiting in that account. His coldness and his selfishness cost my mother her life. And they cost me my mother and the man I loved. Before I could go find him, he found me. "I hear you're quitting? Elena, when are you going to stop making a scene? Dragging this out over that little bit of money only makes me more certain. You're a gold digger." Camilla came in behind him, craning her neck to show off the hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar antique jeweled necklace. "Elena, really, stop making a scene. If Victor hadn't given you this job, you and your mother would be out on the street by now. Quitting to force him to give in is not what I'd call smart!" She sneered at me as she looped her arm through Victor's, her eyes daring me to say something. What she didn't know was that I no longer had anything left to lose. I started to answer, and Victor cut me off. "Camilla's right. I gave you this job and I can take it away. For the sake of what we had, I'll let it go this time. But if there's a next time, I'll fire you outright. And I'll dock this month's pay as a penalty for disrupting the office." 第4章 From last night until now, every sentence I traded with Victor had done the same thing to me. It made me see more clearly that I had never known the man I had spent five years beside. This was the ugliness beneath the mask. Other coworkers heard the noise and crowded over out of curiosity. They knew nothing about any of it, so of course they took Victor and Camilla's side. "Elena, Mr. Moretti isn't just the CEO here. He's the Sicilian Don's heir apparent. A man with that much money and power would never be after your little bit of cash!" "Right, Elena. Your salary wouldn't cover one of Mr. Moretti's auction bids." "Mr. Moretti could marry into any of the other mafia families. He chose you, which proves he doesn't care about money at all." Victor was pleased with the support, of course. He let out a small sigh. "Enough, Elena. If you really don't want to pay me back, I won't force you. What can I do? I love you." Something spiteful flashed through Camilla's eyes. "Victor, you're too good to her. But a woman who'd wish an illness on her own mother for money would never command respect as the next Donna. She'd only reflect badly on you." The coworkers who had been muttering all turned and looked at me with open contempt. I opened my mouth to explain and met Victor's eyes. He was savoring it: pleased with himself, with just a trace of wounded self-pity. When he saw me looking, he arranged his face into concern. "All right, Elena knows she was wrong. I stopped caring a long time ago. Next time you need money, just ask me. I won't say no. After work I'll pick up a few things and we'll go see your mother together. I'll apologize to her properly." That sent the whole office into an uproar. They were furious with me, convinced I didn't know how good I had it. "Exactly. Mr. Moretti has that kind of money. If you want some, just ask." "It takes a monster to wish her own mother sick just to get money." "I never thought Elena was like this. I always thought she was just careful with money. I used to bring her food." "If I were her mother, I'd regret giving birth to her." Even the coworkers I had helped and the interns I had trained joined the rest in condemning me from their self-appointed moral high ground. My eyes moved slowly over every familiar, unfamiliar face, and stopped on Victor. I looked at him and said, slowly and distinctly, "Victor, we were together for five years. Why don't you tell everyone exactly how much of your money I ever spent? If you can't name a single cent you spent on me, give back the hundred and fifty thousand you took. Otherwise you'll be hearing from my lawyer, and so will this company." He called ours a love that had nothing to do with money. Yet money had poisoned it from start to finish. And Victor, the Sicilian Don's heir apparent, was known to everyone as a man who threw money around. Yet he had been counting every dollar I saved to keep my mother alive. Victor's face changed. His mouth opened, but he couldn't produce a single defense. Of course he couldn't. A man who made me pay for the condoms was never going to find a cent he had spent on me. I scoffed. Then Camilla shoved me hard from behind. I stumbled forward before I could catch myself, and my knees hit the floor. "Elena, stop trying to confuse everyone! How could Victor possibly owe you money? Keep lying and we'll call the police. If you actually go to prison, who's going to take care of that mother of yours while she lies in the hospital waiting for you to earn the money she needs? Apologize to Victor now!" Camilla still thought she could threaten me. But there was nothing left in my life to hold over me. Just then Victor's secretary, Grace Coleman, happened to pass by. When she saw him, she pushed her way into the crowd. She was holding a form. "Mr. Moretti, you still haven't signed off on Elena's bereavement benefit. I heard she'd saved the full cost of treatment, but someone transferred the money out without telling her. Her mother believed she'd become a burden to her daughter. She couldn't take the pressure, and she took her own life."