7 Chapter 7
7 Chapter 7
As for Sophia, for sowing discord, Dante ordered his men to hold her down and deliver ten slaps to her face. Both of her cheeks were swollen high. 1
Everything they had done to me had touched his most volatile nerve. They could never have imagined that Dante would completely destroy their previous alliance for me, his wife of only a few days from a marriage of convenience.
Dante paced slowly before them, each step a death knell to their trembling hearts.
They froze on the spot, their eyes wide and their faces deathly pale, not daring to even breathe.
“Dad, it doesn’t matter if he’s here. Katya is our family’s daughter…”
They were so consumed with venting their resentment on me that they completely failed to notice the murderous aura erupting from Dante.
My father considered it for a moment, then stopped objecting.
Dante… wasn’t a cripple?
“Honey, the Don is here today, let’s just drop it…”
My mother then took the leather whip from the butler’s hand and brought it down on
me without a moment’s hesitation.
“Viktor, how dare you lay a hand on him!” I snapped coldly.
At that moment, Dante’s grip loosened. Sophia collapsed to the floor, sucking in great gulps of air.
I had deliberately come into the house without any of my men, originally intending to provoke Sophia and let Dante see with his own eyes the hell I was living in at the Kovalenko house, so that he would stand up for me later.
A flash of silver light streaked past. Before Viktor could even touch Dante, his palm was pierced clean through by a sharp, slender dagger. He instantly grimaced in agony.
“Dad! Mom! I almost never saw you again!”
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7 Chapter 7
“Swoosh!”
“Even if it’s not for Sophia, just for the injury to my hand, we can’t let this bitch off the
hook!”
But I never thought that for my sake, he would reveal his recovery ahead of schedule.
“Dante, by doing this… won’t it affect the bigger picture?”
But Viktor, who had just recovered from the excruciating pain, was not ready to let it
The very instant my mother raised her hand, Dante shot up from his wheelchair, snatched the whip with his bare hand, and violently threw it aside.
“I am the Don of the Torrino family. If I can’t even protect my own woman, how can I maintain my standing in Chicago?”
My mother locked herself away, refusing to leave her room.
With that, she threw herself into my mother’s arms and began to sob quietly.
“Today, I’m going to give you a good whipping, so you’ll know exactly what you did wrong!” My father secretly glanced at Dante, whispering persuasively to my mother.
Dante’s reaction was not part of my plan.
As Dante and I left, Sophia’s wretched screams, mingled with my mother’s heartbroken sobs, still echoed from a distance.
She didn’t even take a moment to catch her breath. Pointing a finger at me, she looked at my parents with an aggrieved expression.
“It was Katya! I was just making small talk with her about what’s been happening at home these past few days, and she flew into a jealous rage! She tricked this cripple into trying to kill me!”
My father, of course, lost his shipping business, and his finances were on the brink of collapse.
Dante scoffed, pulling me into his arms as he looked down on them with utter contempt. “For all these years, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity. I had planned to keep up the act for a while longer, but I never expected Katya to be bullied and
7 Chapter 7
humiliated like this. The Kovalenko family… good, very good!”
My heart was a mess of complicated feelings. On one hand, I felt guilty for dragging him into this and using him; on the other, I was deeply moved by his love and devotion.
But Dante didn’t seem to care in the slightest. “If I hadn’t pretended to be crippled today, I’m afraid I would have never known that the Kovalenkos treated you like this…”
His eyes narrowed, and an oppressive aura descended upon them like the weight of a mountain. The vacant, dazed look he had before was completely gone.
Viktor’s company also fell victim to the Torrino family’s retaliation, destroyed before it even got off the ground. He now spends his days and nights lost in a drunken haze of debauchery.
My mother rounded on me, her voice filled with heartache and fury, “Katya! Why must you always go against Sophia? How could you treat her like this! She’s your sister! How could I have a daughter like you!”
Seeing Sophia’s face flush crimson as she struggled in agony, Viktor gritted his teeth and chopped his hand down, aiming for the back of Dante’s neck.
“My woman. Since when is it your place to punish her?”
