My Arranged Husband Is A Mafia King

CHAPTER: 1 POV: Gauri Sharma❗ The night my life was sold, the rain in Mumbai smelled like iron. It crashed against the windows of my father’s study, turning the world outside into a sheet of gray static. I stood there, eighteen years old, watching the storm tear the city apart. My reflection stared back at me from the dark glass. A girl in a red lehenga she never picked. A bride without a groom. A bargaining chip with a pulse. My hands were empty. They’d been empty since morning, when they took my phone, my passport, my voice. I was allowed to exist, but not to belong to myself anymore. Behind me, the scratch of a pen on paper was louder than thunder. My father signed my life away with hands that shook so badly I thought the pen would snap. The ink bled into the contract like a wound that would never close. Like my name was being crossed out of my own story. “She’s ready,” he said. His voice was thinner than the paper he’d just signed. It didn’t sound like Papa. It sounded like a man who had already dug his daughter’s grave and was just filling it in. The man at the desk didn’t look up. Damien Moretti. Thirty-two. Mafia King. My new husband. I’d seen his face on the news, always blurred, always next to words like “alleged” and “cartel” and “blood.” In person, he was worse. Tall enough that he made the room feel small. Built like violence had a favorite shape. His black suit probably cost more than my father’s entire life. His cufflinks were platinum skulls. He radiated a cold that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. It was the kind of cold that lived in mortuaries. “Collateral,” Damien said. His voice was low, bored, like he was discussing the weather or a stock price. He slid a gold ring across the polished mahogany desk toward my father. “That’s all she is. That’s all she’ll ever be.” Collateral. Not wife. Not woman. Not human. The ring caught the light from the desk lamp. It didn’t sparkle like a promise. It gleamed like a shackle. Like a bullet casing. There were no diamonds. No love story carved into the metal. Just solid, heavy gold. A marker of ownership. My father flinched at the word. I didn’t. I had no flinches left. I’d used them all up when they told me about the debt. Seven crores. A debt my father owed to the wrong people. A debt that bought my life because his wasn’t worth enough. “Gauri,” my father whispered. He still couldn’t meet my eyes. “Beta… put it on.” Beta. He hadn’t called me that in years. Not since I started getting good grades. Not since I became something he could trade. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling when I picked up the ring. The metal was freezing against my skin, but it burned anyway. I wanted to throw it back in Damien Moretti’s face. I wanted to scream until the glass shattered. I wanted to tell them I was a student. That I liked writing poems in the margins of my textbooks. That I was supposed to go to college in Delhi next month. Instead, I slipped it onto my ring finger. My left hand. The finger meant for vows. It fit too well. Like it had been measured in my sleep. Like fate had a cruel sense of humor and I was the punchline. Damien finally looked up. His eyes were the color of a winter storm over the Atlantic. Gray. Empty. Endless. They dragged over me once, slow and clinical. He wasn’t looking at a woman. He was cataloging inventory. Assessing damage. Calculating risk. “Take her to New York,” he told the two men in black suits standing by the door. His guards. Or executioners. I still couldn’t tell the difference. “Today.” That was it. No ceremony. No pandit chanting mantras. No pheras around a fire. Just a signature and a sentence. I was married the way countries declare war. On paper. In silence. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my mother. She was locked in her room, sedated by the family doctor they’d bribed into silence. “For her own good,” they said. I didn’t get to pack my books. My dog-eared copy of The Palace of Illusions. My notebooks full of half-finished poems about freedom. My favorite chipped blue mug that said “Writer” in faded letters. I didn’t even get a suitcase. Twelve hours later, I was in a private jet, staring at clouds that looked like prison bars. The leather seat was softer than anything I’d ever owned, and that made it worse. The air smelled like money and expensive cologne and silence. No one offered me food. No one offered me water. No one offered me a word. I was cargo with a heartbeat. I pressed my forehead to the cold window and watched India disappear beneath me. My whole life, my language, my sky—gone. In exchange for a ring and a contract I hadn’t even been allowed to read. The Moretti mansion didn’t feel like a home. Homes have warmth. This place had temperature control. It swallowed me whole the second I stepped inside. Marble floors that echoed my footsteps back at me, accusing. Oil paintings of men with cruel eyes and mouths that never smiled. Chandeliers that dripped crystal like frozen tears. Guards with guns at every corner who watched me like I was already planning to run. No one spoke to me. No one looked at me. I was a ghost in a red lehenga, haunting hallways that were built to keep people like me out. Until her. Elena Romano met me in the grand hallway. She didn’t walk. She glided, like the floor was beneath her notice. Blonde, sharp, dressed in black that made her look like a blade someone had taught to wear heels. Her eyes were the same gray as Damien’s, but hers had seen wars. And buried the bodies after. She looked me up and down. Her lip curled, just slightly. Not in disgust. In assessment. Like I was a new shipment and she was checking for defects. “Mrs. Moretti,” she said. The title sounded like a diagnosis. Like she was telling me I had a terminal illness and six months to live. “Welcome to hell.” She handed me a phone. Sleek. Black. Expensive. No apps. One contact saved. D. One message already sent, timestamped twenty