Two Souls Own My Husband

Word spreads all across the underworld, a running joke everyone whispers: Wanna take down Don Dante?

Don’t waste your time digging up dirt on him—come straight for me instead. But good luck pulling it off.

First you’d have to cut through three layers of snipers posted at my side, blast your way past five full squads of close-quarters bodyguards, and dodge the armed attack helicopter circling overhead 24/7.

Once, I only got a tiny bug bite from a mosquito. That very night, three district capos vanished off the face of the earth without a trace.

And yet this man who’d burn the whole world down to keep me safe shoved me away on our wedding night.

He brought another woman into our elaborately decorated bridal suite and spent the whole night tangled up with her.

For every single minute they spent tangled together inside, I slammed my fists against that door right outside.

I stared at that face etched deep into my bones, watched him speak words that sounded totally foreign, hold another woman close—and I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it.

Where’d the man who once jumped in front of a bullet to shield me go?

I used to tend bar down in the gutter, stuck in a dive thick with stale sweat and cheap liquor. That’s where I found Dante, covered head to toe in blood, shaking like a leaf at the faintest pop of gunfire.

For months, I helped him work through his trauma. We started with distant firecrackers, moved up to blanks fired right beside him, until one day he sat safe in my arms and didn’t break down at the sound of live rounds.

We fell hard, promised each other forever, and he got down on one knee to propose.

“Kalinda, be the matriarch of the Winston family. Be my wife. I swear on my own life—you will never suffer a single hurt as long as I draw breath.”

Tears blurred my vision as I nodded yes.

Only hours earlier, I’d stood before the priest in a white diamond-studded gown Dante picked out himself, exchanging sacred vows.

“Kalinda, you’re the only person who ever makes me feel truly at peace.” His voice shook, eyes glistening bright blue.

When I said “I do,” the tears pooling at his lash line outshone every gem sewn onto my dress.

Night fell, stars spilling across the dark sky. I perched on our king bed strewn with crimson rose petals, listening to running water from the en-suite bathroom, heart hammering wild against my ribs. I finally had a home—with the man who loved me more than anything in this cruel world.

The bathroom door swung open. Steam fogged the air as he stepped out in a silky black night robe.

“Dante…” I smiled bright, stepping forward to wrap my arms around him.

The second my fingertips brushed his chest, he threw me backward with brutal force. I crashed hard onto cold marble flooring, my wrist slamming sharp against the nightstand’s corner, instantly swelling dark red.

I stared up in shock, only to meet eyes I barely recognized. 

Gone was Dante’s soft, loving, vulnerable sapphire gaze. In its place was something cold, sneering, heavy with unbridled revulsion—deep, shadowed, dead inside. 

A cruel smirk tugged his lips as he loomed over me, like I was nothing but rotting trash he couldn’t stand to look at.

“Don’t touch me with those filthy hands, cheap bar girl.” His tone cut like ice-cold steel.

“Dante… what are you saying? It’s me, Kalinda. We just got married today…Don’t you remember me?” I ignored the burning throb in my wrist, scrambling shakily back onto my feet.

“Dante? That spineless fool might’ve been head over heels for you, but I’m nothing like him.” He clamped a vice grip around my jaw, pressure so fierce I thought my bones would splinter. “Learn my name: Kane. I don’t get why that idiot married bottom-feeding trash like you, but you’re not even worthy of polishing my shoes around me.”

He tossed me to the floor again. My spine slammed the wooden nightstand, white-hot pain shooting through my back.

He smoothed his rumpled shirt without a single glance my way and strode out the bedroom door.

My mind went completely blank, cold dread coiling around my heart like a venomous snake.

Thirty minutes later, he came back.

And he wasn’t alone.

He brought Chloe—his childhood sweetheart, the girl who’d abandoned him the second she found out he panicked at gunshots.

She curled one arm through his, grinning sweetly at me like I was the uninvited intruder crashing their private moment.

“Kane, who’s she?” she purred in a sugary, sickly sweet voice.

“Just some meaningless house staff,” Kane murmured, lacing his fingers through hers with tender adoration I’d never once seen him direct at me.

They stepped straight into the bridal suite that was supposed to be mine, shutting the door firm in my face.

All night long, the sounds of their passion cut straight through my skull.

I stood right outside that door, slamming my palms against the wood until dawn broke. My hands split open, raw and bleeding; my throat turned hoarse screaming his name, yet that door never once opened for me.

The Dante who couldn’t bear to be apart from me was gone, vanished without a trace.

In his place stood this heartless, brutal Kane—and his old flame Chloe.

Overnight, my world crashed straight from paradise straight down to hell.

What the hell had happened to everything we had?