EVA PINK

For three months, I thought I was the only woman who knew Fabiano’s soul. Then he saw my face — and decided I was worth less than the check he slid across the table. But it was all a clerical error. When we finally met and he saw my plain face, he realized I wasn't the glamorous mafia princess he thought he was talking to. He immediately severed our connection and forced me to help him court her instead, promising a blank check to save my dying grandmother from loan sharks in return. I swallowed my pride and did everything he asked. When my grandmother suddenly needed immediate brain surgery to survive the night, I crashed his VIP party to cash in his promise. Fabiano wrote the check, but his new princess snatched it, poured red wine all over the paper, and threw it in the trash. "You are a jealous, pathetic leech. You are nothing," she spat, laughing in my face. I stood there with my hand frozen in the empty air, looking at Fabiano. The man who once swore he would burn down the city for me just sat there on the leather sofa, watching in complete silence as my grandmother's only lifeline was destroyed. The foolish warmth I carried for him instantly died. I turned around, walked out into the freezing rain, and got into the armored SUV of his biggest rival. This time, I wouldn't beg for scraps; I was going to build my own empire.

My fiancé, Julian, was the Alpha heir, and our engagement was supposed to unite our powerful Packs. But hours before our grand ceremony, he coldly confessed that he had always loved my best friend, Seraphina. She orchestrated a flawless trap, hiring a drugged Omega and bringing a mob of reporters to "discover" me in my hotel bed. Julian didn't even let me explain. He looked at me with pure disgust, publicly breaking our engagement and letting the media brand me a worthless, cheating whore. Stripped of my title and abandoned by my family, I was left completely defenseless. That same night, a pack of savage Rogues cornered me in an icy alley. They ripped through my flesh, and my desperate screams were swallowed by the storm. As my blood seeped into the freezing pavement, I saw Seraphina in my mind, wearing the gown that should have been mine, holding Julian's arm. Until my last breath, I couldn't accept it. I had devoted my entire life to him and our Pack. Why was my loyalty repaid with such a vicious betrayal? Why did I have to die like a pathetic, wolfless joke just so they could have their happy ending? Opening my eyes again, I was back in the luxurious hotel bed, mere minutes before Seraphina and the reporters were set to burst through the door.

I was born wolfless, the defective daughter of the Nichols Pack. My only value was an arranged engagement to Julian Hayes, the powerful Alpha heir my family needed for an alliance. Then my stepsister handed me a glass of champagne at the pack gala. When I woke up the next morning, I was naked in a stranger's bed, covered in bruises and bite marks, with a terrifying Alpha's scent burned into my skin. I had no memory of the night before. Only one certainty remained. I had been drugged. I ran home in the stranger's shirt, desperate for protection. Instead, my fiancé looked at me with disgust, my stepsister took my place beside him, and my father decided I was still useful after all. Not as a daughter. As a bargaining chip. He sold me to Alpha Montgomery, a cruel old tyrant rumored to be seeking a bride. When I refused, my father gave me the one threat I could never ignore. "Marry him, or your brother's treatments stop." For Noah, my dying younger brother, I agreed. I even tried a forbidden purification ritual to erase the stranger's scent from my body. But before the healers could begin, a gray-eyed Alpha cornered me in the hospital and shut it all down with a single command. I thought he was only the Lycan King's ruthless enforcer. I thought the man I had to marry was an old monster waiting in the dark. I was wrong. On the eve of my wedding, my groom called. His voice made my cruel father bow in terror. His words made my blood turn cold. He was not old. He was not weak. He was the stranger from that night. The Alpha who had marked me. The Lycan King himself. And he whispered through the phone, "Tomorrow, you become my Luna. Everything you are belongs to me."

I was exactly three thousand words away from eviction when the heir to the New York underworld smashed my laptop and offered me a job instead of an apology. Dante Vitiello wanted me to write a memoir that would paint him as a saint. I moved into his penthouse, thinking I could keep things professional. But when his arranged fiancée, the daughter of the Chicago Outfit, arrived, she didn't see an employee. She saw a threat. She didn't just humiliate me; she leaked fake evidence to the press, branding me as a federal informant. I woke up in a hospital bed with the word "RAT" plastered across every gossip site. Sofia’s guards were stationed outside my door, blocking even the nurses. I was a liability. A stain on the Vitiello name. I knew how these stories ended. The Prince always chooses the Family. The Alliance is more important than the girl. I was packing my bag, shaking with fear, ready to disappear into the night to save him from ruin. But Dante didn't come to fire me. He walked into the boardroom where his father and the Chicago Boss were waiting for him to beg for forgiveness. He looked at the crown that was his birthright, then he looked at the gun on the table. He didn't kneel. He didn't apologize. He slammed his weapon down, shattering a hundred-year alliance and forfeiting his empire with a single sentence. "Keep the crown. I take the girl."

For three years, I was the one scrubbing the scent of blood from his hands and holding him while he screamed in pain. I was the one who taught Coleton Barron how to walk again after the car bomb nearly took his legs. But the moment he reclaimed his seat as Don, I became invisible. At his recovery gala, he draped his arm around Charly—the woman who fled when he was crippled—and laughed as he told his inner circle I was "just the hired help." It didn't stop at insults. When Charly faked a fall, he shoved me aside with enough force to crack my skull against the pool edge. When a bomb went off in a gallery, he looked me in the eye, saw me trapped under debris, and turned his back to carry her to safety instead. He even held a gun to my head because she lied about me poisoning his soup. His mother threw a check at me, telling me that tools go back in the box when the job is done. They thought I would beg to stay. They thought I was weak. I took the five million and vanished without a word. Three years later, I returned to New York. Not as his nurse, but as the fiancée of the only man Coleton fears. And when he saw the diamond on my finger, the King of New York finally realized he had thrown away his only lifeline.

I was a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony. "Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene." His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased. For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind. But then I found the truth. I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory. "If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy." He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage. He was wrong. I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared. "Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld. "I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's."

Tentu, saya akan menambahkan POV (Point of View) ke setiap bab sesuai dengan permintaan Anda, tanpa mengubah format atau konten lainnya. On the day my daughter turned five, my husband Carter finally came home-with his mistress and a child who looked exactly like him. He introduced me as the "mother of his child," not his wife, while my own parents fawned over his illegitimate daughter to secure a business merger. I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, leaving me with months to live, yet no one cared. The breaking point wasn't my illness, but seeing Carter slap our daughter across the face because she refused to give her first-place ribbon to his mistress's child. "She disrespected me! I have a right to discipline my own daughter!" He thinks I' m just a dying, discarded wife who will fade away quietly to make room for his new family. He' s wrong. I have three months left to live, and I' m going to spend every second of it burning his empire to the ground. My funeral will be the stage for his destruction.

At my husband's nephew's christening, I saw him across the ballroom holding a newborn with another woman. I was four months pregnant with his heir, but he was presenting her son as his own. He had built a criminal empire, and our marriage was a strategic alliance. But now, the men who toasted our wedding were congratulating him on another woman's child, their gazes sliding right past me. My mother confirmed my worst fears: he'd been paying for his mistress's apartment for months. His mistress, Selena, cornered me, her voice dripping with venom. "He chose me. And our son." The stress brought on sharp, agonizing cramps, but when my husband, Dante, rushed over, he took her side. "Calm down," he commanded. "You're making a scene." He accused me of being hysterical, of cornering his fragile mistress who had just given birth. Through a haze of pain, I watched him shield her from me, his wife, telling me to go home and "be rational." The public humiliation was absolute. In the lawyer's office, Selena slapped me, then knocked over her own baby's carrier and screamed that I had attacked her child. Dante believed her without question. As I collapsed from the pain, the last thing I saw was his back as he walked away with his new family. I woke up in the hospital. He arrived with his mistress, not to see if I was okay, but to demand I apologize to her. That was the moment the woman he married died. And in her place, someone new was born.

For three years, I lay dying from a poison, my only hope a single-dose antidote, the Moonpetal Elixir. My husband, Alpha Joshua, had played the part of a devoted mate, and I trusted him to save me. But through our fading bond, I overheard his secret command to the pack's healer. "Give the Moonpetal Elixir to Ella Campbell's mother." His reason shattered my world: "Ella gave me a son. A healthy, strong son." He had a secret family. The past three years of his loving care were a lie. He was just waiting for me to die. He even brought me their leftover soup, calling me "the sick wolf," and defiled my parents' sacred home with his mistress and their child. He planned to tell the pack my cure was stolen, turning my death into a tragedy for his own gain. He thought I was a weak, dying wolf. He had no idea what kind of storm he had just awakened. That night, I gathered the last of my strength and severed our mate bond. The pain was excruciating, but I walked out of that house of lies, leaving only my wedding ring behind. I would not die. I would live to watch his world burn.

My life with Andrew was a constant dance around the baseball bat, a premonition of my own bloody end that haunted my every waking moment. Then, I found my father-in-law, Mr. Scott, in a pool of his own blood on the kitchen floor, a deep gash on his forehead. Instead of calling 911, I manipulated my lifelong hemophobia and feigned terror, dialing Andrew' s cousin, Ethan, a kind paramedic, dragging him into a manufactured crisis. At the hospital, Andrew' s true colors bled through: he cursed me, refused to sign for his dying father' s emergency surgery, and screamed divorce, all while giggling with his mistress, Sabrina, in the background. He even tried to strangle me at his father' s funeral, abandoning the casket to rush to Sabrina' s side, believing her needs superseded everything. I wasn' t a helpless victim anymore; I recorded his abuse, exposed his heartless acts online, and watched, stone-faced, as the internet tore him apart, leading to his public humiliation and firing. But Andrew, fueled by rage and paranoia, wasn't done; he came for me, knife in hand, convinced I was conspiring to steal his inheritance with Ethan. When Ethan arrived and got stabbed trying to save me, something snapped inside him, and he furiously plunged the knife into Andrew, again and again. Ethan got prison time for manslaughter, but Andrew' s death wasn' t just a simple crime of passion; his wife' s whispered revelation at the funeral, a calculated confession of her own brutal past with Ethan, shattered my understanding of what truly happened that night. Now, years later, I am finally free, walking away from the ghosts and the blood, ready to build a new life for myself, but the true scope of the sacrifices made for my freedom still lingers.

The smell of burnt coffee and cheap vanilla filled my lungs, my hands shaking behind the counter of "The Daily Grind." Just moments ago, I was on a rooftop, the white of my wedding dress stained with grime, watching my fiancé declare his love for my best friend, Molly. My mother collapsed, her heart giving out from the shock, and I saw her fall before I turned and jumped. Yet here I was, alive, the calendar showing weeks before that catastrophic wedding day, the memory of my mother's lifeless body still fresh in my mind. Molly walked in, her fake-sweet smile exactly as I remembered, still utterly oblivious to the hatred now burning ice-cold in my stomach. She started her tale of a "Karmic App," claiming any man I liked would fall for her instead, her crocodile tears perfected. This was the lie she told me the first time, covering her tracks as she systematically stole every relationship and piece of joy from my life. I stared at her, the woman who orchestrated my downfall, consumed by a rage so pure it threatened to shatter me. Why was I back? Why was I given this impossible second chance, only to relive the agony that killed my mother and drove me to jump? Then it hit me: The app wasn't a curse; it was her weapon, and this time, I wasn't just back-I was going to be the one to erase her.

The cold garage floor seeped through my thin jeans as I lay hidden, listening. This wasn't a memory; it was a horrifying déjà vu, a second chance at the day that had once destroyed me. Inside, I heard my husband Kevin' s bitter voice, dismissing me as "simple," "always tired," and "smelling like the diner." His mother, Helen, chimed in, labeling me an "anchor, dragging him down" from his imagined football star glory. Then came the chilling words from my own twelve-year-old son, Justin. He openly wished Aunt Tiffany, the "friend" I'd helped through her divorce, was his mom, because her house didn' t smell like "fried onions." Tiffany' s smooth voice, dripping with fake concern, endorsed their narrative, twisting my double shifts into "neglect." I knew their entire sinister plot, every humiliating detail: Justin' s fake "runaway" act, Kevin' s performative call to the police and Child Protective Services, framing me as an unfit mother. They planned to file for emergency custody, force a divorce, and escape with Justin to a new "perfect" life with Tiffany, leaving me utterly ruined. In my first life, I was blindsided. I fought desperately, screamed, cried, and ultimately lost everything-my son, my home, my reputation. I truly died a broken woman, my soul consumed by an unbearable grief. But somehow, I was back. The crushing grief was gone, replaced by a terrifying calm and an ice-cold resolve. They still believed I was simple, weak. They were about to discover the monstrous mistake they had made.

The last thing Ethan Walker remembered was the bitter taste of pills. His life, once defined by Coast Guard rescues, had been systematically dismantled by his ambitious wife, Sarah, and her manipulative half-brother, Liam. They'd dismissed his debilitating leg injury, isolated him, and even sent their eight-year-old son, Ben, away, claiming it was for his "future." Drowning in pain and despair, discarded as a liability, Ethan saw no other escape. His final, icy thought: "Sarah, if there's another life, I won't love you again." Then, he gasped, bolting upright in his familiar bedroom. The early Alaskan sunlight cut through the blinds, and he saw the date: months before Liam' s arrival, before the crushing betrayals. He was alive. Again. The shock was a physical blow, but beneath it, a burning fury ignited. He' d believed in Sarah, in their life together, only for her to choose ambition and a snake like Liam over everything. How could she have let Liam twist their love, their family, into something so toxic? The memory of his shattered past, the agonizing spiral, the feeling of being entirely powerless and betrayed, hit him with brutal force. He wouldn't let it happen again. This time, he wouldn't be the wreckage left behind. His hand, trembling with cold resolve, reached for his phone. He was calling a divorce lawyer. When Sarah walked in, her composure already cracking, he stared her down, his voice cold. His fight for freedom, for Ben, and for his own redemption, began now.

At first sight, he realized that he would never forget that face. Nancy was the one who saved Mond’s life and the one to steal his first kiss. Without even a shred of information about the girl’s whereabouts, he spent half a year and all his resources looking for her. Little did he know, that he was the groom her family was forcing her to marry. As she was running away from that marriage, she sought his help and got inside his car, not knowing that she was sitting right next to the man who was, in fact, responsible for all her troubles.

I didn't mean to call my boss. I definitely didn't mean to leave a seven-minute voicemail of dirty secrets about him. Working for Ruslan Oryolov is the job from hell. The man is impossible-demanding, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. After eighteen months of fetching his coffee and swallowing my pride, all I wanted was one night of stress relief. But the billionaire CEO of Bane Corporation isn't just a boss from hell. He's the head of the Oryolov Bratva-and now that he's heard every secret I never meant to share, he's decided to claim me. His contract. His rules. His protection for my three orphaned nieces and nephews-the only reason I'm signing my life away to a man I should fear. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now he wants my soul.

I was three days away from marrying the Underboss of the Fazio crime family when I unlocked his burner phone. The screen glowed toxic bright in the dark next to my sleeping fiancé. A message from a contact saved as 'Little Trouble' read: "She is just a statue, Dante. Come back to bed." Attached was a photo of a woman lying in the sheets of his private office, wearing his shirt. My heart didn't break; it simply stopped. For eight years, I believed Dante was the hero who pulled me from a burning opera house. I played the perfect, loyal Mafia Princess for him. But heroes don't give their mistresses rare pink diamonds while giving their fiancées cubic zirconia replicas. He didn't just cheat. He humiliated me. He defended his mistress over his own soldiers in public. He even abandoned me on the side of the road on my birthday because she faked a pregnancy emergency. He thought I was weak. He thought I would accept the fake ring and the disrespect because I was just a political pawn. He was wrong. I didn't cry. Tears are for women who have options. I had a strategy. I walked into the bathroom and dialed a number I hadn't dared to call in a decade. "Speak," a voice like gravel growled on the other end. Lorenzo Moretti. The Capo of the rival family. The man my father called the Devil. "The wedding is off," I whispered, staring at my reflection. "I want an alliance with you, Enzo. And I want the Fazio family burned to the ground."

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

"You've been in denial for so long, Addison." His voice was husky and heavy with lust. "Do you really want me to stop?" I could not bring myself to say no. My best friend's stepdad was like the devil, making me find so much pleasure in sin. "You can't even say no," he chuckled, letting go of my hand finally. They moved to my face and he stared into my eyes, while his other hand still worked wonders between my legs. "Don't make me do this," I finally said, moaning the words out. "Please." "Tell me to stop one more time and I will," he mumbled. "Please, st-" I didn't complete my words because he captured my lips with his. *+*+*+*+*+*+* Addison Rodriguez never expected to feel any sexual tension or fall in love with her best friend's stepdad. As she surrenders to the sexual tension, her loyalty to her best friend wavers, especially when she finds out that he is secretly a Mafia Lord trying to hide in plain sight and that her best friend's life is in danger, her loyalty is tested even further. Would she reveal his secret to protect her best friend, or keep it to protect her love?

On my wedding day, my father sold me to the Chicago Outfit to pay his debts. I was supposed to marry Alex Moreno, the heir to the city's most powerful crime family. But he couldn't even be bothered to show up. As I stood alone at the altar, humiliated, my best friend delivered the final blow. Alex hadn't just stood me up; he had run off to California with his mistress. The whispers in the cathedral turned me into a joke. I was damaged goods, the rejected bride. His family knew the whole time and let me take the public fall, offering me his cousins as pathetic replacements-a brute who hated me or a coward who couldn't protect me. The humiliation burned away my fear, leaving only cold rage. My life was already over, so I decided to set the whole game on fire myself. The marriage pact only said a Carlson had to marry a Moreno; it never said which one. With nothing left to lose, I looked past the pathetic boys they offered. I chose the one man they never expected. I chose his father, the Don himself.

For three months, I thought I was the only woman who knew Fabiano’s soul. Then he saw my face — and decided I was worth less than the check he slid across the table. But it was all a clerical error. When we finally met and he saw my plain face, he realized I wasn't the glamorous mafia princess he thought he was talking to. He immediately severed our connection and forced me to help him court her instead, promising a blank check to save my dying grandmother from loan sharks in return. I swallowed my pride and did everything he asked. When my grandmother suddenly needed immediate brain surgery to survive the night, I crashed his VIP party to cash in his promise. Fabiano wrote the check, but his new princess snatched it, poured red wine all over the paper, and threw it in the trash. "You are a jealous, pathetic leech. You are nothing," she spat, laughing in my face. I stood there with my hand frozen in the empty air, looking at Fabiano. The man who once swore he would burn down the city for me just sat there on the leather sofa, watching in complete silence as my grandmother's only lifeline was destroyed. The foolish warmth I carried for him instantly died. I turned around, walked out into the freezing rain, and got into the armored SUV of his biggest rival. This time, I wouldn't beg for scraps; I was going to build my own empire.

My sister abandoned her newborn baby at a hospital and fled the country. The father was Dante, the absolute sovereign of the city's underworld. My mother frantically ordered me to hide the child to save our skins. But I refused to cower. I took the baby straight to the Mafia Don's fortress and demanded he take responsibility. For the first critical days of the baby's life, I was the only one there. I paced my rundown apartment with a sick infant, spending my last savings, while my sister was living it up in Vancouver with her offshore money. But months later, when Dante officially claimed the boy and placed us under his ultimate protection, my sister and mother suddenly came back. They put on a pathetic weeping act in Dante's office. "I just want my son back. I was just so scared," my sister sobbed, demanding custody of the Mafia heir. My own mother had actually helped her pack, advising her to dump the baby on me so she could escape. Now, seeing Dante's limitless wealth, they wanted to reap the rewards. They treated me like a disposable pawn, expecting me to quietly hand over the child I had saved. How could my own blood be so shamelessly greedy? But they underestimated me, and they underestimated the Don. Looking at the ruthless Mafia boss, I calmly exposed their treason, forcing his final judgment. This time, I was claiming my place.

I carried the first word I had spoken in ten years like a sacred offering, ready to surprise the man who had saved my life. But through the crack in the study door, I heard Josiah tell his Underboss that I was nothing but a noose around his neck. "Grace is a burden," he said, his voice cold. "I can't become Don while babysitting a mute ghost. Lexi brings power. Grace brings nothing but silence." He chose to marry the Mafia Princess for her father's trade routes, dismissing me as wreckage. But the true betrayal didn't happen in that office. It happened in the woods during an ambush. With bullets flying and the mud sliding beneath us into a ravine, Josiah had to make a choice. I was injured, trapped at the bottom. Lexi was screaming on the ridge. He looked at me, mouthed "I'm sorry," and turned his back. He hauled Lexi to safety to secure his alliance. He left me to die alone in the freezing mud. I lay there in the dark, realizing the man who swore a blood oath to protect me had traded my life for a political seat. He thought the silence would finally swallow me whole. He was wrong. I crawled out of that grave and vanished from his world completely. Three years later, I returned to the city, not as his broken ward, but as a world-renowned artist. When Josiah showed up at my gallery, looking shattered and begging for forgiveness, I didn't sign. I looked him dead in the eye and spoke. "The girl who loved you died in that ravine, Josiah."

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.