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.

Chapters

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.

Continue to next part

I arrived at the hotel with Julian's favorite takeout, ready to surprise my fiancé before our big merger. But the moment I swiped the keycard, the silence of the hallway felt heavy and wrong. Inside, a red-soled stiletto lay on the marble floor-the same one I'd watched my best friend Lila try on at Saks last week. Through the cracked bedroom door, I watched Julian's back arch as Lila looked me straight in the eye and smiled, wrapping her legs tighter around him to mock my heartbreak. I fled to the penthouse to hide, only to find Grafton, Julian's "crippled" brother, waiting in the dark. To my horror, the man who was supposed to be paralyzed stood up from his wheelchair, gripped my chin with cold fingers, and forced me to sign a contract that gave him control of my family's shares. He knew about my mother's secret medical bills and used them to buy my silence, effectively turning my life into a calculated game of corporate chess. The betrayal tasted like acid, and the injustice of it all burned in my throat. My fiancé was a liar, my best friend was a thief, and the man now controlling my fate was a predator who had been faking his disability for years. I couldn't understand how everyone I trusted had turned out to be a monster. I was trapped between a man who cheated on me and a man who wanted to own me, with no way out and no one to turn to. But when Julian came looking for me, Grafton didn't hide; he stood tall, looming over me with a possessive glint in his eyes. "Help me destroy Julian," I rasped, realizing that to survive the Faulkner men, I had to become the most dangerous player of them all.

Horror Mystery Romance

9.1

Bound By The CEO's Cruel Contract

9.1

I was the orphaned "parasite" of the Tyler family, taken in only to be abused for fifteen years after my parents died in a tragic car crash. To finally escape their control, I sold my first time to my ruthless billionaire boss, Ellsworth Mosley, for one million dollars. I thought it was a clean transaction. But the next morning, covered in severe bruises he left on me, I was handed a brutal contract with a fifty-million-dollar penalty. He didn't just buy my silence; he bought me. My nightmare only worsened when my adoptive family found out about my connection to the billionaire. Instead of disgust, they invited me to a hypocritical family dinner. "Talk to Mosley, convince him to invest in our failing business," my adoptive father demanded shamelessly. His son, who had tormented me for years, even grabbed my hand. "Do this, and we can be officially engaged. You'll finally be a real Tyler." They wanted me to whore myself out to save the family that had treated me like a stray dog. I shattered my wine glass, cursed them to go bankrupt, and walked out into the rain. As I reached the door, my phone vibrated with a terrifying summons from Ellsworth. But it was the panicked whisper behind me that froze my blood. "She knows about the brakes on her parents' car. If anyone finds out what we did, we'll go to prison." They murdered my parents. I gripped my phone, accepting the devil's call. Since I was already bound to a monster, I would use his power to drag them all to hell.

Billionaire Horror Modern

7.7

Bound To The Ruthless Lycan King

7.7

I fled my werewolf pack five years ago to hide in a human city, all to escape a recurring nightmare. Every full moon, a terrifying, golden-eyed Lycan slaughters everything in his path, forces me to my knees with a crushing Alpha command, and claims I am his fated mate. The vivid dreams were destroying my inner wolf, forcing me to finally agree to return to my pack for the annual Pack Run to seek a cure. But right before my flight home, I accidentally bumped into Rick Miller, the most arrogant, tyrannical Alpha on our college campus. He looked down at the coffee spilled on his expensive leather jacket with pure disdain, publicly humiliating me in front of the entire airport. "Do you have any idea what this jacket costs? Never mind. It's not like you could afford to replace it." As he coldly insulted me, a terrifying realization suddenly froze my blood. He smelled exactly like the ancient pine and storm from my nightmares, and his brief touch sent a mate's electric spark straight to my soul. How could this cruel, spoiled campus bully possibly be the legendary, terrifying Lycan King who haunted my every sleeping moment? As he turned and boarded his private jet, I looked down at my trembling hands and realized the horrifying truth. My trip back to the pack wasn't a journey to heal my trauma. I was walking straight into the cage of the very monster I had spent five years trying to outrun.

Horror Werewolf Young Adult

8.8

My Cruel Ex-Husband Demands A Remarriage

8.8

I spun the dial on the hidden wall safe, expecting to find the Glock 19 Aiden insisted I keep. Instead, I found a ledger proving my husband, the Mafia's most feared Enforcer, was funding a secret family with my dead father's money. For seven years, I had been his obedient doll. I cleaned the blood off his knuckles and justified his violence. But the ledger showed he had siphoned my entire inheritance into a trust for a child he had with his brother's wife. When I tried to leave, his mistress framed me as a spy. Aiden didn't ask for proof. He didn't hesitate. He dragged me to a damp warehouse, hooded me, and beat me until my ribs cracked. He left me to rot in the dark, ignoring the diamond bracelet on my wrist—the very one he had gifted me the day before as a symbol of his "ownership." He thought he had broken me. He thought I would die in that basement, a silent collateral of his rage. But he made a fatal mistake. He left me alive. I escaped through a ventilation grate and ran straight to the one man Aiden feared most: his sworn enemy, Jensen Levy. "Make me a weapon," I told him. Two years later, I walked back into Aiden's office. Not as his battered wife, but as the CEO of the corporation that had just bought his empire's debt. He looked at me with horror, realizing the ghost he created had come back to burn him down. "Hello, Aiden," I said, pressing a high-voltage tactical pen against his chest. "You're trespassing."

Horror Modern Romance

8.1

My Shapeshifter Mate:Falling for My Cursed Superior

8.1

His second name is Death. Anyone who tries to get too close to him loses their life. He was cursed with the blood of his dead brother and till he finds the killer of his brother, he's forever bound with the curse. He's avoided like a plague, but he even loves it that way. He's so addicted to solitude and being alone. He is a bloody supernatural being, an unusual wizard. The only child born under Three Red Stars on a gloomy night 25 years ago. The demons fret at the smell of his scent, and evils flee. He has no shadow even in the dark. He is soulless-Orion Alaric, that's his name. The son of Duran Alaric, who owns Mystic Institute, a school for supernatural beings, located deep in the fogs of Mount Delos. Mystic Institute takes in over five hundred disciples yearly, and of the five hundred, Orion was determined to find his brother's killer that year, so he joined the school as a superior. There he sat on his throne, and as expected, she came. Samara Hercules, a whitehead witch who's the exact opposite of everyone around him. Unexpectedly she is not the one he's hunting for, but her white hair reminds him of the killer each time he sets eyes on her and that builds a toxic hatred in him for Samara. He was even ready to get rid of her so he wouldn't have to see her face anymore. Let's stop here.... Now are you ready to jump into the book and see how things go? Will Samara ever escape him and his tortures Will romance ever bloom between these two? Will his curse ever get lifted? Will the real killer ever show up? And are you in for the steamy romance, fights, jealousy, betrayal, and series of dramas between the supernaturals? Demons and dark forces? Join this rollercoaster ride, don't miss out.

Fantasy Horror Romance

7.8

Return From Grave: Reclaiming My Betrayed Heart

7.8

I returned to Boston after three years, not for forgiveness, but to die. My family, who blamed me for my mother's death, had cast me out, replacing me with a quiet, grateful orphan named Gabriela. She stole my father's love, my brother's affection, and my childhood sweetheart, Corey. Now, terminally ill, my only wish was to reclaim my mother's wedding dress, a final piece of her to hold onto. But Gabriela was wearing it to marry Corey. When I confronted her, she destroyed my mother's locket and cursed me to drop dead. In a blind rage, I slapped her. She shrieked, stabbed her own arm, and framed me for the attack. As my family and Corey looked on with disgust, calling me a maniac, my body gave out. I collapsed, coughing up blood, my secret illness revealed in the most brutal way possible. "You always blame me," I gasped, the words bubbling out with blood. "But I was just... dying." Their faces filled with dawning horror, but it was too late. I was already gone. Until I opened my eyes again, and my mother, who had been waiting for me all along, took my hand. "We'll be reborn," she promised, her eyes blazing with fury at the family who had destroyed me. "Together. As mother and daughter, again."

Fantasy Horror Romance

The Canary Who Learned To Fly

Chapter 4

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