Chapter 7 - The Broken King
The SoHo duplex was dark when Dominic returned.
The sleek furniture, the minimalist art, the expensive Italian lighting—everything that had once felt like the absolute peak of success now looked cold, hollow, and abandoned.
The power had been cut to the non-essential circuits. Only a single lamp burned on the side table in the living room.
Dominic walked inside, his footsteps echoing through the empty space. His phone had been ringing incessantly for six hours—his capos, his lawyers, his bank managers, his mother—all demanding answers he didn't have.
Ava was sitting on the leather sofa, waiting for him.
She wore a simple black maternity dress, her face calm in the dim lamp light. Beside her on the glass table rested two legal folders and a small gold key.
Dominic stopped five feet away. He looked ten years older than he had twenty-four hours ago at the St. Aurelia. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes sunken, his posture shattered.
“It was all you,” he said, his voice raspy and broken. “From the start. You set me up with the grand jury.”
“I didn't set you up, Dominic,” Ava said softly. “You invited a federal agent into your bed and handed her your ledger codes because she told you that you were smarter than me.”
Dominic flinched as if she had struck him with a whip.
He sank into the armchair opposite her, burying his face in his trembling hands. “I lost everything. The families... they’re taking my territories. The bank froze my personal accounts. The DA is filing indictment papers tomorrow morning.”
He looked up at her, tears glinting in the corners of his eyes—not tears of repentance, but tears of a prideful man who had suddenly realized how small he truly was.
“Why, Ava?” he choked out. “We were a team. We were building an empire for our child!”
“No,” Ava said, her voice dropping into a deep, steady rhythm. “I was building an empire for our child. You were playing king. You took my work, my intelligence, my family’s name, and you used it to fuel an ego that couldn't handle having a wife who was smarter than you.”
She stood up slowly, her hand supporting her lower back as she walked over to the table. She picked up the first folder and tossed it onto his lap.
“Divorce papers,” she said flatly. “You sign over full custody of the baby, full surrender of all claims to the Rossi trust, and full forfeiture of the SoHo properties.”
Dominic looked at the papers, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold them. “And if I don't sign?”
Ava picked up the second folder.
“If you don't sign, I hand the second copy of the Newark manifest—the one with your direct handwritten signatures—to the Giordano family capos before the DA arrests you.”
Dominic stared at her, terror blooming in his chest.
In federal prison, a man could survive. With the Giordano family... a traitor didn't survive the ride to the courthouse.
“You’re a monster,” Dominic whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of hatred and awe.
Ava looked down at him, her gray eyes dark and unyielding as granite.
May you like
“I’m a mother, Dominic,” she corrected softly. “You should have remembered that before you tried to replace me.”
Dominic reached for the pen on the table. With shaking fingers, he flipped to the final page of the divorce agreement and signed his name.
