My lover's revenge after my death

Five years after my death, the street punk banished by the Mafia family returned to this soil as a highly respected Godfather.

He didn't come back for turf or business. He came for revenge.

He wanted to make me regret the day I "betrayed" him.

He framed my father as a rat.

He locked my mother in a pitch-black basement until she went blind.

He crippled my brother's right arm, stripping away his gift as a top-tier sniper forever.

To find me and exact his vengeance personally, he had turned himself into a monster.

"She’s dead! She’s been dead!" my brother roared. "Five years ago! When The Commission sent hitters after you, she took the fall! She burned to ashes so you could live!"

Chapter 1

The sprawling courtyard of the Moretti estate was unrecognizable.

It was raining. My father, Vincenzo Moretti, was forced to his knees.

Once the Consigliere of the Moretti family, he had always exuded an old-world elegance that modern gangsters sorely lacked.

Now, his tailored suit was in tatters, soaked through by the freezing rain and the cheap vodka Lev had poured over his head.

His face was a canvas of purple bruises and jagged lacerations. Yet, his spine remained perfectly straight.

Lev sat in a plush leather chair, completely untouched by the downpour.

He wore a bespoke charcoal suit, the cut accentuating the broad, aggressive shoulders he had built over the last five years.

A heavy, gold Syndicate ring gleamed dangerously on his index finger.

The street punk named "Leo Vance" from five years ago was dead and gone, replaced by the reigning kingpin known as "Lev Tarasov."

I stood inches away from Lev, screaming at him, pounding my translucent fists against his chest.

"Stop! Leo, look at him! That's my father!"

But my fists just phased right through his tailored suit.

I was a ghost. He couldn't see me, nor could he hear my soul being torn apart.

I was trapped in a purgatory of my own making, forced to watch the fallout of my ultimate sacrifice unfold.

Lev’s pale blue eyes had turned terrifyingly cold. A cigarette burned between his fingers.

"How does it feel, Vincenzo?" Lev’s voice was lethal, cutting right through the sound of the rain. "The great Consigliere. The man who used to own the judges, the cops, and the streets."

"Look at you now. The Commission has disowned you, and your capos have turned their backs on you. You're nothing but a laughingstock, waiting to be butchered in your own front yard."

My father didn't flinch. He slowly raised his head, water dripping from his eyelashes. Even battered and broken, the look he gave Lev held no fear—only a deep, pitying disappointment.

"Tarasov, I have lived my entire life in the shadows," my father rasped. "I have made my peace with my sins. My only true regret... is that my daughter had such terrible taste in men."

Those words hit Lev like a sledgehammer.

I saw a microscopic twitch