Chapter 1 1

Isabella POV

1923. Chicago smelled of rain, expensive cigars, and the metallic tang of blood hidden beneath the floorboards of speakeasies. On my nineteenth birthday, Jaret Frazier-my cousin, my fiancé, and the man I thought was my North Star-held my hands in his father's study.

"The Kanes are dangerous, Izzy," he whispered, his eyes wide with a practiced, desperate sincerity. Jaret was the heir to the Frazier name, a minor branch of the Outfit, but he had the ambition of a Caesar. "My meetings with Alexandria Kane are a necessary alliance. It's business, purely to keep your father's fortune safe from the bigger sharks. Trust me."

I was a Wilder, raised in silk and shielded from the grime of the streets. I believed him. I didn't see the hunger in his gaze-not for me, but for the crown the Kane daughter could provide.

1924. The wedding of the decade took place at the cathedral, but I wasn't the one in the white veil. Jaret married Alexandria Kane, securing his seat at the high table. That same night, he dragged me to a secluded apartment overlooking the grey skyline.

"You are mine, Isabella," he snarled, the mask of the gentleman finally shattered. "The engagement is dead, but you aren't going anywhere. You will be my mistress. If you leave, if you tell a soul, your father's business burns. He's already drowning in Frazier debt."

The apartment was a masterpiece of Art Deco-velvet chairs, crystal carafes, and reinforced locks on every window. It was a gilded cage, and I was the bird whose wings he had personally clipped.

1925. The year the world turned red.

I was three months pregnant when the door to my prison didn't open for Jaret. Instead, Alexandria Kane stepped inside. She was a Mafia Princess in every sense-cold, sharp, and radiating a terrifying, quiet power. Behind her stood two *Enforcers*, men whose shadows seemed to swallow the light.

"A bastard Frazier heir?" Alexandria's voice was like a razor against silk. "Not in my city. Not in my marriage."

The Enforcers pinned me to the bed. I screamed for Jaret, but only the cold wind answered. A back-alley doctor, his hands smelling of cheap gin and carbolic acid, performed the procedure. It wasn't surgery; it was an execution. They didn't just take my son; they tore something vital from my womb, leaving me a hollowed-out shell, barren and broken.

Jaret never came that night. He never explained. He simply... stopped.

The next ten years were a slow, agonizing fade into grey.

From 1925 to 1935, the apartment became my tomb. Jaret thrived. I heard the echoes of his life through the newspapers the delivery boy left: the birth of his legitimate son, Leo Frazier; his rise to *Underboss*; his perfect, blood-stained life with Alexandria.

I withered in the silence. The silk curtains frayed, and dust settled on the designer dresses I would never wear again. My body, once vibrant, became a map of scars and skeletal remains. I was a ghost haunting a room that Jaret had forgotten existed.

As I lay on the bed in the winter of 1935, my breath rattling in a chest that felt like it was filled with glass, I realized the ultimate cruelty of the Frazier men. They didn't just kill you with a bullet. They killed you by making you disappear.

My eyes flickered shut, the darkness finally reaching for me, pulling me back toward the beginning of the nightmare.