SHATTERED VOWS

--- SHATTERED VOWS A Mafia Suspense Romance By Brian Mutale Sampa --- PROLOGUE: The Lie That Became Real Three Years Before the Wedding The Rossi family owned Los Angeles. Not with signs or titles. With fear. With favors. With bodies that never surfaced. John Moretti—born John Smith, FBI—stood at the bar of a downtown nightclub and watched Domenico Rossi hold court in a VIP booth. Dom was thirty-three, handsome in a broken way, with eyes that smiled while his hands planned murder. His earpiece crackled. Marcus’s voice: “You’re clear. Make contact.” He ordered a whiskey, carried it to the booth. Two bodyguards stepped in his way. “I’m here about the trucking job,” John said. “Vinny sent me.” Dom looked up. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Vinny’s dead.” “Then I’m here to take his place.” A long silence. Then Dom laughed—a cold, curious sound. “Sit.” John sat. For three hours, he drank, lied, and laughed at Dom’s jokes. By midnight, he had a trial job. By morning, he was inside the Rossi organization. He told himself it was just work. Then he met Jacqueline. She worked at a bookstore the Rossis used to launder money—a small, dusty place in Silver Lake that Dom’s father had bought as a gift for a mistress fifteen years ago. Jacqueline was behind the counter, her dark hair falling across her face, her laugh filling the empty shop. John came in for “research.” He stayed for her smile. Three months later, they had their first date. Six months later, he knew he was in trouble. “I love you,” she whispered one night, her head on his chest. John kissed her forehead. “I love you too.” It was the first honest thing he’d said in years. But the lie was already too big. And Domenico Rossi had noticed. --- CHAPTER 1: The Morning Of The Wedding John Moretti had survived two assassination attempts, a knife fight in a burning warehouse, and six months of eating dinner with a man who had fourteen bodies in his past. None of that had prepared him for a bow tie. The tuxedo fit perfectly—black, tailored, paid for with money that wasn’t his. He stood in the hotel bathroom, staring at his reflection. The scar above his left eyebrow. The gray threading through his hair. The hollow look in his eyes that Jacqueline always mistook for intensity. She didn’t know it was exhaustion. The exhaustion of a man who had been lying for three years. His phone buzzed. Marcus: You dressed yet? The bride’s father is already crying. John smiled despite himself. He managed the bow tie on the sixth try. John: Crying from joy or the bar tab? Marcus: Both. Also—check your voicemail. Someone’s been calling all morning. No name. John’s smile faded. He tapped the voicemail icon. A voice he knew better than his own father’s. “Congratulations, Moretti.” Domenico Rossi. “I hope you’re not too busy to hear this. I just wanted to let you know—I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. After all…” A pause. Then the words that turned John’s blood to ice. “…I’m the groom’s family.” The message ended. John stared at the phone. Dom was in federal custody. Marcus had confirmed it yesterday. A holding cell in San Diego, awaiting trial for trafficking. He dialed Marcus. “The voicemail. Dom—he said he’d be at the wedding.” Silence. Then: “That’s impossible. I checked myself.” “Check again.” “John—” “Check again!” He hung up, his heart hammering. The mirror showed a man whose hands were steady now—the tremor gone, replaced by the cold focus of fifteen years of lying, fighting, surviving. He reached for his service weapon. Then stopped. No guns at the wedding. Jacqueline’s rule. You’re being paranoid, he told himself. It’s a recording. Someone f*****g with me. But the feeling wouldn’t leave. That cold presence at the edge of his awareness—the same feeling he’d had six months ago, seconds before Dom’s men tried to put a bullet in his skull. He grabbed his phone and sent a text to the one person he trusted more than Marcus. John: Something’s wrong. Keep Jacqueline close. Don’t let her out of your sight. The reply came seconds later. Nina: What do you mean? John’s blood ran cold. He’d texted Jacqueline’s maid of honor—Nina, Dom’s sister, a woman who claimed to hate her brother’s empire. A woman John had spent two years trying to turn into an informant. But the number he’d texted was Jacqueline’s. He checked the thread. The contact name was Jacqueline. But the last message—Nina: What do you mean?—came from a number he didn’t recognize. Someone had swapped the contact. Someone had been inside his phone. His thumb hovered over the call button. A knock at the door made him spin. “Come in.” Marcus Webb filled the doorway, his face tight, his phone pressed to his ear. He held up a finger, listening, then lowered the phone. “Dom’s holding cell is empty. They’re saying he escaped three days ago. No one told us because—” Marcus’s jaw tightened. “Because someone in the Bureau is helping him.” John’s phone buzzed again. A text from the unknown number. Unknown: Jacqueline is already with me. Come to the ballroom if you want to see her alive. --- John was moving before Marcus finished reading—tearing out of the room, down the hallway, toward the staircase. Marcus was behind him, radioing for backup, shouting orders. The ballroom doors were closed. John burst through them— And stopped. The ballroom was empty. No guests, no flowers, no music. Just a single chair in the center of the room. And in the chair, Jacqueline. Her hands bound. A strip of cloth over her mouth. She was alive. She was looking at him. He ran toward her. Three steps. Two. One. The floor dropped out from ---