For two years, I endured agonizing chemo for my leukemia, believing my struggling family was sacrificing everything to save me.

But right before my surgery, I overheard my brother and mother whispering outside the door.

I didn't have cancer.

My family, who were actually billionaires in the Syndicate, had been secretly poisoning me.

They needed me weak and dying so my betrothal to the supreme Don could be transferred to their newly found biological daughter.

"Once the betrothal is transferred, I will find the best specialists to cure Clara," my brother said coldly.

But they didn't know I had already made my choice.

Thinking my treatments were starving them, I had just swallowed a vial of lethal, untraceable poison in the bathroom.

I died in excruciating agony on the operating table before they even made the first cut.

When the surgeon announced I had committed suicide, my family's world completely shattered.

My brother found my blood-stained suicide note and the meager cash I had saved to buy them gifts.

"We murdered our own daughter," my father sobbed.

My mother went completely insane, clutching my rotting corpse, while my brother slit his own wrists in a desperate attempt to feel my pain.

They kneeled before my grave, weeping and begging the heavens to let them protect me in the next life.

Floating above them as a ghost, I watched their absolute despair with a numb heart.

I harbored no hatred, but I knew one thing for certain.

In the next life, we will be nothing but strangers.

Chapter 1

Clara POV

Not ten minutes had passed since they wheeled me into this private Syndicate hospital wing. I had pleaded for a moment's pause, a brief use of the restroom. As my slippers padded past a secluded, dimly lit fire stairwell, the muffled sound of a quarrel arrested my steps. I pressed my ear to the cold, industrial steel of the door.

Through the dense metal, I discerned my brother's voice, a harsh, suppressed whisper, declaring my leukemia a fabrication. He was telling my weeping mother that the treatments were nothing more than slow-acting toxins, a cruel pageant designed to steal my betrothal to the supreme Don for his biological sister.

The tragic irony was his alone, for in the moments after that revelation had sliced through me, I had locked myself inside a bathroom stall and swallowed the lethal poison I carried, a self-inflicted sacrifice to save my impoverished family from ruin.

Now, I lay upon the operating table, forcing a stillness into my limbs. I held my breath so shallowly that my own heart, knocking against my ribs, was the only betraying sound in the room.

The cold liquid from the IV line had not yet breached my veins.

The nurse had stepped out to fetch a spare monitor lead. After she departed, the only sound was the frigid drip of fluid in the tube, a clinical 'tick' that sounded unnervingly like the countdown to an execution.

The voices of those I had cherished most, their words from the stairwell, still vibrated against my eardrums.

I recognized my brother Mateo's voice immediately.

It was not the gentle, exhausted tone he used when he carried me to the bathroom after my chemo sessions.

It was a voice forged of ice and steel.

"I believe a doubled dosage of the toxin is in order after this mock surgery," Mateo said, his words filtering through the heavy door.

A sharp gasp followed his words.

I knew that sound.

It was my mother, Rosa.

"You are effacing her, Mateo," my mother cried quietly. "Look at the state of her, how emaciated she has become. She is naught but skin and bone."

Mateo let out a heavy sigh that sounded more like an order than a comfort.

"Elena lacks Clara's inherent grace," Mateo explained coldly. "She was broken by those traffickers. She can never survive the brutal politics of our Syndicate unless Clara is sacrificed for two years to pave Elena's way."

I had stood in the dim-lit hallway, my body a column of ice.

My heart felt like a stone dropping into a bottomless well.

"Once Clara's betrothal to the supreme Don is officially transferred to Elena, I will find the top Syndicate specialists to cure Clara," Mateo continued. "She will have the best rehabilitation money can buy."

"I will give her my own blood and my own kidneys if I have to," he added. "I will leave her two of my luxury mafia estates as compensation. She will be fine."

The words did not make sense to my brain at first.

Syndicate. Betrothal. Supreme Don. Mafia estates.

I was the adopted daughter of a struggling blue-collar family.

My father, Salvatore, worked construction. My mother, Rosa, took in laundry. My brother, Mateo, worked odd jobs to pay for my ballet classes.

But the cold, calculating Underboss standing on the other side of that door was a stranger.

I understood in a sickening rush that my family possessed immense wealth.

I understood I was not dying of leukemia.

I understood I was not facing a life of paralysis and endless medical debt.

The burning sensation in my stomach suddenly flared, a sharp reminder of the choice I had made.

I had emptied an entire vial of a clear, odorless poison my father had once warned me never to touch—a substance he kept locked away, claiming it was a dangerous chemical from his work—in the solitude of the restroom, before they brought me to the pre-op room.

I did it because I thought my treatments were bankrupting them.

I did it because I loved them too much to watch them starve for my sake.

I understood I was already beyond saving.

The nurse walked back into the room, her rubber shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor.

She smiled at me with pure pity.

"We are going to wheel you out to the hallway for a minute so your family can give you a kiss before we go into the main theater," the nurse said gently.

I could not speak.

My throat was thick with a mixture of unshed tears and the bitter aftertaste of the poison.

The nurse unlocked the wheels of my bed and pushed me toward the door.

The door swung wide open.

Mateo and Rosa instantly dropped their intense posture.

Their faces rearranged themselves into masks of agonizing grief and boundless love.

My mother rushed to my side, her eyes red and puffy from crying.

My brother gripped my hand, his fingers warm and strong.

I forced a tearful smile onto my face.

I looked at their familiar features, inwardly apologizing to them over and over again.

Because I knew I would be dead before the surgeon even made the first cut.

And they had no idea that I knew exactly who they really were.

Clara POV

I traced the contours of my family's faces, seeking to memorize their final expressions.

My mother stroked my cheek, calling me her precious canary.

She promised that once this surgery was over, she would cook my favorite meals and help me put my ballet shoes back on.

I looked at her gentle, exhausted face and remembered the grueling sacrifices she had supposedly made for me.

She would hold my hand during every single injection, her grip a counterpoint to the needle's sting.

The reflection from a nurse's stainless steel tray would catch the light, and a sour bile would rise in my throat, summoning the memory of all those mornings I was made to swallow fistfuls of bitter pills.

The foul taste of the drugs left a constant, gnawing nausea in my stomach.

I had endured the agonizing pain for two years, never uttering a single complaint.

I would force a lighthearted smile, comforting them by pretending to be strong.

I recalled the relentless vomiting that left me gasping for air over the toilet bowl, my throat raw.

I recalled coughing up blood into my cupped hands, terrified that I was dying too fast.

My beautiful hair—the very hair my mother used to brush every night—fell out in massive clumps.

I had to hide my baldness beneath a cheap woolen beanie.

I suffered from severe insomnia and bone-deep agony.

I would bite down on my blanket at night to muffle my whimpers, desperate not to wake my hardworking father in the next room.

I watched my own body wither away.

I transformed from a vibrant ballet dancer into a bedridden invalid.

My vision blurred.

The letters on my schoolbooks twisted into unrecognizable shapes, stripping away my ability to learn.

I slowly lost touch with all my friends at school because I was confined to this sterile prison.

I looked at Mateo, who was currently choking back fake sobs.

I recalled the day a particularly brutal round of chemo had broken me, leaving me in a heap of tears.

I had asked him if I would ever get better.

I had begged them to stop the treatments because we had no money left.

My mother had held me, weeping and repeating the lie that I would definitely recover.

My father—the man I now knew was a hardened mafia Capo—had red eyes and a trembling voice as he swore he would never give up on me.

Mateo had brought me cheap hair clips and plush toys that day.

When he tried to pin a clip to my hair, he realized I had almost none left.

His hands shook as he pinned the clip to my beanie instead.

He called me the best sister in the world and begged me not to speak nonsense.

They had taken turns caring for me.

They had cooked nutritional meals, wiped my sweating body, and offered relentless encouragement.

They seemingly wasted away themselves from the stress of my illness.

I had hugged my mother, crying and begging them to abandon me.

I blamed myself for not being strong enough to fight the cancer.

My mother could not stop her tears, apologizing in return, claiming it was their fault I was suffering.

I had believed their words were born of genuine heartbreak.

Only now did I understand they were born of twisted, guilty confessions.

They were apologizing because they were the ones poisoning me.

I did not doubt they loved me.

But knowing what I knew, that love was a mouthful of ash.

A sudden, violent cramp ripped through my abdomen.

The poison was eating through my stomach lining.

And the worst part was that I could feel it spreading—slowly, deliberately, the way their lies had spread through every corner of my life.

Clara POV

The pain in my gut was a sharp, tearing sensation, but I kept my smile frozen on my face.

My thoughts drifted back to yesterday afternoon in my small bedroom.

The tang of rust from the large metal lockbox hidden deep beneath my bed seemed to cling to my fingertips still. When the screwdriver finally pried its heavy iron clasp open, a rusted spring had scraped the flesh of my thumb.

I had sat on the floor with a bleeding nose, counting the worn stacks of bills, totaling exactly ten thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two dollars and fifty cents.

It was every dime I had saved from birthdays, holidays, and tutoring gigs over the years.

I had sealed the cash and a handwritten letter inside a thick manila envelope, then crept into my brother's room and slipped it under Mateo's pillow.

I had planned for the money to buy a massage chair for my parents, because I thought their backs ached from manual labor.

I had wanted Mateo to buy new sneakers, because he always wore the same scuffed pair.

I had only wanted to silently watch over my family from heaven after my death.

My body had ached terribly while I had written that note, and tears had stung my eyes.

I had written about my boundless love for them.

I had written that I refused to be a financial burden anymore.

I had written that the chemo hurt too much and I just wanted to sleep.

After I had sealed the envelope, I had walked to the garage.

A memory, cold and sharp, surfaced from a month ago: my father bringing home a small, dark vial, his face unusually grim. He had placed it in his locked cabinet, his voice grave as he forbade me from ever touching it, explaining that it contained something lethal—a substance so dangerous that even a single drop would kill in unspeakable agony, a thing he claimed he was merely storing for someone else to help pay our mounting debts. I had been terrified of it ever since, my nightmares haunted by the thought of what kind of desperate people my family had become entangled with.

I had learned in biology class of the ruinous mechanics of corrosive toxins, and knew precisely the excruciating death it caused.

But yesterday, I had picked the lock on that cabinet with hands that barely trembled, believing I was saving my family from financial ruin. I had decanted the deadly liquid into a small travel vial, keeping it hidden against my skin. It was not until ten minutes ago, alone in the hospital restroom, that I finally unscrewed the cap and drank it all in one gulp.

I had deliberately severed any chance of my own survival.

As I lay on the hospital bed now, I admitted to myself that the discovery that my agonizing illness had been entirely orchestrated by my family broke my heart.

But I did not hate them.

I believed their past affection was genuine.

I was taken from an orphanage at age five, named Clara, and raised with overwhelming indulgence.

I had deduced that their immense wealth was hidden to keep me dependent, and that their love was a projection of their grief for their missing biological daughter.

Elena.

The name echoed in the hollows of my mind.

Elena was a name I had found on a faded missing person flyer locked deep inside my father's desk drawer, a ghost who had been kidnapped by traffickers five years ago.

I understood now that my family had a desperate need to compensate her.

They had prioritized her when the conflict over the betrothal to the supreme Don arose.

I firmly believed my family did not truly want to kill me.

Their guilt had blinded them, making them sideline me with the intention of compensating me later.

But they had no idea I had ingested poison.

They had no idea I would die on the operating table today.

They would be forever robbed of their chance to make amends.

The anesthesiologist signaled that it was time to move.

My mother cried out, promising to stay right by my side through the doors.

My father chased the gurney, promising to buy me delicious food and beautiful dresses.

He promised to take me on a vacation to the beach once I was out.

Mateo leaned down, his eyes bloodshot, and told me they were all right there with me.

I nodded through my tears.

"I know," I whispered, my voice barely audible. "Dad, Mom, Mateo. I will always love you."

My family wept harder at my words.

As the nurses pushed my bed through the heavy swinging doors of the operating room, my stomach violently contracted.

I opened my mouth to draw a breath—