Chapter 1 1

Isabella POV

The roar of the Tommy gun still echoes in my bones.

*Rat-tat-tat.*

It tore through the jazz music and the heavy velvet curtains of the VIP booth at The Velvet Cage. I remember the sharp, coppery stench of blood mixing with spilled bootleg champagne. I remember Daniel Marino collapsing across from me, his hands clutching his ruined abdomen, his tailored suit soaked in crimson. And then, the burning, breathless agony in my own chest as a bullet found its mark.

As the darkness pulled me under, the last thing I saw was Daniel's face. There was no despair for me in his eyes, no desperate reach for his dying fiancée. Only a twisted, selfish terror.

We both died that night on the speakeasy floor. But the devil sent us back.

Now, standing outside my father's heavy oak study doors in the Wolfe Estate, the phantom ache in my chest throbbed. It was the day of our discharge from the hospital. The day we were supposed to finalize the wedding details and solidify the alliance between the Wolfe and Marino families.

Instead, I heard Daniel's voice bleeding through the thick wood, arrogant and demanding.

"The engagement is over, Don Adrian. I won't marry Isabella. I want Celine."

I froze, my hand hovering over the cold brass doorknob. *Celine.* My sweet, orphaned adopted sister.

A beat of dead silence was followed by the violent shatter of crystal against the marble fireplace.

"You ungrateful bastard!" My father's voice was a thunderclap. Adrian Wolfe, the Don of the Chicago Outfit, did not tolerate disrespect. "You stand in my house, after my men bled to pull you from that speakeasy, and you spit on our honor?"

"It's not about honor, it's about survival!" Daniel shot back, his voice rising. "That hit was meant for her. For your throne. I won't be collateral damage in a Wolfe family war. Celine is innocent. She's who I truly love."

I closed my eyes, a dark, lethal amusement curling in my gut.

*He remembers.*

Daniel had been reborn too, dragged back from the brink of death just like me. But he was a fool. He thought the assassination was a Wolfe internal dispute. He thought shedding me would save him. He didn't realize the rot went much deeper, and that his precious Celine was the furthest thing from innocent.

I took a breath, burying the calculating, vengeful woman I had become in that hospital bed. I needed them to underestimate me. I pushed the heavy doors open, letting my face pale, my eyes widening in perfectly crafted horror.

"Daniel?" I whispered, my voice trembling just enough to sound broken.

The people in the room turned. My father, his one good arm braced on his mahogany desk, looked murderous. Shards of his favorite whiskey glass glittered on the Persian rug. Daniel stood in the center of the room, looking at me not with the guilt of a man breaking a sacred vow, but with the condescending pity of a survivor looking at a doomed ghost.

"Izzy," Daniel said, his jaw tight. "You shouldn't be out of bed."

"Is it true?" I forced a tear to spill over my lashes, clutching the fabric of my dress over my healing wound. "You... you want Celine?"

Daniel's chest puffed out slightly, emboldened by my apparent fragility. "I care for you like a sister, Isabella. But I love Celine. I won't tie my fate to a sinking ship."

"You coward with no honor," my mother, Elizabeth, hissed from the shadows near the window. As the Mafia Queen, her fury was quieter than my father's, but infinitely colder. "You dare insult my daughter in her own home? On the day she returns from the hospital?"

Daniel flinched under her icy glare, but he held his ground, blinded by his own arrogance. He thought he had outsmarted the game. He didn't know I was already rewriting the rules.