Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Despair

My twin sister Haleigh returned with a fake diagnosis of Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer and a "dying wish" to marry my fiancé, Jameson Blair.

Without a second thought, Jameson, the most feared Underboss in New York, took the three-carat diamond meant for me and slid it onto her finger.

I became the spare. The obstacle standing in the way of a tragedy's happy ending.

When Haleigh planted a brown recluse spider in my room, I was the one bitten and poisoned. Yet, my brothers kicked me while I was delirious with fever, accusing me of trying to terrorize their "dying" angel.

On her birthday yacht party, a grill tipped over during a storm. My synthetic dress caught fire instantly.

As flames seared the skin off my legs, I screamed for help.

But Jameson and my brothers formed a human shield around Haleigh, frantically checking her hand for a single speck of ash while I burned alive just ten feet away.

The final straw came at the cliffs. Haleigh staged a suicide attempt to frame me for bullying her.

To teach me a lesson, Jameson bound my wrists and hung me over the edge of the abyss on a rope, leaving me dangling helplessly over the churning ocean.

They thought they were punishing a monster.

They didn't know I had a jagged rock in my hand.

As they drove away to comfort the liar, I didn't wait for them to come back.

I sawed through the rope myself and let the ocean take me.

Three years later, after discovering Haleigh never had cancer, my brothers and Jameson found me alive in Florence.

They knelt on the cobblestones, weeping, begging for a second chance.

I looked at the men who had watched me burn.

"You aren't sorry you hurt me," I said, turning to walk away with another man.

"You're just sorry you bet on the wrong sister."

Chapter 1

I watched through the rain-streaked window of the cafe as Jameson Blair, the most feared Underboss in New York, slipped the three-carat heirloom diamond meant for me onto my twin sister's finger.

My phone buzzed against the cold marble table.

It was a notification from the family calendar, a digital ghost from a future that no longer existed.

Isabella and Jameson: Wedding Rehearsal.

I swiped the notification away.

Across the street, the heavy oak doors of City Hall swung open.

Jameson stepped out first.

He looked like a king who had just conquered a new territory, his dominance absolute.

His black suit was tailored to hide the holster he wore under his left arm, but I knew the shape of the gun against his ribs better than I knew the beat of my own heart.

Last week, he had executed three men for breaching Blair territory.

Today, he was killing me without firing a single shot.

Haleigh clung to his arm.

She looked frail in her white dress, a calculated fragility that made men want to burn the world down to keep