The Canary Who Learned To Fly
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.
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Chapter 4
Seraphina Vitiello POV
Dante crashed into the water, shattering the surface.
He gathered Isabella into his arms as if she were made of spun glass, shielding her from a threat that didn't exist.
She was sobbing hysterically, her fingers clawing at his soaked shirt.
"She tried to drown me!" she wailed, her voice echoing off the stone walls. "She tried to kill me, Dante!"
I lay sprawled on the cold stones, my breath hitching as agony tore through me.
My fractured leg was twisted at a sickening angle beneath me. Pain radiated up my thigh, white-hot and blinding, stealing the air from my lungs.
I tried to push myself up, my arms trembling.
Dante turned.
His face was no longer the face of the man I knew. It was a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"You are sick," he spat, the words landing like physical blows.
"I didn't touch her," I gasped, fighting the black spots dancing in my vision.
"Liar!" Isabella screamed, burying her face in the crook of his neck to hide her dry eyes. "She said she hated me! She said she wished the sign had killed me!"
Dante stepped out of the fountain, water streaming from his clothes. He set Isabella down gently on a stone bench, treating her with a tenderness that shattered my heart.
Then, he turned his attention to me.
He stalked forward, water dripping from his clothes like blood.
He looked like an executioner.
"Attempted murder on a made man's fiancée," he said. His voice was terrifyingly calm, a deadly contrast to the rage in his eyes. "Do you know the punishment for that, Seraphina?"
"You're blind," I whispered, my voice cracking.
He stopped dead.
"What did you say?"
"You were blind when I found you, and you are blind now," I rasped, looking up at him through a haze of pain. "You see nothing."
Before he could respond, my father burst into the courtyard, flanked by two soldiers.
"What is happening?" the Don roared, his presence sucking the oxygen from the air.
"She attacked Isabella!" Dante shouted, never taking his eyes off me.
My father didn't hesitate. He didn't ask for my side. He didn't look at my broken leg.
He crossed the distance in two strides and backhanded me across the face.
The force of the blow snapped my head back. Metallic tang filled my mouth. I tasted blood.
"Disgrace," my father hissed, looking down at me as if I were something he had scraped off his shoe.
"Take her to the Cooler," Dante ordered the soldiers, his voice devoid of mercy.
My eyes went wide with terror.
The Cooler. The hospital morgue. The place where they kept the bodies before disposal.
"Dante, no," I pleaded, panic overriding the pain in my leg. "It's freezing down there. You can't..."
"You need to cool off," he said coldly, turning his back on me. "Maybe a night with the dead will teach you to respect the living."
The soldiers seized my arms.
They didn't help me stand. They dragged me.
My cast scraped loudly against the concrete, vibrating the shattered bone beneath.
I screamed, a raw, guttural sound, but no one listened. No one cared.
They shoved me into the service elevator.
They took me down, past the basement, into the bowels of the building.
The air grew sharp and biting. The chemical sting of formaldehyde assaulted my nose.
They hauled me to the heavy steel door of the morgue and threw it open.
Inside, rows of stainless steel drawers lined the walls, gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights.
It was freezing. A tomb of ice.
They threw me onto the tiled floor. My hip slammed against the hard surface, sending fresh waves of nausea through me.
"Think about what you did," one of the soldiers sneered.
Then they slammed the door.
The lock clicked with a sound of finality.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
It was absolute. Heavy. Suffocating.
The cold began to seep into my bones immediately, bypassing my skin and settling deep in my marrow.
I curled into a ball, tucking my knees to my chest, trying desperately to preserve heat.
My teeth began to chatter violently.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine the safe house.
I tried to remember the crackle and heat of the fireplace.
I tried to remember Dante's body heat, the way I had lain next to him to stop his shivering when the fever took him.
*I am cold, Sette,* he had whispered then, vulnerable and broken.
*I am here,* I had answered, holding him tight.* I will keep you warm.*
I had given him my warmth.
I had given him my blanket.
And now, he had locked me in a freezer.
The irony felt like a serrated knife twisting in my gut.
As the hypothermia set in, I started to hallucinate.
I saw shadows detach themselves from the corners.
I heard whispers echoing off the tiles.
I realized they were the voices of the girls who had died on the operating table before me. The other spares. The ones who hadn't made it.
I was going to die here.
And the man I loved was the one who had turned the key.
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9.3
Lena Martinez never imagined that her desperate need to save her younger sister's life would land her in billionaire Nathan Blackwood's world. When Julian, Nathan's loyal cousin and right-hand man, offers her a contract for a life-changing sum of money she cannot refuse-impersonate Nathan's fiancée and marry him-Lena has no choice but to agree. With the clock ticking and her eleven-year-old sister's life on the line, she steps into a life of wealth, power and secrets she never asked for.
But playing the role of the glamorous Kimberly Hayes is only the beginning of her nightmare. Lena must contend with a man who is kind, loving, and yet haunted by past heartbreak, while hiding the truth that could destroy them both.
In a world of lies, secrets and danger, can Lena survive as Mrs. Blackwood-without losing her heart to the man she was never meant to love?
7.6
I unlocked my mate's tablet to check the time, but a notification caught my eye: Project Luna.
Curiosity turned to horror as I opened the file. It wasn't a diary. It was a spreadsheet.
Task #104: Public display of affection. Status: Complete.
Task #215: Gift pearls. Status: Complete.
I wasn't Jaxon's soulmate. I was a quarterly projection inherited from his dead brother to secure the pack's assets.
The reality of his indifference nearly killed me at our engagement gala. When the massive chandelier snapped above us, Jaxon didn't shield me.
He used my body as a launchpad to dive toward his mistress, Janice.
I was crushed under lead crystal and silver wire, my flesh burning from the poison. While I lay bleeding on the marble floor, Jaxon carried a scratch-free Janice to safety, screaming at the guards to ignore me.
But the physical scar on my arm was nothing compared to what I found next.
I hacked into Janice’s private account. There was a marriage certificate from Vegas, dated six months ago.
On the exact night I miscarried our child alone on the bathroom floor, begging him to answer his phone, he was marrying her.
He let our pup die while he pledged his life to another.
When he tried to buy my forgiveness with a necklace, only to let Janice snatch it from his hand, I finally snapped.
I threw his money in his face, rejected the bond, and vanished to Norway.
Jaxon thought I would die without him.
He didn't know that the Alpha Supreme of Europe had been waiting a lifetime to find me.
7.7
"Tristan! Help!" I called out his name again. It was not a scream but a command.
He didn't even flinch. "You know the rules, Juniper," he said, his voice fearfully calm. "I don't touch you. Don't use a fall to trick me into breaking those rules."
....
But this mess is over.
I'm done playing love with him. I'm returning to the Vangough seat. And as for the man who was allergic to my touch, he's just about to find out how much it hurts when I finally let go-and take my empire with me.
Tristan wants a divorce. But I'll give him a battle he will never be able to endure.
9.3
My mate, Theron, was a powerful Alpha, and I, a scentless Omega, was his greatest prize. But beneath his adoring facade was a terrifying, possessive monster, revealed when he dragged me home and forced me into our bed after I was late to his challenge match. His golden eyes burned with chilling control, and he whispered a threat that turned my blood to ice.
I'd been stuck on a forest road, my truck dead, racing to reach his challenge match. His mate bond panic had already frayed my nerves, but nothing prepared me for his rage. He'd publicly broken his opponent's shoulder, then stalked directly to me, ignoring the crowd. He marked my lateness with chilling precision, before dragging me away to our rooms for "punishment."
Later, as he tried to force a ceremonial marking pendant on me, he promised, "If you will not accept my mark willingly, then I will wait for your Heat. I will fuck you until your body begs for it, and my wolf will hold you down while I bite." My gaze fell on his open journal, filled with frantic, scrawled words: "SHE IS MINE. PUNISH. CLAIM. MARK HER. BREED HER. MAKE HER UNDERSTAND SHE IS MINE. MINE. MINE."
The man I loved, my only protection, was a captor in disguise, his devotion a gilded cage. Every gentle touch, every soft word, now felt like a brand of ownership, a tightening leash. The terrifying truth of his pathological obsession finally hit me.
A fragile plan formed in the space between heartbeats: I would de-escalate, redefine, and survive, no matter the cost, before his possessive madness consumed me entirely.
8.2
To save my brother's life, I married a dead billionaire.
My new home was a freezing, high-tech mausoleum where I was ordered to hold a year-long vigil beside Byron Hyde's cryogenic pod.
But I wasn't alone in the dark.
Every night, a terrifying shadow smelling of whiskey and sandalwood pinned me to my narrow bed.
It tore my clothes and brutally claimed my body, leaving me bruised and trembling until dawn.
When I begged the housekeeper for help, showing her my torn skin, she just smiled cruelly.
"It seems the master's spirit has accepted you."
I thought I was being haunted by a vengeful ghost, until Byron's arrogant nephew broke into the tomb to assault me.
His tampering triggered the life-support system, and the heavy lid of the pod hissed open.
Byron Hyde sat up, his eyes lethal and his skin shockingly warm.
He was alive.
Looking at his broad shoulders, I caught the faint scent of whiskey and sandalwood.
The horrific truth hit me like a physical blow.
My nightly tormentor wasn't a ghost. It was my living, breathing husband.
When I confronted him, his eyes were cold and clinical.
"That was a necessary test. I had to know if my wife would break."
A white-hot rage choked me, but I didn't scream or run.
He slipped the priceless, heavy sapphire of the family matriarch onto my finger, offering me absolute power over the treacherous relatives who wanted us both dead.
To fight a monster, you can't be a victim.
I looked into his deep, dangerous eyes and accepted the ring.
If this was a cage, allying with the keeper was the only way to find the key.
9.6
#Chapter1 Chapter
I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved.
He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again.
"Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.
That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports.
For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian.
In return, he treated me like furniture.
He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste.
I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home.
So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco.
I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage.
But I underestimated Dante.
When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat.
He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.