"Father. I've decided to annul my marriage."
...
In my previous life, the moment I heard Dante had been made Boss of the Ferrante family, I bundled up my daughter and traveled across three state lines to find him. Gianna killed us both with poisoned cannoli.
My last thought before the darkness took me was regret. Not for dying, but for severing ties with my father, Don Enzo Castellano, all for the sake of marrying Dante Ferrante.
This time, the moment I opened my eyes, I sold the tenement, packed what little money it brought, and set out for the city.
But I was not going to the Ferrante compound.
I told the driver to take the long way around, and the car rolled to a stop before the iron gates of the Castellano estate.
The driver took one look at us, my daughter and me in our threadbare clothes, shuffling toward the Don's gates like a pair of beggars, and let out a snort.
"Takes all kinds. Now even beggars have the nerve to show up at the Don's door claiming to be family."
I ignored him. I took Valentina's small hand in mine, walked to the gate, and knelt.
"Father. Your daughter knows she was wrong."
My father was Don Enzo Castellano, Boss of the oldest and most feared syndicate on the Eastern Seaboard. My mother had been a Montecalvo from the old Sicilian families.
I was born the heir to the Castellano name, raised behind compound walls where men kissed my father's ring before they spoke. Then one autumn, during a drive through the warehouse district near the waterfront, I stumbled upon Dante Ferrante, the castoff second son of the Ferrante family.
His brothers had been tearing each other apart over the family's territory, and he'd nearly been killed in the crossfire. They broke his leg and left him bleeding in a back alley.
I felt sorry for him. So I saved his life.
Then, sharing those long days in a safe house while his bones healed, I fell in love with him.
When I swore I would marry Dante and no one else, my father was furious. His voice went cold as iron.
"If you marry that man, I no longer have a daughter."
Dante swore on his mother's grave he would cherish me for the rest of his life.
I stripped off my silk, left my father's ring on the kitchen table, put on a plain cotton dress, and became his wife.
And over the years, lulled by his sweet words repeated day after day, I withered into a gaunt, hollow-eyed woman in a waterfront tenement, jumping at sirens in the night.