After I was reborn, I tore up my blood-ink invitation to the Falcone inner circle with my own hands.

And turned down both my childhood sweethearts' passionate confessions.

Because in my last life, I chose one of them — Domenico Falcone.

On our wedding day, he ran off for Ivy Santoro, and the shock killed the grandmother who'd raised me alone.

At my lowest point, my other blood-bound companion took my hand and said: "You still have me. I will never let you down."

He walked me through the darkness, but after we married, he turned cold.

I thought he regretted that we couldn't have children.

Then came a car accident. He left me dying on the pavement to go save Ivy, who had nothing worse than a scrape.

I died right there. And as my soul drifted, untethered, I finally learned the truth.

My entire life had been nothing but a love game between the three of them.

They'd already drawn up their wills, leaving everything they owned to Ivy Santoro.

And my years of infertility? That was them too. To prove their devotion to Ivy, they'd bribed a doctor to remove my uterus.

This time around, I was going to stay far away from all of them and live a life that was mine.

——

When I tore up the invitation, my handler at the Caruso house went pale.

"Serafina Caruso, what are you doing?"

Four names from our district had been offered positions within the Falcone inner circle this year.

I was the only one who'd earned it on merit — a mind valued more highly than a hundred soldiers, recognized after I broke every cipher they put in front of me.

Every elder in the old network, not just my handler, had high hopes for me.

I kept my expression calm. "I don't want the Falcone position anymore. I've been accepted into The Order of the Black Lily. They've agreed to send dedicated personnel to look after my grandmother."

"Ah, I see. All right. I know your family's situation is difficult, Serafina. Train hard, build yourself a future, and make your Nonna proud."

I nodded. Before I even had time to grieve for everything that had happened in my last life, Domenico and Salvatore Vitale were already calling, telling me to hurry downstairs.

The whole way down through the Caruso house, people stared and whispered.

Someone tripped me on the stairs.

Called me a whore.

I had no idea what was going on. I got to my feet, limping.

At the turn of the corridor, I caught Ivy talking to my two blood-bound companions.

"I did see Serafina getting out of a Falcone lieutenant's car in the middle of the night, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe she really did earn her place on her own."

"Stop defending her, Ivy. She won't even let anyone see her test results. She's obviously too guilty to let anyone find out."

"Exactly. You're just too kind, Ivy, that's why she keeps fooling you. A scheming woman like her is capable of anything."

After I'd entered The Order, I signed a blood oath of silence. My records were sealed — every score, every file, every trace of who I'd been before.

I never imagined that would become the excuse Ivy used to frame me.

And my two blood-bound companions, who knew exactly how hard I'd studied for my grandmother's sake, still chose to believe every word Ivy said.

I laughed bitterly to myself. Told myself it didn't matter.

Once I officially entered The Order's compound, all my personal information would be classified too.

After that, I could cut ties with them completely.

No more listening to words designed to wound.

No more living like a fool inside someone else's web of lies, only to end up dead and discarded.

I walked up to the three of them as if I'd heard nothing.

"You wanted to see me?"

Domenico dropped the contempt from a moment ago and smiled at me.

"Serafina, this is great. We'll be running in the same circles again. All those years of hard work finally paid off."

Salvatore was smiling too.

"We get to keep protecting you now! Four years isn't enough, though. We're talking a lifetime."

A few girls passing by watched us with open envy.

I felt nothing.

In my previous life, all four of us had ended up in the same territory. Same circles. Same obligations.

I'd worked myself to the bone, studying the Family's operations, throwing myself into every task the elders set before me, all for a better future. All to prove the Caruso name still meant something.

But in the end, my place in the inner circle and the patronage I'd earned were quietly taken from me and handed to Ivy.

Rumors spread that I'd bought my standing on my back, that I'd been sleeping with one of the old guard to secure my position.

I was isolated and frozen out for four straight years. No one sat with me at Family dinners. No soldier acknowledged me in the halls.

Back then, these two had sworn up and down they'd stand by me. Protect me. Blood-bound, they'd called it.

It wasn't until after I died that I learned they were the ones behind all of it.

Through all those endless sleepless nights, all those hours crying until dawn, they'd been feeding my pain to their precious Ivy to make her smile.

When I said nothing, Ivy's voice turned sour.

"Serafina is so lucky. Born into a Family bloodline, a pampered heiress, and two blood-bound companions who'd do anything for her."

"I could never be that lucky. Without Serafina's patronage, I wouldn't have even been able to stay under the Families' protection." The moment those words left her mouth, both men's faces softened with concern.

"Don't say that, Ivy. You're beautiful and talented. You've got an amazing future ahead of you. Once you're established, I'll have my father set you up running one of our front operations. A general manager position, at minimum."

"No, Ivy, come to the Vitale organization instead. I'll give you a higher position, better cut, whatever you want. It's yours."

The two of them fell over each other trying to one-up their offers for Ivy.

The bitterness was hard to swallow.

All these years of knowing each other, and they had never once made that kind of promise to me. Never once shown me that kind of favoritism.

Of course. Love that's performed can never compare to devotion that comes from the heart.

I was about to leave when Domenico noticed something was off.

He reached for my hand, a trace of guilt flickering across his face.

"Serafina, don't overthink it. We're only nice to Ivy because she's your friend."

Salvatore ruffled my hair the way he used to when we were kids, back when the three of us ran wild through the Compound's gardens and no one had taught us yet what blood debts were.

"Stop reading into things. Everything's settled now. Let's go for a drive. We got you a present."

I nodded. Didn't refuse.

I was leaving soon anyway.

I just wanted one last look at this territory where the three of us had grown up together. The streets the Families controlled, the old restaurants where our grandfathers had once broken bread, the waterfront where the boundary lines had been drawn before any of us were born.

In the garage, Domenico and Salvatore both scrambled to get Ivy into their front passenger seat.

Ivy looked at me with that perfectly rehearsed expression of reluctance. Her fingers drifted to the hollow of her throat.

"I thought the front seat was only for Serafina?"

"She'll be upset if I sit there, won't she?"

Domenico was faster. He guided Ivy into the passenger seat and buckled her in.

"She doesn't deser—" He caught himself. "She won't mind. She's got the best temper of anyone I know."

Salvatore shot Domenico an annoyed glare.

He slammed his car door shut, visibly irritated.

It wasn't until the engines were about to start that either of them realized I still wasn't in a car.

They rolled down their windows and looked at each other.

Both wanted to explain. Neither could find a single good reason.

"It's fine. I'll drive myself."

The relief on both their faces was instant and simultaneous, though a flicker of confusion followed, as if my calm wasn't what they'd expected.

"Serafina..."

I rolled my window up. I didn't want to hear another manufactured word.

But the scenery along the road still pulled old memories to the surface, one after another. The iron gates of the Falcone estate. The corner where Salvatore had bloodied a boy's nose for looking at me wrong when we were twelve. The old social club where the capos used to let us sit in the back booth and eat cannoli while they talked business in voices too low for children to hear.

The three of us were blood-bound companions who'd grown up side by side, raised across allied Families with the understanding that bonds formed at the matriarch's table were sacred.

For as long as I could remember, both the Falcone and Vitale households had competed to claim me as a future daughter-in-law. The Caruso bloodline was old, and old blood still carried weight, even when the money and the soldiers were gone.

Then my parents died, gunned down in what the Families called an accident but no one truly believed was one, and the once-powerful Caruso Family shrank down to just me and my grandmother, holding on to each other with nothing else left.

An old woman and a young girl, holding together a crumbling household in a circle of wolves.

So I threw everything I had into learning the only currency that mattered in our world: knowledge. Codes, ledgers, the architecture of power. Desperate to shoulder the family's burden before the last of our name was swallowed whole.

Ivy Santoro came from nothing. No family name, no bloodline, no standing. At the gatherings of the Five Families, nobody gave her the time of day.

When I found out she was an orphan too, I felt for her. I reached out first, paid her way, brought her under the Caruso roof, and told her we'd get through the hard times together.

I never imagined she'd take my kindness as charity.

That she'd resent me for everything I had.

That she'd use every trick she knew to wrap my two blood-bound companions around her finger.

And then, together with them, destroy my life.

While I was still lost in those thoughts, we arrived.

What had happened in the car left both of them uneasy. They fell over each other to open my door and carry my things.

"Maxie, look. This is the overlook we used to come to as kids. Salvatore and I bought the whole hillside. From now on, it's ours. Private ground. No one sets foot here without our say."

Salvatore nodded. "I already had someone plant your favorite yellow roses across the ridge. By this time next year, there'll be a whole sea of them."

"Then the four of us can come up here together, drive around, watch the stars."

Their faces were bright with plans for the future.

I stood staring at the land in silence.

This really had been our secret place when we were little. Before blood oaths and Family politics turned everything sharp. It held every happy memory the three of us shared.

But I had never liked yellow roses.

I was allergic to pollen. All of it.

While I stood there turning that over, fireworks burst open across the sky above us. Brilliant colors spelling out my name.

Under that dreamlike canopy, Domenico produced a ring box lined in black velvet and held it out to me. Inside, on a bed of silk, sat a signet ring bearing the Falcone crest. Not his own. A woman's ring, smaller, older, the gold worn smooth by generations of Falcone brides.

"Maxie, this is the family heirloom. My parents told me to give it to the future lady of the Falcone house. I've wanted to give it to you for a long time. I just had to wait for the right moment."

"Be with me instead, Maxie. Don't you remember? When you nearly drowned as a kid, I jumped in after you without thinking. I'd give you my life, let alone some ring!"

In my last life, this was exactly what had fooled me. The two of them, performing devotion so convincingly.

Back then I was naive enough to believe it. Blood-bound companions, a happy ending waiting for us. My grandmother and the Caruso name would finally have someone to lean on.

I didn't learn the truth until the day I died.

Devotion that deep can be faked.

I was about to refuse.

Then Ivy spoke up. "Maxie, why did you tell people I've been spreading rumors about you? Now everyone's attacking me..."

She held her phone up to my face. Her fingers fluttered to the hollow of her throat as she did it, lingering there with the practiced tremble of a woman begging to be believed.

Under the Westbrook social feed, hundreds of comments called me shameless, said I'd sold myself for a seat at the Falcone table. The handful of people defending me became, in Ivy's telling, proof that I'd sent them to bully her.

Salvatore snatched the phone from her hand. His knuckles cracked once, pinky finger, slow and deliberate, before his voice came out shaking with rage.

"Serafina, how could you do something like this? Fine, you've got no shame. But why blame Ivy for it?"

Domenico, the calmer of the two, didn't explode. But his eyes pinned me with the same accusation.

I swallowed the storm inside me. "I didn't do it. If you don't believe me, go look into it yourselves."

Neither of them heard a word I said. They were already busy comforting Ivy.

"Don't worry, Ivy. I'll have our people scrub it by morning."

"Sweets always help. Come on, I'll take you for something."

One on each side, they flanked Ivy and walked away.

Neither of them looked back.

I let out a long breath and watched the ash drifting down where the fireworks had been. The Falcone ring box sat on the stone wall where Domenico had set it down, forgotten.

Compared to life and death, this much hurt was nothing.

At least I was still alive. I still had a brand-new life ahead of me.