His Betrayal Forged My Ruthless Soul

Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift—a way to protect me from a worse fate.

Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."

My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.

They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.

They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.

It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.

That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."

Chapter 1

Alessia POV:

The man I was promised to, Don Dante Moretti, told me that seven years in prison was a gift. He said it was his way of protecting me, a mercy compared to the alternative my parents were considering.

That was seven years ago.

Today, he was waiting for me outside the gates of a federal penitentiary, leaning against the polished black hood of an armored sedan. The California sun blazed off the chrome, a brilliant, blinding light that never reached the chilling stillness in his eyes. He looked exactly the same-impossibly handsome, brutally composed, a king in a bespoke suit that probably cost more than this entire prison's annual budget.

I was the one who had changed. The girl who went in-the one who'd loved him with every fractured piece of her soul-was dead. I had buried her somewhere between the third and fourth year, right after a shivving in the laundry room over a stolen bar of soap.

"Alia," he said, his voice a low rumble that once made my heart race. Now, it was just a sound. He opened the passenger door for me. "It's over. I'm taking you home."

Home. The word was a bitter laugh I swallowed down.

I slid into the plush leather seat, the scent of him-sandalwood and power-filling the small space. It was suffocating. As he drove, the silence between us stretched into something thin and lethal, a wire pulled taut and ready to slice.

My mind drifted back to that night. The night my world ended.

My adopted sister, Chiara, had been high, reckless. She'd taken my car and plowed through a made man from the Falcone family, shattering the fragile truce Dante's father had brokered. A life for a life. That was the law of