She Died Once: Now The Mafia Kneels
I was the Mafia Princess of the Wolfe family, engaged to Daniel Marino to unite our powerful syndicates.
But during a hit at a speakeasy, we were both gunned down.
As my chest was torn apart by a Tommy gun, I looked at my fiancé, expecting him to reach for me.
Instead, there was no despair in his eyes, only a twisted, selfish terror.
We both died on that floor, but the devil sent us back to the day of my hospital discharge.
Instead of finalizing our wedding, Daniel stormed into my father’s study.
"I won't marry Isabella. I want Celine."
He demanded to break our engagement, claiming he wouldn't be collateral damage in a Wolfe family war, and declared his true love for my sweet, orphaned adopted sister.
He thought shedding me would save his life, completely unaware that the assassination was orchestrated by his precious Celine.
In my past life, I didn't know she was a rat who sold our patrol routes to rivals and plotted my murder just to take my place.
If I hadn't died once, I would have believed her manufactured tears and comforted her.
But this time, I remembered everything.
I buried the vengeful woman I had become and let my face pale as I pushed open the heavy oak doors.
"Daniel? You... you want Celine?" I whispered, forcing a heartbroken tear to fall.
This time, I would play the fragile victim, just so I could orchestrate their absolute ruin.
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Chapter 5
Isabella POV
The sight of that carved silver box in Bianca's hands didn't just shatter the solemn silence of my father's study; it violently ripped me back in time.
Suddenly, I wasn't standing in the warm, whiskey-scented room of the Moretti Estate. I was back in that sterile, tomb-like room at the Falcone Sanitarium. The air smelled of bleach and despair. I remembered kneeling on the cold floor in a thin hospital gown, my mind already fracturing from the slaughter of my family.
“If your stubborn father hadn't been so blind, my son would have married Eva years ago,” Eleonora Falcone had sneered, her face twisted into a cruel, victorious smile. She had stood over me, tilting this exact silver box, dumping its contents over my trembling body. Dozens of letters had fluttered down like black snow. I had scrambled to read them, my heart shattering with every word. They were pages of Dante and Eva's sickening affair, their meticulous plots against the Moretti family, and their dripping, arrogant mockery of my naive devotion.
That memory had broken my mind then. But now, it was my sharpest weapon. I knew exactly what Eva kept hidden under her vanity.
"What is the meaning of this?" my father thundered, his voice pulling me back to the present.
Dante's face twisted into an ugly mask of pure, defensive rage. He lunged forward, pointing a shaking finger at Bianca. "You dare?" he spat, his eyes wild. "You insolent puttana (whore)! Don Marco, are you going to let a lowly Soldier insult a Falcone Underboss in your own home? I demand she be punished immediately!"
Eva didn't miss her cue. She scrambled backward, tears streaming down her pale cheeks as she looked at me with wide, betrayed eyes. "Izzy... sister, why?" she sobbed, her voice trembling with perfect, rehearsed agony. "I know you hate me for Dante's choice, but how could you orchestrate such a vicious lie? These must be forgeries! You are trying to destroy me out of jealousy!"
They stood shoulder to shoulder, a united front of righteous indignation, desperately trying to twist the narrative.
I didn't dignify their pathetic performance with a response. I simply met Bianca's eyes and gave a slight nod. "Show them."
Bianca stepped past Dante's threatening stance and placed the open silver box directly on my father's mahogany desk. Don Marco and my mother, Sofia, reached in. Their hands trembled slightly as they pulled out the thick stack of parchment.
I watched my parents' faces. The initial confusion morphed into disbelief. Then, as their eyes scanned the familiar handwriting—Eva's elegant, looping script and Dante's sharp, aggressive scrawl—a terrifying, suffocating rage took over. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"Don Marco, I swear to you, Isabella forged these—" Dante started, taking a desperate step toward the desk.
He never finished the sentence.
My mother moved with the lethal speed of a true Mafia Queen. She crossed the distance to Eva and delivered a resounding, vicious slap across the girl's face. The crack echoed through the study like a gunshot. Eva crumpled to the floor with a sharp cry, clutching her rapidly bruising cheek.
"You shameless beast!" my mother shrieked, her voice raw with a fury I had never heard before. "Animale senza onore! (Animal without honor!)" Tears of absolute disgust welled in her eyes as she looked down at the girl she had treated, protected, and loved like a second daughter.
Before Dante could intervene, my mother grabbed the entire silver box from the desk and hurled it violently at them. The heavy metal struck Dante's chest, and the letters exploded into the air, raining down on the two of them like a verdict of damnation.
"You want to marry?" my mother snarled, her chest heaving, her eyes blazing with a promise of absolute destruction. "Fine! I will give you exactly what you want! I will make sure every family in Chicago knows how you two traditori (traitors) trample on honor and crawl in the dirt!"
Eva lay paralyzed on the Persian rug amidst the scattered evidence of her sins. The fragile, innocent mask was entirely gone, replaced by the stark, suffocating terror of a rat finally caught in a trap.
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8.4
I had been locked in a freezing cellar for three days, starving and waiting for my husband, Marco, to save me.
Instead, the iron door opened to reveal his mistress holding a toddler with Marco's exact face.
Marco wasn't sterile like he had claimed for years. He just wanted my De Luca family trust funds.
With my husband watching coldly, his mistress and a corrupt doctor pinned me to the concrete floor.
"We're going to carve you up until you're unrecognizable, then throw you in the lake," she laughed.
The most chilling part wasn't the affair. It was the realization that my mother-in-law, the mafia matriarch I had served faithfully for three years, had personally signed my death warrant to save their crumbling empire.
The scalpel sliced deep into my cheek, permanently destroying my face as warm blood poured down my neck.
I had given them everything. I used my family's money to pay off his secret gambling debts and endured endless insults about being a barren wife, only to realize the entire family viewed me as nothing but a pig to be slaughtered for cash.
In the suffocating darkness, I didn't pray for mercy. I swore a blood oath.
I didn't die in that cellar. Saved by a legendary rival boss, I stood outside the Falcone estate three weeks later.
I pushed open the heavy oak doors to my own memorial service, the jagged red scar on my face silencing the hall.
"I'm afraid your plans to inherit my estate will have to be postponed," I smiled at my terrified husband.
7.1
For ten years, I disguised myself as my dead twin brother, fighting bloody mob wars to build the Falcone family's bootlegging empire.
When the war ended, I thought I could finally take off the men's suits and be Anya again.
Instead, my parents stole my victories to secure my father's power, demanding I disappear forever.
When I tried to expose the truth, my family dragged me into a soundproof basement.
My younger brother forced a metal funnel past my teeth and poured corrosive chemicals down my throat, dissolving my vocal cords into a blistered ruin.
They chained me to a freezing pier, whipped me bloody, and let the men I used to lead spit on me as a jealous traitor.
Then, under the guise of a family reconciliation dinner, my mother drugged my wine.
While I lay paralyzed but fully conscious on my bed, my brother took heavy iron pliers and crushed all ten of my fingers, bone by bone.
They wanted to ensure I could never hold a gun or write the truth again.
I had slaughtered for them, bled for them, and craved only their love.
In return, they pulverized my body and painted me as a hysterical madwoman just to keep the crown I had won for them.
The foolish girl who wanted a family died in that agonizing pain, leaving behind only a ghost.
Dragging my mangled, bandaged body into the rival Romano family's charity gala, I collapsed at the feet of their ruthless matriarch.
"I invoke the sacred code," I rasped through my chemically burned throat. "I demand a Vendetta."
8.2
I spent a year in a Swiss asylum, swallowing pills to cure a madness that didn’t exist.
It turned out the medication was just sugar.
My insanity was a script written by Jaxon Francis, the Don of New York, just so he could marry a Cartel princess without his ward getting in the way.
When I finally escaped and tried to leave him, his new wife staged her own kidnapping and framed me.
Jaxon didn’t ask for proof. He didn’t look at the evidence.
Instead, he tied a rope around my ankles and dragged me behind a helicopter across the jagged rocks of the Wastelands.
He held his wife close and watched as my skin was flayed and my bones shattered, believing he was executing a traitor.
He left me for dead in the dirt, convinced he had cleansed his empire.
I took the hush money his mother threw at me and vanished, letting Alina Phillips die in that field.
Three years later, I returned to New York as "Echo," the elusive artist the world was obsessing over.
At a charity auction, Jaxon bid one hundred million dollars for a painting of a woman’s scarred back, desperate to buy redemption for the ghost he thought he killed.
He chased me into the rain, begging for a second chance, swearing he had destroyed his wife for me.
I looked at the man who once held my heart and simply smiled.
Then I turned to the man standing beside me.
"Jaxon, meet Darwin," I said, linking my arm through his.
"My husband."
7.4
In a world ruled by guns, secrets, and blood-soaked loyalties, love is the most dangerous currency of all.
Alessandro De Luca is the unseen king of a global cartel-ruthless, brilliant, and feared across continents. His word is law, his mercy nonexistent. Until one night, one woman, and one mistake unravel everything he has built.
Elena Hart is innocent but unbreakable, drawn into the underworld through a debt she never created. She should have been collateral-nothing more. Instead, she becomes his weakness.
As enemies close in and betrayal festers within the cartel, Alessandro must choose between the empire crowned in blood... or the woman who threatens to destroy it.
Love was never part of the plan.
Survival was.
And in this world, both demand a price.
9.6
When the boy I had loved in silence for five years dropped to one knee and proposed to the very girl who had bullied me, the entire room burst into laughter at my expense.
"That fat, ugly Lydia Prescott actually thinks she has a shot with a mafia boss?"
In a single night, I became the city's favorite punchline. I fled in humiliation.
The next time I appeared, I had transformed. The weight was gone, and so was the ridicule. I stunned everyone into silence.
Miles Calloway begged through tears for another chance, but I simply slipped my arm through the arm of the mafia godfather beside me and smiled.
"Sorry. I'm married."
The man rumored to be cold-blooded and untouchable pulled me closer and declared with chilling certainty, "Lydia is my wife."
The room erupted.
Only my best friend, Annie Sinclair, gasped, "Lydia, you seriously locked down my dad?"
7.8
The fire that melted my skin should have been the end of my story.
I had been the perfect mafia wife. I obeyed my father, I married Dante Genovese, and I even birthed his daughter.
But in return, he locked us in a safehouse and lit a match.
He watched from behind a steel door as I burned to ash, all because his mistress, Sofia, was jealous and wanted me out of the picture.
My own brother had spiked my champagne to ensure I was too weak to fight back.
I died screaming, my lungs filling with smoke and the scent of my husband's betrayal.
But when I gasped awake, I wasn't in hell.
I was in the bridal suite at the Ritz-Carlton.
My hands were smooth. My skin was unblemished. The date on the digital clock burned red in the darkness.
It was three years ago.
It was the night of our engagement. The night it all began.
Dante was in the bathroom right now, humming contentedly as he washed off the scent of his mistress before coming to claim his "lawful prize."
In my past life, I waited for him. I let him take me, thinking my submission would earn his love.
Not this time.
I didn't run to the lobby for help. My family had sold me out.
Instead, I took the elevator to the Penthouse floor.
To the territory of the Outfit.
To the door of Matteo Moretti—The Butcher. The only man ruthless enough to make Dante tremble.
When the door opened, revealing a man with eyes like ice and a gun in his hand, I didn't flinch.
I fell to my knees and looked up at the monster who could save me.
"I am Elena Vitiello," I whispered, the drug in my veins setting my blood on fire.
"And I have a proposition."