The Cheated Mafia Husband novel Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When I woke up, I was lying in a private ward.

The door wasn’t fully closed, and voices drifted in from the hallway.

“Mr. Delacruz, Mrs. Delacruz’s injuries are serious this time. If she finds out about Ms. Melendez again…”

It was Jeffrey’s personal physician, Luciano Nunez.

Before he could finish, Jeffrey’s cold, sharp voice cut through the air.

“Watch your mouth. Your job is to treat her, nothing more.”

He paused, his tone low and detached. “Geraldine has been in this business for years. She’s seen every kind of vicious trick. She’s an expert herself.

“Amelia isn’t like her. She’s clean like a blank slate. She would never stand a chance against Geraldine.”

Then, his voice dropped even lower.

“If she wakes up and starts causing trouble, bring her mother here. That’s her only weakness left. She won’t sit still if her mother’s involved.”

I gripped the bedsheet tightly, biting my lip until I tasted blood.

That night, years ago, when I helped him take down the head of New

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Jersey’s largest casino, he had told me, “Geri, from now on, no one in New Jersey’s underworld will ever lay a hand on you.”

He had said the same words, made the same promise of protection, but the person he wanted to protect had changed.

Once, I had been his most precious possession. Now, in his eyes, I was a dangerous, conniving woman who needed to be controlled.

Footsteps approached. I shut my eyes and pretended to have just woken up.

“You’re awake?” he said flatly. “We found out that it was that Brazilian gambler who got his hand broken last time for cheating at the casino.”

He tossed a folder onto the bed.

“Sign this settlement agreement, and they’ll give up control of Trenton.”

Trenton, by the sea, was New Jersey’s last clean haven, untouched by gambling or crime.

And then I remembered what he had said to Amelia. “I’ll build you a quiet place, a resort where you can relax.”

So all my pain and scars had just become the price he paid to build a gilded cage for his new lover.

My throat burned. “Jeffrey, when did you make this deal?”

Was it the moment he saw me being dragged away? Or long before

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that, when he had already decided to pave the road for her with my suffering?

He frowned, clearly irritated by my question.

I forced a smile and said nothing more.

The answer no longer mattered.

Maybe to ease his guilt, he spent the next two days staying with me under the pretense of handling business.

But his phone never left his hand. Even during meals, he would take photos to send to someone on the other end of the chat, his lips curving into a gentle smile I had never once seen before.

I stared at his side profile, and for a moment, my mind drifted back eight years.

The first time I met him wasn’t at the casino. It was in a dark alley.

He had been caught cheating, surrounded by seven or eight men with machetes. They dislocated his arm right there on the street.

I stepped in, helped him fight his way out, and dragged him back to my apartment to patch him up.

Later, Dad fell deep into gambling debt and was hunted down by drug traffickers, who killed him.

They came for me next, pressing a needle against my vein as collateral

for his debt.

It was Jeffrey who burst in with his men, saving me at the last second.

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By then, he had taken over a small casino and placed me behind the Golden Sparrow-where I became his invisible weapon, “The Scarlet

Healer.”

I helped him swallow one casino after another, eliminate one rival after another.

I knew my hands were stained with blood that could never be washed

clean.

But even if the whole world thought I was filthy, he shouldn’t have.

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