For six years, I endured my fiancé Ethan's calculated cruelty, believing it was the only way to pay for my dying father's black-market lung medication.
Then, I overheard him talking to his secret lover—his late brother's widow.
"Once the old man suffocates, I'll put ivy in a fortified apartment as my personal whore, and you will wear the Capo's ring."
But Ethan didn't know that the night before, I had taken the last of my money to buy a silver Vendetta Rosary.
I had ventured into the shadows and pledged myself to Willian, the terrifying, newly ascended Don of the entire syndicate.
As I sobbed on the cold wooden floor, the courtyard fell dead silent, and a pair of large, scarred hands reached into my vision holding a flawless Crimson Rose. And in the heavy silence that followed, I understood: either salvation or damnation had come for me, and I was no longer the one choosing.
