Chapter 2 2

I didn't die on that freezing pier. They dragged my broken body back to the Falcone estate, locking me in my childhood bedroom like a shameful secret. Days blurred into a haze of bruised ribs and feverish agony.

Then, Gia, my loyal maid, brought the whisper that sealed my fate.

"Damien Romano," she murmured, her hands trembling as she changed my bandages. "He casually mentioned to your father that Sofia looks nothing like the heroic Angelo. The Dark Don was just probing, but your parents are terrified. They're shipping you off to a decaying family in Sicily to silence you forever."

I refused to be a pawn.

I dragged myself out of the room and intercepted Marco in the mahogany-paneled hallway. "I won't go," I rasped, my chemically burned throat making my voice a demonic scrape. "Your Underboss seat exists because I slaughtered for it."

Marco's face flushed with indignant rage. He lunged, grabbing my injured shoulder to force me down. But I was still an Enforcer. Muscle memory took over. With my one good hand, I seized his wrist, twisting it into a brutal joint lock. Marco dropped to his knees with a choked gasp.

"Ungrateful monster!" Isabela shrieked, rushing from the parlor to pull us apart.

Marco cradled his wrist, his eyes wide with a new, terrifying realization. They couldn't break me with authority. They needed something permanent.

That evening, they orchestrated a masterpiece of deceit. A "family reconciliation" dinner. The dining room felt like a tomb, the ancestors glaring from their portraits. Isabela wept crocodile tears, sliding a glass of vintage red wine toward me. "For Angelo's memory. Let us find peace, Anya."

Exhausted, aching, and foolishly desperate for a shred of a mother's love, I drank.

The heavy sedative hit me before I even reached my bedroom. My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the cold silk sheets, paralyzed but entirely conscious.

The door clicked open. Marco, Isabela, and Leo surrounded my bed.

Isabela stroked my cheek, her touch like ice. "This is to save your life, Anya. And ours."

Leo stepped forward. He was trembling, a sickening mix of fear and excitement dancing in his eyes. In his hands, he held heavy iron pliers.

He started with my right hand. The hand that pulled the trigger.

The crunch of my index finger breaking echoed in the silent room. A ragged, silent scream tore at my ruined throat. Leo didn't stop. He moved to the next, the iron jaws crushing bone and cartilage. Ten sickening snaps. Ten agonizing fires. They didn't just break my fingers; they pulverized them, ensuring I could never hold a gun-or a pen-again.

As the blackness of pain dragged me under, the last remnants of Anya Falcone died. They didn't love me. They only loved the power I bled for. The seed of *Vendetta* took root in my shattered soul.

Weeks later, my hands were useless, twisted claws wrapped in thick white bandages. It was Isabela's birthday charity gala at the Waldorf Astoria. The ballroom was a suffocating sea of jazz, expensive perfume, and New York's elite.

I waited in the shadows. Across the room sat Donatella Romano, the shrewd matriarch who respected the old ways. She was my only play.

I caught Gia's eye. My maid nodded, deliberately backing into a towering champagne pyramid.

Glass shattered. Women screamed. The guards turned.

I ran.

I threw my frail body through the crowd, collapsing directly at Donatella Romano's feet. The jazz band faltered into a dead silence. Marco and Isabela froze, the blood draining from their faces.

I forced myself onto my knees and raised my heavily bandaged, mangled hands high into the chandelier's light.

"Donatella," I forced the words through my ruined vocal cords, the raspy, guttural sound carrying through the dead-silent ballroom. "I am Anya Falcone. I am the true Angelo. I won the war, and this is how my family repaid me."

Donatella stared down at me, her dark eyes unreadable, the weight of the Commission's laws hanging in the sudden, suffocating silence.

"I invoke the sacred code," I rasped, locking eyes with the matriarch. "I demand a *Vendetta*."