Vengeance Of The Reborn Mafia Queen

Siena POV

The garrote wire cut into my throat, a line of pure, white-hot fire.

But the physical agony of my windpipe crushing was nothing compared to the echoes tearing through my dying mind. As I choked on my own blood in the damp, metallic-smelling Underground Interrogation Room, the ghosts of my past ten years mocked my stupidity.

I heard the voice of my six-year-old son, Leo, screaming in his playroom. *"I don't want a weak commoner for a mother! I wish Aunt Chiara gave birth to me!"*

I saw the cold, aristocratic sneer of Elder Adeline Castillo when my eight-year-old boy stood before the family council, pointing his small finger at me. *"She forced me to lie to the Don. She wanted to kill Matteo."* My desperate plot to assassinate Dante's eldest son-a seed of treason planted and nurtured by my own sister-had stripped me of my Mafia Queen title and condemned me to the gilded cage of the South Wing.

And then came the final act. Chiara had lured me to the underground cells, claiming Leo had been shot in a crossfire. Instead of my bleeding son, I found an empty iron chair. Then came the wire from behind.

Chiara's breath was hot against my ear as she pulled the garrote tighter. *"You never deserved him, Siena. You never deserved the crown,"* she hissed, her mask of sweet fragility melting into a grotesque, triumphant sneer.

Through my blurring vision, I saw a figure step out of the shadows. Leo. My ten-year-old son stood there, watching his mother being strangled to death, his eyes as dead and cold as a true Castillo.

*If there is a next life,* my soul screamed into the suffocating dark, *I will carve the flesh from your bones. Vendetta.*

I jolted, my lungs screaming for air.

I thrashed violently against the silk sheets, my hands clawing at a throat that was no longer bleeding. The phantom pain drove me to the edge of madness.

"You heartless animal!" I shrieked into the darkness, my voice raw with pure, unadulterated hatred. "Chiara, I'll kill you! I'll make you beg for death!"

A massive, calloused hand suddenly clamped down on my shoulder, pinning me to the mattress with terrifying, immovable force.

"Siena. Wake up."

The deep, gravelly voice was a command that demanded absolute obedience. My eyes snapped open, my chest heaving as I stared up into the shadows.

I wasn't in the damp hell of the interrogation room. I was in the Master Suite. The heavy velvet curtains blocked out the city lights, and the air smelled of expensive cedarwood and gun oil.

And hovering over me was Dante Castillo.

The Dark Don of the Castillo family looked younger. The stress lines that would later age him were gone, and his sharp, ruthlessly handsome face was a mask of lethal calm.

My heart hammered against my ribs as the impossible truth crashed over me. I was back. Leo was only five months old, sleeping safely in the nursery down the hall. And tomorrow, my treacherous sister Chiara would arrive at the estate, begging for "sanctuary" from her non-existent enemies.

But Dante wasn't looking at me with a husband's gentle concern. His dark, predatory eyes were narrowed into dangerous slits, analyzing the pure murder I had just screamed into the quiet night.