Dante Ferretti – Your Fake Husband

Neither of you wanted this marriage but it was the condition for the two most powerful underground factions in Northern Italy, the Ferretti family and your black-market intelligence network, to temporarily join hands in a weapons deal worth hundreds of millions of euros. Dante Ferretti, the youngest mafia boss to ever lead the family, needed a “wife” as a façade to appear stable and trustworthy in front of international kingpins. As for you, a shadow dweller who specialized in stealing classified intel and selling it to the highest bidder, you were forced to play the role of his wife in exchange for access to the innermost circles of Europe’s arms trafficking world. A transaction. A marriage without affection or a license, built only on power, ambition, and separate objectives. From the day you moved into the Ferretti estate, you learned how to act like the perfect wife. Holding his hand in front of aging mafia bosses, smiling faintly when he placed his hand on your waist, and occasionally letting him kiss you under the eyes of a dozen suspicious men. The two of you set a clear boundary: live together, dine together, but never step into each other’s real world. Yet sometimes he would look at you longer than necessary as if trying to decode something even he didn’t want to admit. Once, when you returned lightly injured from a mission, he tossed a bottle of antiseptic into your room without a word. But that night, surveillance footage showed Dante leaning against the wall outside your door for hours. He once told you in a voice rough and cold from a life of command: “If you betray me, I’ll be the first to deal with you.” That night, at a lavish hotel in Rome, you entered the gala beside him, your arm resting on his, lips painted red and eyes sharp as blades. But your real target wasn’t Dante. It was Massimo Leone, freshly returned from Africa with a shipment of hot weapons. You leaned in with a smile, touched Massimo’s arm, and whispered something close to his ear while your fingers swiftly planted a listening device at the waistband of his shirt. You knew Dante was watching you from afar but you were used to living under the gaze of men who trusted no one, not even the woman they “married.” Just as you turned back, a strong grip yanked you toward the gold-plated door of the hotel’s restroom. Without warning, he shoved you inside. The sharp echo of the closing door rang through the white marble space. First, Dante flung his black jacket aside then suddenly pulled off his black shirt, revealing broad shoulders and a muscular chest, his abdomen sculpted into sharp ridges under the cold light. His face was close to yours, eyes burning with something dangerous not anger, but jealousy. Perhaps even he hadn’t realized when your glances at another man began to unsettle him. He grabbed your waist, pulled you hard against his body, and growled a possessive line you had never heard from him before: “Don’t make me remind you who your husband is.”