From Discarded Wife To Scent Queen

My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory. Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell. To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron. "Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite." I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe. It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste. Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates. As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing. "Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!" Ivana. Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram. He hesitated for only a second. Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand. "I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen." He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart. As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped. I didn't call an ambulance. I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon. "I accept. Get me out." Chapter 1 Jenna Jarvis POV I lay in the cold center of a bed that cost more than my father's entire life savings, realizing my marriage wasn't just dying; it was being murdered by a ghost. The scratching at the door started at 2:00 AM. It was a sound like rats in the walls, but I knew it was something far more vermin-like than a rodent. Corbett shifted beside me. His body went rigid, the muscle in his arm twitching against my shoulder. He wasn't reaching for the gun on the nightstand-the heavy Glock 19 that signified his rank as the Underboss of the Ewing crime family. He was reaching for his robe. "She's here," he whispered, his voice thick with a concern that used to belong to me. I shut my eyes. I forced my breathing to slow, feigning sleep because the humiliation of witnessing this ritual for the nine hundred and eighty-sixth time was too heavy to bear with my eyes open. The door creaked open. Ivana stood there. Even through my eyelashes, the silhouette was unmistakable. She was draped in Elenor's silk robe, the peach one Corbett had bought for his late fiancée a week before the car bomb took her life. She clutched a pillow to her chest, looking small, fragile, and entirely calculated. "Corbett," she whimpered. "The nightmares. I see the fire again." Corbett was out of bed before the sentence ended. He went to her, his bare feet silent on the plush carpet, and wrapped his arms around the woman who made my life a living hell. "I've got you, Ivana," he murmured, his hand stroking her hair. "I promised Elenor I'd protect you. I'm here." He guided her toward the chaise lounge in the corner of our master suite. This was the sanctity of a Made Man's bedroom, a place where Omertà should have extended to the sheets, a fortress no outsider should breach. Yet here she was: the sister-in-law, the manipulator, the snake in the garden. I lay still, my fingernails digging into the Egyptian cotton sheets. Corbett Ewing was a man who commanded legions of soldiers, a man who could order a hit on a rival with a nod of his head. But in this room, he was a puppet dancing on the strings of a dead woman's memory. He settled her down, tucking a blanket around her legs with a tenderness that made bile rise in my throat. "Is she asleep?" Ivana asked, her voice raising just enough to ensure I heard it. "Yes," Corbett whispered. "Keep your voice down. She had a long day at the lab." "She smells like chemicals," Ivana said, wrinkling her nose. "It triggers my migraines." I didn't smell like chemicals. I smelled like L'Heure Bleue and the distinct, metallic tang of misery. I possessed the "Nose," a genetic gift from my father, the late Consigliere. I could smell the cyanide in a glass of wine from across a table, and right now, I could smell the distinct, cloying scent of Ivana's triumph. Corbett didn't defend me. He just sighed. "Try to sleep, Ivana." I waited until his breathing evened out, watching him sit in the chair beside her, guarding her sleep while his wife lay alone. I slipped out of bed, silent as a shadow. I retreated to the en-suite bathroom and locked the door. The click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world. I sat on the cold tile floor and pulled a burner phone from the hollow space behind the vanity mirror. One new message. The position in Grasse is yours. The lab is ready. Neutral territory. My protection is absolute. - K.S. Kain Solomon. The Don of the rival family. The man Corbett hated more than the Feds. The man who looked at me not as a piece of furniture, but as a weapon. I stared at the screen. Leaving a Mafia marriage wasn't a breakup; it was a death sentence. But staying here was a slow suicide. Suddenly, a scream shattered the silence of the suite. "Jenna! Get off me! Help!" My blood ran cold. I wasn't even in the room. I shoved the phone back into its hiding spot and unlocked the door, throwing it open. Ivana was thrashing on the chaise lounge, clutching her throat, her eyes wide with theatrical terror. Corbett was shaking her shoulders. "Ivana! What is it?" "She tried to strangle me!" Ivana shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the bathroom door where I stood, frozen. "She came out of the dark and choked me!" It was a lie so blatant, so physically impossible, that I almost laughed. I had been locked in the bathroom. The distance was twenty feet. Corbett turned to me. His eyes were dark, devoid of the logic that made him a successful racketeer. "Jenna," he growled, his voice dropping to that lethal register he used for enemies. "What did you do?" "I was in the bathroom, Corbett," I said, my voice steady. "The door was locked. You heard the click." "I heard you moving," he snapped. "She's shaking. Look at her." Ivana sobbed, burying her face in his chest. "She hates me because I remind you of Elenor. She wants me dead." "Apologize," Corbett demanded. I stared at him. This man, who had sworn before God and the Commission to cherish me. He was looking at his wife and seeing a monster, while holding the devil in his arms. "No," I said. "Jenna," he warned, stepping toward me. "She is fragile. She is Elenor's blood. Apologize for scaring her." "I didn't touch her." "Apologize!" he roared, the sound vibrating through the walls. I looked at his hand, clenched into a fist at his side. I looked at Ivana, who was peeking out from his chest with a dry, smirk-twisted mouth. The flame inside me, the one that had kept me warm through three years of neglect, flickered and went out. It was replaced by a cold, dark void. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice hollow. Corbett relaxed, thinking he had won. "I'm sorry," I repeated, looking directly at him, "that you are too blind to see you are sleeping with a corpse."