The Day When the True Mafia Queen Was out of Prison

I gave up ten years of my life and went to prison to protect my sister, Jasmine. In return, she took my baby, claiming my one-night stand with the ruthless mafia king, Dominic Valentino, as her own.

Now, she sits on a stolen throne, playing the perfect mafia wife. And I become my son's night nanny.

Dominic is lethal, cold, and suspicious of everyone. He married Jasmine out of duty, yet he refuses to touch her. But the moment I step into his house, his eyes lock onto me. He doesn't know I'm the woman who saved his life in a bloody alley a year ago. He doesn't know the baby crying in the nursery is mine.

All he knows is that the air burns whenever we are in the same room.

My sister thinks I'm just a broken ex-con she can easily crush. She forgot one thing.

I didn't just survive prison. I learned how to run an empire in the dark. And I am taking my son, my man, and my throne back.

Aria's POV

The day I walked out of prison, my sister was already living my life, wearing my name, holding my son, and married to the most dangerous man in the city, the one whose child I'd carried alone for nine months.

Dominic Valentino. Head of the Valentino crime family. The man every cop in this state knew better than to touch.

And Jasmine had just made herself his wife.

Daniel was waiting outside the gate. Not Jasmine. Daniel, her boyfriend, the man I'd punched hard enough to break his nose, the reason I'd ended up inside in the first place.

He looked at me, then looked away.

"She send you?" I said.

"She doesn't know I'm here."

He talked on the drive over without me asking. The words came out like he'd been holding them too long. I stared at the road and let them land one at a time.

Jasmine had taken the ring. The heavy silver band I'd worn on a cord around my neck for nine months, left in my hand by a stranger the night everything fell apart.

I'd given it to her with the baby and a handwritten note. Take him to his father. Show him the ring. He'll know.

She'd found Dominic Valentino within a week. Took one look at the gates and the men with guns. And told him the baby was hers.

"They got married three weeks ago," Daniel said. "Private ceremony."

I counted the cracks in his windshield. If I stopped I was going to break something.

"Does she take care of the baby?"

He didn't answer fast enough.

"Daniel."

"She has nannies. The kid's fine."

My son was four months old, being raised by strangers in a mobster's house, and he was fine.

He pulled up near the bus station and reached into the back seat. "There are things about Jasmine you don't know." He held out an envelope. "I'm not asking you to believe me. Just take it."

I left it on the seat and got out.

I sat on the motel bed thinking about Jasmine at eight years old, feverish and small, while I pressed a cold cloth to her forehead through the night. Dropping out of school at seventeen to cover her medical bills. Every shift I picked up, every meal I skipped, every time she called crying and I came without asking why.

I reached up to touch the ring out of habit.

Bare skin. Nothing there.

I washed my face, pulled my hair back, and walked out in the same clothes I'd worn into that courtroom fourteen months ago.

The Valentino estate didn't hide. Iron gates, stone walls, two guards who clocked me before I reached the intercom.

"I'm here for Jasmine Harrington," I said.

"Valentino," the guard corrected, flat and automatic. "Mrs. Valentino isn't receiving visitors."

Mrs. Valentino. The words sat wrong in my mouth even hearing someone else say them.

The gate clicked, a black car nosing out from the drive. It stopped two feet from me, window coming down.

I knew his face before the rest of me caught up. Dark eyes, sharp jaw, the kind of stillness that had nothing to do with calm. A year older than the last time I'd seen it, and a hundred times colder.

He'd been half-delirious in that alley, barely standing, and he'd still looked at me like he was memorizing every detail. I'd thought about that look more times than I'd ever admit.

He didn't recognize me now. He just looked at me the way men like him look at small problems, briefly, then gone.

"Aria."

Jasmine's voice, from the front steps. Silk blouse, perfect hair, heels on a Monday. For one second her face went white.

Then the smile came up, wide and warm, like she'd been expecting me all along.

"Oh my God." She came down the steps with her arms already open, pulled me into a hug I didn't return, and put her lips to my ear.

"Smile," she breathed. "He's watching."

I pulled back and looked at her, really looked. The blouse probably cost more than three months of my bar shifts. The ring on her left hand caught the light, a thick silver band with a crest I recognized.

My ring. The one I'd sent her to return.

She was wearing it on her wedding finger.

"Jasmine," I said, keeping my voice even. "Where's the baby?"

Something moved behind her eyes. Fast, controlled, gone.

"Inside, sleeping." She looped her arm through mine, already turning me toward the house, her grip just a little too tight. "Come in, my cousin, we have so much to catch up on."

"What?" I was shocked. Why my sister called me cousin?

"Mrs. Valentino," One of the guards stepped forward. "Mr. Valentino hasn't cleared additional guests."

Jasmine opened her mouth, but the answer came from behind us, low, unhurried, the kind of voice that didn't need volume to fill a space.

"Let her in."

Dominic Valentino stood beside the car, one hand in his pocket. Then he paused as he passed me.

He watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

"She looks familiar," he said. Not to Jasmine. Not to the guard.

To me.

My pulse kicked once, hard.