At the awards for the Global Jewelry Design Competition, my stepsister Sandra took the grand prize.

She used the designs she stole from me.

What she didn’t know was the show’s biggest sponsor: Jude Moretti. Godfather of the Moretti family. A bloodthirsty monster scarred in an explosion, a man they say can never have children.

And the grand prize? Becoming the Godfather’s bride.

That night, Moretti’s men, all in black, delivered a gold-trimmed marriage contract. They were here for the “genius designer.”

My fiancé, Marco, panicked. He whisked Sandra off to Vegas to save her.

They got married that night.

With the deed done, Sandra strutted back in, wearing my silk robe. She flashed the ring on her finger and the hickies all over her neck.

“Marco’s mine now,” she purred. “What are you going to do, Odessa? The Godfather’s only giving you a day. If you don’t marry him, the Family will have to appease him. That means sending you to the red-light district. Selling you to the kind of sicko who gets off on broken things.”

She was wrong. I had another choice.

I found my father and stepmother, both scrambling to deal with the contract.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll marry the Godfather.”

My father was stunned when I agreed to take my stepsister’s place.

“Odessa, do you have any idea what kind of monster Jude Moretti is? They call him the Butcher of New York's underworld. They say when he loses it, he skins traitors with his own hands. You think you’ll come back in one piece?”

Before I could answer, my stepmother cut in, her eyes darting nervously.

“If Odessa doesn’t go, Sandra dies. Our Sandra, who already sacrificed her reputation by marrying Marco just to escape that monster. The Morettis are savages, but even savages have rules. They won’t touch a married woman…”

Conflict flickered in my father's eyes. He slowly let go of my hand and slumped back into his chair.

My heart turned to ice.

This house stopped being a home the day my mother died.

Sandra stole my father's love. She stole my designs.

Now she wanted me to jump into this man-eating pit for her.

And my right hand… useless.

All because they stuck me with some quack doctor after the accident.

And now, to protect Sandra, they were throwing me to the wolves without a second thought.

I let out a cold laugh, my eyes hard. “Fine, I’ll marry him. But on one condition. The day I get married, Sandra has to admit it, in public. Tears of Medusa was my design.”

“Are you crazy?! You want to ruin your sister’s future?!” my father roared, slamming his hands on the desk.

My stepmother looked heartbroken. “Odessa, how could you be so cruel? Sandra is the future of this family!”

My face was a mask of scorn, my voice like ice. “The Moretti Godfather specifically asked for the ‘genius designer.’ You can’t have it all. She can have her reputation, or she can have her life. Pick one.”

In the end, they agreed, to save Sandra’s life.

I turned and left the study, only to run right into Marco in the hall. He’d just come from Sandra’s room.

He was shirtless. The scratches on his chest were still fresh.

The air was thick with Sandra’s rose perfume—a cloying, sweet rot.

The scent of sex. A desperate, frantic fuck to escape the Godfather's grasp.

I covered my nose in disgust and tried to walk away, but Marco blocked my path, his face twisted with a sick sense of righteousness.

“Odessa, I know you’re jealous. But I had to marry Sandra. It was the only way to save her. Making her a married woman was the only way to get that monster to back off. Sandra is so innocent. She’d die in the Godfather’s hands.”

A bitter laugh escaped me.

I raised my right hand, showing him how it shook uncontrollably.

“She’s innocent? She’s scared to die? What about me, Marco? Should I just die?”

We were engaged for three years.

Ever since I came back from Switzerland with this hand, all I got from him was coldness and suspicion.

The wedding, postponed again and again.

Now, to save a thief, he had no problem throwing me away.

A flash of guilt crossed his face, but it was gone in a second, replaced by irritation. He grabbed my wrist.

“Odessa! If you’re a good girl, I can arrange a ‘private support agreement.’ I’ll set you up in the west wing of the Bianchi estate. I'll give you money, I'll protect you. You won't have to marry that monster.”

He leaned in. “Don’t worry. You won’t have the title, but I’ll treat you just as good as Sandra.”

I laughed, my stomach churning.

A “support agreement.” Mafia-speak for a mistress contract. The lowest of the low.

I would be his property. His toy.

No dignity, no freedom. Forced to watch him and my sister play house while he used my body for his release.

I snatched my hand back like he was something filthy. “Marco, I’d rather die than be a toy for you two sick fucks!”

His face darkened, the mask of kindness shattered. He’d lost face.

“Odessa! Who are you trying to fool with that high-and-mighty act? Is your reputation more important than being with me? You think I don’t know about the filthy things you did during that year in Switzerland?”

I shot back, “Oh yeah? Then why not make Sandra sign a mistress contract? That would have saved her too. The Morettis would never take a mistress as a wife.”

“How could she be a mistress?!” he blurted out. “She’s the champion designer, a pure angel! She’s meant to be cherished, she can’t handle any hardship!”

Years of hurt welled up, burning in my eyes.

Just because she could cry and play the victim.

I took a bomb blast for him. Ruined my right hand. Went through four agonizing nerve-stripping surgeries in Switzerland. So I’m supposed to be the strong one? The one to be sacrificed?

I blinked back the tears, my mocking gaze like a knife. “Marco, you keep your angel. I just hope you don’t cry too hard when you find out the truth.”

His face flushed with anger, scalded by my look. “Don’t be a fool! Who else would want you, a cripple and a whore? When that monster is done with you in three days, don't come crying to me to scrape your body off the floor!”

After Marco left, I stumbled back to my empty room.

On the bed, a black velvet box from the Moretti family.

My hands trembled as I opened it. My breath caught in my throat.

Lying inside was a necklace.

A perfect replica of the Tears of Medusa from my original sketches.

Every detail, every stone, was perfect.

He even fixed a tiny imperfection from my original draft, a place where my hand had trembled.

And next to the necklace, a thin slip of paper.

An expedited appointment confirmation from the University Hospital of Zurich.

Attending physician: Dr. Weber.

He’s the world’s top neurosurgeon. The most difficult to book. The only one who can fix irreversible nerve damage.

My hand started to shake violently.

The so-called monster, the demon who kills without blinking… cared more about my hand than the fiancé whose life I saved.

Maybe marrying Jude was my only way out.

The next day, I went to a high-end men’s boutique.

If I was going to marry the man they called “The Viper,” I should bring a gift.

It was good manners. It was also a sign of good faith.

I stood at the tie counter and pointed to a dark green silk tie.

“This one. Wrap it up.”

Just as the sales associate reached for it, a hand with tacky pink nails slammed down on the glass.

“That color is so drab. It wouldn’t suit Marco at all.”

Sandra’s voice, dripping with superiority, came from behind me.

I turned.

Marco had his arm around her waist, stroking her hair like she was a prize. The moment he saw me, the warmth in his eyes turned to ice.

“Odessa, are you following us?”

He glanced at the tie I’d picked and sneered. “I know you rejected my offer the other day to drive up the price. Regret it now? Trying to buy me a birthday gift, begging me to take you in? With a cheap tie that costs, what, a few grand?”

Trash? It was the most expensive limited-edition tie in the store. Fifty thousand dollars.

“It’s not for you,” I said, taking the box back. I motioned for the associate to wrap it. My voice was flat. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“It’s for the monster?” Sandra giggled, raising her voice on purpose. “Oh, sister, how thoughtful. But I hear a man like Jude doesn’t bother with ties. Too restrictive when you’re killing someone. You sure he won’t just use it to strangle you?”

Other customers started staring, whispering.

Sandra loved the attention.

She leaned in close, pulling down her collar to show off the bruises on her skin. Then she whispered, so only I could hear:

“So what if I stole your design? Marco believes me, not you. You’re just a useless cripple. You and that monster Jude deserve each other. But… what if that monster, like Marco, believes you spent your year in Switzerland getting an abortion? How do you think he’ll torture you then?”

My pupils shrank. It felt like a giant hand was crushing my heart.

“What did you say?”

“The truth, according to Marco,” she hissed, her smile turning nasty. “While he was badly hurt, you pretended to be recovering in Switzerland, but you were really taking his money to shack up with some other guy. You even got pregnant and had it scraped out… Tsk, tsk. Marco was so disgusted he threw up.”

A chill crawled up my spine.

So that was it.

That was why he’d changed. Vacation. Cheating. Abortion.

She had taken my year of hell—of fighting to survive, of passing out from the pain of physical therapy—and smeared it with her filthy lies.

“Sandra, shut your mouth!” I clenched my fist. The rage sent my right hand into a violent, uncontrollable spasm.

“What? Hit a nerve?” she cackled, then casually picked up a hot coffee from the counter. “Don’t be mad, sister, I just feel so bad for—AH!”

A scream.

I hadn’t touched her, but the coffee in her hand suddenly went flying.

Not onto the floor.

It splashed directly onto my spasming right hand.

“Hiss—!”

The searing liquid hit my skin. Pain shot through my nerves like a lightning bolt.

I cried out, the tie box falling to the floor.

For a hand that had been through four nerve-stripping surgeries, a hand this sensitive, the heat was like a red-hot poker twisting into the old wound.

The boutique dissolved around me. I was back in the warehouse. Fire and smoke. The cold, sterile steel of the operating table. My PTSD slammed into me like a freight train.

I curled up, clutching my hand, breaking out in a cold sweat, too much in pain to make a sound.

“Odessa! Are you insane?!”

Marco’s roar exploded above me.

He didn’t even glance my way. He grabbed Sandra’s perfectly fine hand, fussing over it, his voice laced with panic. “Baby, are you burned? Does it hurt?”

“It hurts… she pushed me…” Sandra squeezed out a few tears, shrinking into Marco’s arms. “I was just trying to get her a coffee, why would she do that to me?”

“Is this your revenge?” Marco spun on me, his eyes blazing with fury.

He strode over to where I was curled on the floor, my right hand twitching and turning an angry red.

“Marco… my hand…” I tried to explain, to beg for just a shred of pity.

This was the hand I had ruined to save his life.

But he lifted his foot. His expensive, handmade Italian leather shoe came down hard on my right hand.

“AGHH!”

A raw scream tore from my throat. I thought my bones would crack.

He ground his heel into my hand. The expensive leather twisted against scorched skin, crushing the delicate nerves beneath.

“Wasn’t hiding in Switzerland for a year enough for you? Stop playing the victim and trying to frame Sandra! I thought your hand was useless? How’d you push her so hard?”

Marco looked down at me like I was a piece of trash.

“This useless, filthy hand isn’t even fit to polish Sandra’s shoes.”

Pain.

A pain that bored right through me.

Worse than when they first cut the nerves.

But I didn’t scream again. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood.

Through a blur of sweat and tears, I stared up at the man I once loved, the man I once saved.

His foot was still pressing down.

“If you got her dress dirty,” Marco leaned down, his voice cold as a stranger’s, “I will snap this useless hand in two.”

Suddenly, the shop’s front door didn’t just open—it shattered. A murderous chill ripped through the store.

The agony from his shoe nearly snapped the last thread of my sanity.

But I didn’t beg.

I just stared at him, my mind flashing back to two years ago.

It was an assassination attempt on the Bianchi family.

He was kidnapped, badly wounded. It took me seven days, crawling through nearly every sewer in New York, to find him.

He was passed out in an abandoned warehouse. The bomb the kidnappers set was about to go off.

I dragged him with all my strength, and just as the blast wave threw us through the air, I shielded his head with my right hand.

A sharp piece of glass pierced my wrist, severing the nerves.

With his last bit of consciousness, Marco looked at me, his eyes red. He said he loved me. He said he would marry me.

And what happened next?

The Family rushed me to Switzerland for treatment. The best doctors, but also the highest costs and the most painful recovery.

I didn’t want him to worry, so I downplayed how bad it was.

But all the messages I sent him, his replies went from “Get well soon” to “K” and “Busy.”

A year later, I came back, full of hope. I was met with him and Sandra, and the words from his mouth: “Your hand is useless. You’re not fit to be the matriarch of the Bianchi family.”

Only now did I understand.

It wasn’t that he’d stopped loving me. He believed Sandra’s lies. He thought I was a cheat who took his money to get an abortion.

“Let go…” I choked out.

“Apologize!” Marco pressed down harder, twisting his heel. “Get on your knees and apologize to Sandra, and I’ll let your hand go! Or else I’ll have someone tattoo ‘WHORE’ on it right here!”

CRASH!

Not a gunshot, but the deafening roar of an engine. A black Hummer didn't just lose control—it leaped the curb, plowing straight through the glass storefront.

Glass and displays went flying.

Screams everywhere.

This was no accident.

A swarm of unmarked motorcycles roared up, masked gunmen spraying the store with automatic fire. It was a classic drive-by shooting. The target was clearly someone in here.

Bullets chewed up the marble floor, ricocheting through the air.

“AH! HELP!” Sandra shrieked, scrambling for cover.

On pure instinct, Marco lifted his foot off my hand, grabbed Sandra, and dove behind a counter.

His movements were smooth, decisive, full of a fierce need to protect.

Just like how I protected him three years ago.

Only this time, I was the one left out in the open, a living target.

I was still crumpled on the ground, my right hand numb with pain. I couldn't move fast enough.

A bullet hit the floor inches from my face, stone shards cutting my cheek.

I watched Marco’s back as he shielded Sandra, never once looking back at me.

In that moment, a part of my heart collapsed into rubble.

A bullet screamed for my heart.

I closed my eyes, ready for the end.

SCREEECH!

The shriek of tires drowned out the gunfire.

A bulletproof Maybach slammed to a halt, positioning itself between me and the hail of bullets.

The heavy chassis absorbed the assault, sparks flying off the metal.

The world went silent.

The rear window slid down.

Even in this chaos, the man inside was terrifyingly calm.

I couldn’t see his whole face, just a delicate silver mask covering one half, and a pair of ice-blue eyes as deep as an abyss.

“Can you move?” his voice was a low, magnetic rumble, full of a dangerous charm that demanded obedience.

I gritted my teeth and nodded.

A hand in a black leather glove emerged, offering a small silver canister.

“For the nerve pain. Spray it on the wound.”

My shaking fingers took it. The moment I brushed against his glove, a jolt shot through me.

“Thank you…”

But the window was already rising. The car pulled away like a ghost, leaving behind the smoke, the chaos, and a stunned Marco peeking out from behind the counter.

…

The next day. St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Every powerful family in New York was there, but no one dared to sit in the front pews.

Those were for the Moretti family.

As I put on my wedding dress, my father was still begging me not to make Sandra confess.

But I wouldn’t let her off the hook.

I stood alone at the altar in an ivory gown, waiting for the legendary monster.

The groom hadn't shown up yet.

“Wait!”

The cathedral doors burst open. Marco stormed in, the Bianchi family trailing behind him, along with a smug-looking Sandra.

“This wedding cannot happen!” he yelled, pointing at me, his voice echoing through the vast church. “Odessa Rossi is damaged goods! A liar! Her right hand is crippled, she is unworthy of the Moretti Godfather!”

The guests began to whisper.

I stood there, feeling their eyes on me, my heart a calm, dead sea.

“And she spent a year in Switzerland fooling around with other men! She had an abortion!” Marco bellowed, determined to nail me to a cross of shame. “How can an unclean woman like this marry the great Godfather? This is an insult to the Moretti name!”

“She doesn’t deserve to be his wife! She can’t even hold a ring steady with that hand! She’ll only bring shame to the Moretti name! She should be thrown out into the slums!”

He was here to humiliate me. To prove his loyalty to Sandra, to show everyone he wanted nothing to do with the "whore" he was leaving behind.

Even as I was about to marry another man, he had to destroy my name, to ensure I had no future.

I watched his mad performance, about to speak.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The heavy, steady sound of leather shoes on stone came from the shadows behind the altar.

The air in the cathedral froze. Every breath was held.

A tall figure emerged.

He wore a perfectly tailored black suit that did nothing to hide the power in his broad shoulders and narrow waist. His presence was so heavy it was suffocating.

He wasn't wearing a mask.

His face was brutally handsome. A jagged scar ran through one eyebrow, but it didn't ruin his looks—it just added a wild, bloodthirsty edge.

Jude Moretti.

He ignored everyone, walking straight to me.

Those ice-blue eyes locked onto mine, then drifted down to my gloved right hand.

He reached out.

After a moment’s hesitation, I gave him my hand.

He pulled off the glove, revealing the scarred, trembling flesh beneath. And on the back of my hand, the ugly, fading bruise from where Marco had stomped on it.

From the crowd, Marco sneered. “See, Don Moretti? I told you. It’s a useless hand. She is unworthy…”

He didn’t finish.

Jude suddenly bowed his head.

And before the horrified eyes of everyone, this feared Godfather, this demon of the underworld, reverently, gently, pressed a kiss to my ugliest scar.

“This hand saved a blind man’s life.”

He looked up, his voice low and raw, laced with an undeniable authority that filled the church.

“But in my house, it’s meant to wear a crown.”

The next second, Jude spun around.

He drew his gun, cocked it, and aimed the black muzzle right between Marco's eyes.

"You're on my turf," he said, his voice deadly soft. "And you put your filthy hands on my wife."