I've died on my wedding day.

When I'm in the middle of getting cruelly tortured by the thugs, my parents, older brother, and my fiance are all comforting my younger adopted sister, Arianna Capuano, who's bawling her eyes out.

Before I die, I've called them for help.

But Diego Atzori, my fiance who's the next Don of the Atzori family, sounds extremely angry at me when he picks up the call.

"Carlotta Capuano, Arianna's life is more important than our marriage! Stop putting on an act just to attract attention!"

The call goes dead. My life is also entering its countdown. I can only lie in my own puddle of blood, my body broken and mutilated, until I stop breathing entirely.

No one can find me at home. They think I'm just throwing a tantrum because the wedding has gotten canceled. Perhaps I've chosen to run away from the altar just so I can attract their attention.

What they don't know is the fact that I've never left home.

In fact, I've died in the basement of my own house. I died right beneath their feet.

My soul was awakened by Mamma's joyful sobs.

I floated from the basement to the main living room in the mansion and saw my mother, Livia Trotta, holding my younger adopted sister, Arianna Capuano, while weeping bitterly.

"Oh god, my poor Arianna has suffered so much! Thank goodness we finally found you. Otherwise, who would have known how much you'd have gotten hurt!"

Arianna wouldn't stop sobbing quietly either. "I thought I wouldn't ever get to see you again, Mamma."

My elder brother, Giusto Capuano, patted her on the back with reddened eyes. "Don't worry, Arianna. Next time, I'll arrange for more Soldati to keep you safe from now on," he said.

I looked at Arianna. Her dress was a little dusty. But other than the dirt streaks on her face, she looked perfectly fine without even a scratch on her—a stark contrast to my condition in the downstairs basement.

Arianna wiped her tears away. "By the way, Giusto, where's Carlotta? I don't seem to have seen her anywhere."

"You don't have to care about her. She's probably just angry that her wedding had to be cancelled because we had to rescue you. I bet she's just hidden herself away, hoping that we'd go out and beg her to come back home next."

"But it's getting dark outside… Isn't it dangerous for a young woman like her to be outside on her own?"

My dad, Vittorino Capuano, waved his hand dismissively and said, "She'll come back on her own after she's thought things through. As for you, the doctor said that you need to rest more at home.You should stay at home and have a good rest."

I floated in between the two of them, reaching out to touch Papa's face, but my finger went right through him.

The warmth belonged to them. I didn't deserve any.

My fiance, Diego Atzori, stood at the door for a long time without saying anything.

Arianna then looked at him and began talking to him in a coquettish manner. There were still tears in her eyes as she said, "Did Carlotta contact you, Diego?"

Diego's face looked dark and a little ashen. "No. Her phone's been turned off."

"It's all my fault… If you didn't come out to save me, you and she would have already been married at your wedding ceremony by now—"

"Don't put it that way," Diego said, interrupting her. "No matter what important day it is, it's still not as important as your life. Carlotta will think things through by herself after she's calmed down."

"Let me send her a text message to apologize first. I hope that she'll come back home after she reads my message," Arianna said, taking out her phone to text me.

"I bet those three thugs aren't enough to keep you busy, right? Maybe I should just get more people to join in on the fun next time! Have fun rotting away in the basement!

"There can only be one Principessa in the Capuano Famiglia, and that will be me! I am also the only one who will be marrying Diego!"

I watched with wide eyes as she sent out the text message before deleting it from her chat window almost immediately.

Then, she composed a different text message saying, "I'm sorry, Carlotta! I was wrong. Hurry up and come home! Everyone's worried to death about you!"

After sending the second text message, she showed her phone to Mamma and said, "Mamma, do you think that Carlotta will forgive me after reading this text message?"

Mamma pulled her into a heartbroken hug and said, "It's Carlotta's fault for being ruthless and running away from her own wedding. It was never your fault to begin with. Oh, how I wish you were my biological daughter instead!"

I felt a pang of hurt in my chest.

Was I ruthless? Was I really as ruthless as they said I was?

Papa and Mamma had always felt sorry for Arianna because she had grown up mostly in the slums her whole life. After adopting her, they gave her all of their love, even more than what they reserved for me.

I had felt sorry for her in the past as well, so I never made a fuss about it.

It was supposed to be my wedding to Diego today. While I was about to set out for the church after getting ready at home, three masked men in black suddenly rushed into the mansion and dragged me straight down to the basement.

I was terrified, and I later learned that they were hired by the enemy Famiglia to capture me and torture me to my death.

I had promised them that I would give them as much money as they wanted as long as they let me go.

One of the masked men grinned slyly as he handed me my handphone.

"You have one chance to call someone. If someone comes to save you, then we will let you go."

I called Diego without hesitation.

"Diego… Save me… I've been kidnapped, please come back and save me…"

Diego sounded like he was panting heavily on the other end of the line, almost like he was running while answering my call.

"Carlotta Capuano! Arianna's life is way more important than our wedding! Stop it with your pathetic acting just to make yourself sound pitiful to get our attention!"

Then, he hung up on me.

The next two hours were like hell for me.

The thugs tore off my wedding dress, sliced every inch of my skin open with their sharp knives, and broke all four of my limbs.

I lay on the ground in a boneless heap. When the thugs saw that their mission was done, they immediately took to their heels and fled.

The basement door slammed heavily on me.

Blood wouldn't stop bleeding from my four broken limbs. I stared up at the ceiling as blood flowed down my ears.

If Arianna's life was important and worth saving, then was mine not after all?

I closed my eyes.

As it turned out, there was no actual difference between dying in my own basement and dying out in the streets.

Nobody knew or cared anyway.

And so, I bled to death in my wedding dress in the basement.

I recalled what my biology professor had taught me before. I knew that there were only 24 hours left before the stench of my corpse would fill the entire mansion.

My soul remained trapped in the mansion. I watched Papa and Mamma stay with the spooked Arianna until she fell asleep before finally leaving her room, and I watched Giusto wake up early in the morning to prepare breakfast for her.

Everyone seemed to have already accepted the fact that I wasn't even home.

Suddenly, Arianna emerged from her bedroom, clutching a bundle of fabric while sobbing quietly.

"This is the dress I prepared to attend the Cioffi Famiglia's ball next week… But how did it turn out like this?"

Mamma hurriedly took the fabric from her and unfurled it, revealing a champagne-colored satin dress with three long slashes from the chest to the hem. The remaining fabric hung down in tatters.

Papa frowned as Giusto leaned over to have a look. Their faces turned dark immediately.

"It's been cut with shearing scissors," Giustio said. "It wasn't an accident. It had to have been Carlotta! She must have been so resentful about Arianna ruining her wedding that she sneaked back in the middle of the night to ruin her dress!"

Arianna wiped the tears from her eyes and feigned sadness as she said, "Carlotta once told me that she really loved this dress of mine… I had even thought about gifting it to her… But I don't think she would have done such a thing…"

"Who else could it be if it wasn't her? The home security system is working well. Nobody else could have broken in."

Giusto was furious.

While watching Arianna orchestrate this act of her own and pretend to be the pitiful victim, I suddenly understood why Papa, Mamma, and Giusto all hated me so much. Arianna certainly had plenty to do with it.

She had always been jealous of my identity as the Principessa of the Capuano Famiglia. She kept fabricating evidence of my bullying her or betraying the Famiglia, framing me, and then using her acting skills to point the finger at me and gain everyone's trust.

Every time, Papa would just lock me up in the basement without waiting to listen to my side of the story.

It wasn't until Diego appeared that I felt there was a ray of sunshine in my life once again. Yet, he was also always fooled by Arianna's pitiful acts.

Giusto slammed his fist into the couch cushion in fury.

"I knew that it was Carlotta! It's just a stupid wedding! What's the big deal about it? Arianna nearly lost her life then! She just wants the whole world to revolve around her and nobody else!"

After a few seconds of silence, Arianna's quiet sobbing resurfaced. "Forget about it. Carlotta has never liked me in the first place. It's just a dress. I shouldn't blame her for it…"

"What do you mean, 'forget about it'?" Mamma exclaimed, wiping away her tears in a heartbreaking manner. "I won't let this blow over just like that! When Carlotta comes back later, I will make sure she explains exactly what she's up to!"

"We'll talk about it again if she ever comes back," Giusto said with a cold grin on his face. "There's still no trace of her anywhere."

Papa got up and walked over to Arianna, lowering his head to look at her. "Throw this dress away. I'll have the family seamstress come over tomorrow to make you ten new dresses instead."

Arianna was stunned for a moment. Then, she threw herself into Papa's arms and exclaimed, "Thank you, Papa!"

"Also, Carlotta's room is facing the south, and it gets good sunlight during the day. You can move in. There's no point keeping it empty now that she's not coming back."

Arianna looked up at once, her eyes still brimming with tears. However, her lips lifted momentarily in a sly smirk, and I was the only one who caught it.

"But… But Carlotta will get angry about it…"

"Who does she think she is?" Giusto spat.

"She ran away from home just because her wedding got cancelled. What's the point of leaving the room for her? It's not like she cares about this Famiglia anymore anyway!"

Mamma nodded and said, "He's right. Haven't you always wanted your bedroom to have a balcony, Arianna? It all works out just fine."

Arianna nodded happily, smiling sweetly at them.

I floated next to them, taking in everything with my own eyes.

I had only gotten that bedroom for myself when I turned ten years old, and I'd been delighted for an entire month just because of it.

But now, the room was going to belong to someone else instead.

It was fine. I wasn't going to be returning to it anyway.

Meanwhile, Diego stood by the window without saying a thing.

After Arianna finally calmed down, he turned around and said with a frown on his face, "The Carlotta I know would never do a thing like this. All the rooms have surveillance cameras. We just need to check them to know the truth."

Arianna got flustered and gripped the hem of her dress at once.

Of course, Arianna would never let them check the surveillance cameras, because then everyone would have realized that I never appeared anywhere after all!

She leaned next to Mamma and said, "There's no need to check the surveillance. It's just a dress. We'll just pretend that it wasn't Carlotta's fault."

"But…"

"Mamma, I had a terrible nightmare last night about the kidnapping, and my head really hurts now," she suddenly said, avoiding Diego's eyes and hugging Mamma next to her instead.

Mamma held her in her arms, her expression heartbroken, and began chiding Diego.

"Arianna just experienced a kidnapping. Stop making her upset because of Carlotta! It doesn't matter whether this was really Carlotta's fault, since she's not home anyway. The important thing now is to cheer Arianna up and keep her that way."

Although Mamma had already put it that way, Diego's suspicions still made Arianna uneasy.

I saw the cogs turning in her head for a while before she suddenly got to her feet and said, "Mamma, maybe we've all wrongly blamed Carlotta for everything after all.

"I suddenly remember seeing a gift box next to my bed when I woke up in the morning. Maybe it's a gift she left me to celebrate my safe return last night. Let me go and retrieve it to see what she got me."

She turned and made her way upstairs.

Diego was the only one who still looked suspicious about everything.

Suddenly, there was a loud scream from her upstairs.

She grabbed a gift box as she stumbled down the stairs, her arms now covered in angry red rashes.

"Mamma! It itches so bad! There's nettle powder on the gift box!"

I looked at the gift box containing a brooch in her hands. It was my favorite brooch, and everyone had seen me wearing it before.

Papa didn't say another word as he glared at the brooch. Meanwhile, Mamma pulled Arianna into her arms again with comforting words while Giusto's face turned darker than thunder.

"I knew it! I knew Carlotta was nothing but an evil witch! She still hasn't shown up at home because she's been meaning to escape after harming Arianna!"

"Stop it with the yakking and get the antidote for Arianna now!" Papa said, grabbing the gift box Arianna stole from my room from her hands and tossing it straight into the trash.

"The antidote is in the basement. Let me go and get it," Giusto said.

Arianna immediately stopped him. "I'm just allergic, Giusto. You just need to get the Famiglia doctor for me. I don't need the antidote."

I watched as Giusto stopped in his tracks. If only he'd gone down into the basement, he would have immediately noticed my rotting body.

However, he listened to Arianna's words instead and ran off to fetch the doctor.

All it took was just Arianna twisting the truth, and all of a sudden, I was this evil, ungrateful, and unreasonable person— someone who had run away from home, ruined Arianna's dress, and poisoned her with stinging nettle because I was ostensibly jealous of her.

And yet, I hadn't even lifted a finger toward her.

Diego stood next to the window, watching everything unfold in silence.

A short while later, he said, "I'm going to look for her."

"And where do you think you're going to find her if she's set on hiding from us? It's going to take a miracle for you to find her," Mamma said impatiently.

"I'm going to the few places she often goes to," Diego said, hurrying toward the door. "The church, the library, and the cafe in the east of the city… I'm going to find her somehow."

I suddenly felt like laughing while I floated behind him.

As it turned out, Diego still remembered the places I liked going to. Many times over the past two years, I had tried to get him to go with me to the library and the cafe on dates, but he would always leave me for Arianna's lies instead.

As for the church… He had a point. I was supposed to be at the church with everyone witnessing me becoming his bride, but I'd already died at home before I even had the chance to go there.

Diego spent a long time patrolling the streets, but he couldn't find me anywhere.

Ultimately, he stopped his car in the abandoned alley near a warehouse in Queenton District, where they'd all rescued Arianna from just the day before. It was also the place where he'd hung up on me.

He walked in, retrieved his phone, and began recording a voice message for me.

"Carlotta Capuano! Where on earth are you? Arianna had an allergic reaction thanks to the brooch you gifted to her… I always thought that you were a kind soul, but I never thought that you'd ever stoop so low.

"You'd better have a proper explanation for this. Otherwise, I'm going to call off—"

He hesitated for a moment before deleting the message and recording another.

"Whatever. Stay hidden forever if that's what you want. You'll be back once you've thought things through anyway."

His phone screen then lit up for a moment, showing that the voice message had been successfully sent to me.

I stood behind him and said softly, "I'm never coming back, Diego."

But he couldn't hear me after all.