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."