I took the casino business Angelina, my stepsister, had always wanted.

The very next day, the heir of the Corleone family who was Angelina's childhood companion knocked on my door.

With that deep, captivating face, he asked, “Principessa Annelise, what’s the point of those bloody businesses? Why don’t I take you to enjoy a life of real pleasure?”

So, I agreed without hesitation.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I sealed those lips I had long wanted to taste.

After that, I began frequently skipping internal mafia meetings.

I let the businesses in my hands fall into decline, little by little.

I spent extravagantly.

Every day, I only cared about indulging in pleasure with Lorenzo in high-end clubs and private yachts.

That was until my father, the don, fell gravely ill.

The night before the family leaders gathered to choose the new don, he served me in bed and asked me to hand over control of the family to Angelina at the meeting.

I knew that was his true purpose for approaching me.

However, this time, I only quietly touched the don’s ring hidden beneath my pillow, the symbol of the family’s highest power.

“You’ve given me a great experience this past year. But the power of the don is too tempting. For the next game, I won’t be playing with you.”

“Hey, behave.”

Lorenzo Corleone moved hard against me, thinking I was joking.

“Mmm…”

His performance in bed satisfied me, and I couldn’t help letting out a soft moan.

The next morning, I woke up in bed.

The air still carried the lingering scent of desire mixed with champagne from last night. I got up and walked toward the cabin door to pour a glass of ice water.

However, through the half-closed door, I heard Lorenzo on an international call with Angelina.

Angelina’s voice came through, unable to hide her excitement.

“She really agreed to transfer the inheritance to me?

“Lorenzo, are you sure she’s completely out of it? That woman crawled out of a pile of corpses!”

Lorenzo let out a mocking laugh, his tone full of certainty and arrogance.

“Angelina, she’s so mentally weak right now that she can’t even understand the accounts.

“I’ve been doubling her dosage every day. The only thing on her mind now is sleeping with me. Nothing else.”

Laughter came from the other end.

I swirled the glass in my hand.

My mind really was filled with him—the way he was on top of me and how he reacted when I told him to go faster.

What a fine man.

Playing along and fooling him a little didn’t matter. After all, Lorenzo was the one putting in real effort to please me.

Once he hung up, Lorenzo turned and saw me drinking water at the bar.

He quickly hid the panic in his eyes and put on an affectionate smile as he walked toward me.

“Baby, you’re awake? Why not sleep a little longer?

“I was just on the phone with Angelina. She wants us to attend the selection meeting earlier today.”

He tried to cover it up with a lie.

I stepped forward, my fingers lightly brushing across his warm chest before resting on his firm waist.

“No sleeping.”

I stood on my toes and breathed softly in his ear.

“You sounded very sexy on the phone just now. I’m in the mood again.”

His body stiffened slightly, then quickly relaxed. He wrapped an arm around my waist, lifted me, and threw me back onto the messy bed.

He pressed me beneath him, his hot kiss falling on my neck.

“Me too, baby.”

His voice was low and coaxing.

“Annelise, at the meeting this afternoon, transfer the inheritance to Angelina, then leave immediately. I’ll take you to watch the sunset. Just the two of us.”

“Mmm… Ah.”

I pressed my face against his chest, feeling his heartbeat.

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

Lorenzo let out a breath of relief and kissed my forehead. A trace of triumph flashed in his eyes.

I lowered my gaze and waited as the yacht slowly approached the dock.

The net was closing; time to wrap things up.

Ever since I was young, I knew that in the cannibalistic world of the mafia, only absolute ruthlessness could keep you alive.

So I climbed my way up over countless corpses and became a monster in everyone’s eyes.

However, standing out too much is never a good thing.

My stepmother, Darlene, and Angelina have always seen me as a thorn in their side.

For the past twenty years, Darlene has sent assassins after me again and again. And Angelina, to seize territory, threw my trusted men into the river.

I constantly reminded myself that I needed to take the don’s ring of power as soon as possible and crush them both under my feet.

I never dared to relax until a year ago.

With ruthless methods, I took over the largest underground casino on the West Side of New Haven, called “Gates of Heaven”.

It was the money-laundering base Angelina had long coveted, and also her stepping stone into the core of the family’s power.

When I cut off her path, she went mad with jealousy and swore to make me pay the price.

So, she sent her childhood companion, Lorenzo Corleone, known as “New Haven’s underworld’s most handsome man”, to me.

That night, the casino was deafening with noise, and I had just finished dealing with a traitor.

Lorenzo appeared in front of me with his perfectly sculpted face.

A face that was exactly what my desire wanted.

His body outshone Hollywood stars.

As he moved, his suit outlined his perfect muscle lines and stirred my most hidden desires.

I wanted him.

He leaned against the roulette table, playing with a chip, his gaze burning as it landed on me.

“Principessa Annelise, I hear you like exciting bets.”

He pushed the chip toward me. His posture was lazy, but his voice was tempting.

“Tonight, I’ll bet myself against you. What do you say?”

The men behind me immediately tensed, gripping the guns at their waists.

The heir of the Corleone family was no joke. However, I wasn’t afraid.

“Sure.”

I took the chip and agreed without hesitation.

That night, I kicked him onto the king-sized bed of the presidential suite, and in the most primitive way, completely took away his control.

I was riding on top.

He probably never expected that the skills he was so proud of would be lost to me.

Watching him beneath me go from initial shock and humiliation to eventual surrender and indulgence, I truly understood then what it felt like to control a top-tier prey.

I had to admit that Lorenzo appeared at the perfect time.

Although many of the senior figures in the family appeared respectful on the surface, I knew they had already secretly sided with Darlene and Angelina.

Since they hadn’t made a mistake, I had no way to remove them without a reason.

I was just worrying about how to wipe out these cancers in one move when Lorenzo appeared.

His original plan was to lure me in slowly, like hunting a rare butterfly, and make me fall deeply in love before eventually offering everything to him.

Unfortunately, I was not a butterfly but a trap.

I knew the moment he came to me that it wasn’t because he had taken a liking to me.

He was the poison Angelina sent to destroy me.

‘Now that you’ve delivered a high-end toy to my door, I’ll play this game with you to the very end.’

I pretended, gladly accepting every deliberate attempt Lorenzo made to lure me in.

In the noisy casino, the hidden underground fight club, on the balcony, the couch, out in the open…

As the way he looked at me grew more and more certain, I pretended to fall for him.

After all, a prey delivered itself to my door. There was no reason not to take it.

When I brought him back to my private villa, Lorenzo began testing my limits like crazy.

He searched through my study, trying to steal the password to the core business vault.

However, I was already on guard.

He spent half a month and found nothing.

Since he couldn’t get the core secrets out of me, he changed his strategy.

That night, before we got into bed, he handed me a pill.

He leaned close to my ear, coaxing, “Anna, this enhances pleasure. Take it, and tonight you’ll feel unprecedented bliss.”

I took the glass.

After years of surviving in the family, I immediately recognized that the pill had a banned substance added to it.

Immediately, I understood his plan.

He wanted to drug me until I was mentally weak, then control me.

Using his looks, he’d trap my feelings, take my family secrets, and hand them to Darlene.

That way, he could gain her support and secure his position in the Corleone family, while also pleasing Angelina.

I pushed him onto the bed.

After he lost himself and fell asleep, I went to the bathroom and spat the pill into the toilet.

From that day on, he gave me pills every night, and every time, I pretended to take them.

Soon, I started showing headaches and memory loss in front of him and pretended to be completely obsessed with him.

I spent my days taking Lorenzo shopping through luxury stores, racing down highways late at night, and going in and out of private clubs and parties with him.

I pushed away all reviews of the core business and even handed over management of several large casinos to Angelina.

Every day, all I did was cling to him in bed.

Thinking his plan had succeeded, Lorenzo became even more eager in bed.

I watched his smug expression and felt nothing but endless mockery.

My decline quickly spread within the family.

Among the upper ranks of the mafia, rumors spread that Principessa Annelise had been blinded by beauty and turned into a useless joke.

The men under me were completely disappointed. Some even spat at my car in public.

At a family dinner, Darlene pointed at me in front of all the capos and mocked me.

“Some people are born to rot in a man’s bed, wagging their tail like a begging wh*re.”

At that time, I was sitting in Lorenzo’s arms, feeding him a peeled grape.

I didn’t even raise my head. I only laughed softly and asked him, “Darling, do you like me like this?”

Lorenzo smiled with satisfaction, his hand roaming restlessly along my waist.

“I like it very much, my principessa.”

Sometimes, when Lorenzo looked at me, there was a kind of condescending pity.

He thought I was pitiful, a fool who ruined her future for love.

In reality, every minute I spent fooling around with him was also to secretly contact money-laundering experts.

Through these high-end places, I secretly approached politicians and judges.

I pushed all the casino’s bad accounts onto Angelina, letting her take the pressure from the investigation team.

Using the excuse of “messing around” with Lorenzo, I frequently replaced the people around me.

Without anyone noticing, I removed the insiders who were close to Darlene and Angelina.

He treated each one of my “downfalls” as a victory, regularly reporting them to Angelina.

However, I acted as if I knew nothing and kept looking for Lorenzo to have some fun.

In bed, he indulged more and more. And off the bed, he grew closer to me in ways he didn’t even realize.

Angelina began to feel a sense of crisis.

Once, on the way to a family gathering, Lorenzo and I got too intense in the car. When I got out, my legs gave out.

Angelina blocked me at the car door, full of hostility.

She stared at the hickeys on my collar, her eyes full of anger.

Still, she held it back.

“You and Lorenzo must have a lot of energy. Don’t you get tired of doing the same thing over and over?”

I carefully covered the marks with my collar.

Then I looked at her with a smile.

“If I don’t spend my energy on men, where should I spend it?

“On taking your territory?”

Angelina was left speechless. I still remember the look on her face.

Later, when Lorenzo went to comfort her, I pretended not to know.

Lorenzo was naturally unruly.

He thought he could control everything, but never realized that from beginning to end, he was nothing more than a high-end toy to me.

“Annelise, sign this black market arms agency agreement and give it to Angelina.”

Lorenzo’s voice pulled my thoughts back to the present.

I was sitting in a bulletproof Maybach on the way to headquarters.

The air felt heavy.

Lorenzo took a document from his suit and gently placed it on my lap.

“Keeping these will only bring you trouble. Sign it, and I’ll take you to the airport.”

His tone was certain, as if granting me a kind of salvation called “freedom”.

I looked at the agreement and suddenly let out a soft laugh.

Lorenzo frowned, confused.

Relying on the favor I had shown him this past year, he spoke to me as if giving an order.

“What are you laughing at? Sign it. We don’t have much time.”

I raised my hand and slapped his face hard.