On the night I was to consummate my vows with the heir to the Vitiello mafia empire, his childhood sweetheart tipped a pail of hissing cockroaches into my bathwater.

My new husband, Cassius, just stood in the doorway, arranging a wager with his soldiers on the exact minute my mind would splinter.

He coldly announced that our marriage certificate was a forgery, and that a bloodless civilian like me could never sit beside him.

"You are only a pretty distraction, a temporary toy meant to be passed around my loyal men," he sneered.

Bianca slapped me across the face, her diamond ring drawing blood, before ordering the men to dump a massive glass jar of hundreds of frenzied roaches into the tub.

The soldiers surged forward like starving animals, leering at my exposed, wet body, ready to drag me out and tear me apart.

Cassius merely smoked his cigar, fully sanctioning my violation and telling me to curse my own low birth.

I stared at the man I had expended every hidden connection and resource to keep alive during the bloody succession wars.

I had given him everything to secure his seat, only to be discarded the second I outlived my usefulness.

They thought I was just a fragile canary with no moves left on the board.

They didn't know I was the hidden Boss of the Romano Famiglia, the ruthless Don who controlled the entire Eastern Seaboard.

I wiped the dirty bathwater from my face, shed my civilian disguise, and gave the kill order to my tactical strike team waiting in the shadows.

Chapter 1

Sera POV:

On the night I was to have consummated my vows with the heir to the Vitiello mafia empire, his childhood sweetheart tipped a pail of hissing cockroaches into my bathwater.

All the while, my new husband stood framed in the doorway, arranging a ten-million-dollar wager with his soldiers on the exact minute my mind would splinter.

The dark, chitinous shells broke the surface of the warm water with a series of thick, unsettling plops.

I became rigid in the massive marble tub, the air seized in my lungs. My fingers clamped onto the porcelain lip with such force that the blood fled from my knuckles.

Only hours before, Bianca Falcone had taken a blade to my swimsuit by the estate pool, a crude attempt to humiliate the bloodless civilian bride before the entire syndicate.

I had knotted the ruined fabric into a makeshift two-piece that clung to every curve. The made men had tracked my movements with a naked, possessive hunger, and a bitter jealousy had curdled Bianca's features. This, now, was her answer.

Dozens of insects thrashed in the dense white bubbles that lapped against my bare skin, their spiny legs making a dry, scratching sound against the basin.

My mind lurched back to a dark, decaying cellar. I was seven years old again. My cruel stepmother had sealed me in the pitch-black with rotting refuse and a thousand crawling shadows during a syndicate war.

A strangled gasp tore from my throat as I fought to rise, to reach for the silk robe laid out on the counter.

The heavy bathroom doors were thrown wide.

Bianca strode into the en-suite, the sharp report of her heels against the tiles like a series of small cracks in the silence.

Directly behind her was Cassius Vitiello-the man who had slid a wedding ring onto my finger not six hours ago.

A dozen of his trust-fund cronies and low-level soldiers crowded the doorframe behind him, their bodies blocking the light from the hall.

Bianca gestured toward me, a high, sharp laugh cutting the air. She began to narrate the tremor in my limbs, calling to the men to witness the pathetic little bird who could not even save herself from a few bugs.

With a snap of her fingers, the men in the doorway produced their phones, their thumbs moving swiftly to transfer funds into some squalid betting pool.

Through the thinning layer of foam, the gleam of my wet skin was exposed. Not one of them looked away; their eyes were a palpable weight on my shoulders and the swell of my chest.

They tossed out coarse, degrading appraisals of my body-words one might expect to hear in a cheap brothel, not within the fortified walls of a ruling family.

My gaze passed over the leering crowd until it found my husband.

A tremor entered my voice as I called his name, pleading with Cassius to clear the room. I told him the insects were crawling closer to my bare legs, that the fear was a physical sickness inside me.

Cassius merely canted his weight against the doorframe and folded his arms, his dark eyes as flat and lifeless as chips of slate.

He called me a fragile burden in a toneless voice, ordering me to sit still and afford the men who fought for his territory a generous view.

Acid surged up my esophagus, a bitter, rusty taste filling my throat and forcing me to clench my jaw. Fueled by a sudden, cold anger, I reached over the edge of the tub and took up my phone from the dry mat.

I told him I would make a single telephone call. I gave him my word that I could mobilize enough of my own men to hunt down every last cockroach in this city and force-feed them to him and his mistress.

A muscle jumped in Cassius's jaw. Bianca stepped nearer to the tub, her fine-boned face contorting with fury at my sudden defiance.

I folded my arms across my chest, sinking deeper into the dissipating foam to shield myself from the soldiers' stares.

Bianca looked back at Cassius and proposed a wager: she forbade him from intervening to help me for the next thirty minutes.

Cassius did not hesitate. He reached out and tapped the tip of Bianca's nose with a fond, proprietary air, agreeing to her cruel terms without a second thought.

The associates in the hallway erupted in a chorus of coarse cheers, praising Cassius for showing true allegiance to his mafia princess over the civilian he was forced to wed.

As Bianca regarded me from on high, her gaze that of someone inspecting a bag of wet, rotting garbage, Cassius moved his hand and stroked her long, dark hair with a lover's tenderness.

He looked at me and stated, his voice cold, that I needed to learn how to indulge Bianca. He claimed a simple wager was of no consequence, since I already possessed the unbreachable security of being the Vitiello wife.

From the back of the crowd, a tall associate let out a loud, ugly snort.

He told Cassius to stop the pretense, and then he announced the truth in a voice loud enough for all to hear: the marriage certificate signed on the altar today was a forgery.

Sera POV

The vertebrae in my neck gave a dull crack from the velocity of the turn, and the resulting splash of water struck my eyelashes, momentarily blurring my vision.

I demanded the truth, my voice fracturing as I asked him what his soldier meant about our union.

Cassius remained indolently propped against the doorframe, a cruel, unfamiliar smirk deliberately taking shape on his lips.

He admitted it openly, that our entire marriage was a fabrication.

He explained in a slow, condescending drawl that a civilian with no mafia bloodline could never occupy the seat beside him.

He said I was only ever meant to be a pretty distraction, a creature kept in a gilded cage to keep his bed warm.

The consigliere standing next to Cassius added his voice to the chorus, his tone thick with a sycophantic pride.

He declared that Bianca Falcone was the true, rightful future Donna of the Vitiello family.

Thrusting out his chest, he boasted that their real marriage would seal an ironclad alliance between the two most powerful syndicates on the East Coast.

My mind went quiet and empty.

I stared at the man I had loved-the same man for whom I had expended every resource, every hidden connection, and every ounce of my tactical intellect to keep alive during the bloody succession wars.

Through a sharp ringing that had begun in my ears, I asked him if he had used my devotion only to secure his seat as the heir, to then cast me aside the moment I had outlived my usefulness.

Cassius looked at me as if I were a dull-witted child.

Without a flicker of remorse in his expression, he said yes.

I lowered my head.

A dark, chilling laugh forced its way from my mouth. As it did, the men's faces distorted in the steam, becoming grotesque caricatures from a silent film, and the only sound left in my ears was a high, piercing whine.

I unlocked the screen of my phone, keeping the device submerged just beneath the surface of the water where the leering men could not see. My wet thumb hovered over the glass as I prepared to make the call that would summon my real muscle and burn this entire compound to the ground.

But as the last of the foam shifted, it revealed the motion of my hand. Bianca lunged forward.

She snatched the phone from my wet fingers, her eyes glinting with venom as she branded me a pathetic mistress attempting to steal a made man from his rightful place.

She stood tall, preening in her perceived dominance.

With a smile of sickening sweetness, she generously offered to let me remain in the estate as Cassius's temporary whore.

She degraded me further, saying that a woman of my low station was meant to be passed among the soldiers in any case.

My face felt as if it had been carved from stone.

Bianca continued her relentless mockery, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at the bathwater and announcing with glee that the concealing bubbles were almost entirely gone.

As if summoned by the rot of the place, two more large cockroaches dropped from a crack in the bathroom ceiling.

They landed with a soft, obscene splash in the water near my stomach.

A scream tore itself from my throat.

I scrambled backward until my spine struck the cold porcelain with a jarring impact.

My throat felt raw, burning with unshed tears and a rising panic.

I made one final, desperate plea to Cassius.

I begged him to clear the room, to just hand me a robe so I could leave with what little remained of my dignity.

- Cassius blatantly ignored my distress.

His jaw tightened. He snapped that I should consider it an honor to breathe the same air as him, let alone be his mistress.

The sound of my scream seemed to flip a switch in the men crowding the hallway.

The gathered associates grew more feral.

Their predatory taunts escalated from crude jokes into open threats of physical violence, and they began to press forward as the last of the foam dissolved into nothing.

Sera POV:

I felt like a piece of meat displayed on a butcher's block.

I was trapped in the water, yet a venomous, simmering hatred began to displace every ounce of fear in my veins.

I looked directly at Bianca, then at Cassius, and finally at the men crowding the door, my gaze resting on each of their faces in turn.

I delivered a lethal warning. I swore upon the old laws of blood vendetta that they would remember this night, and that they would repay every measure of my suffering in blood.

The men met this with loud, derisive laughter, and the ugly sound seemed to be absorbed by the damp tiles without an echo.

They scoffed at the notion of a bloodless civilian doing anything to bankrupt two of the ruling families on the Commission.

Bianca marched to the edge of the tub. She raised her hand. The crisp sound of flesh on flesh was swallowed by the bathroom's steam; half a second later, a prickling numbness slowly bloomed across my left cheek.

She dragged her sharp, manicured nails down my cheek as she pulled her hand away; warm blood welled up from the deep scratches, stinging as it met the cold air.

She leaned in close, her breath a warm vapor on my wet skin. She threatened that once the thirty-minute bet was up, she would have her personal soldiers force-feed me the roaches swimming in the water.

She promised to let the men have their fun with me right after I swallowed the last bug.

My eyes went dead and cold. I stared at her without blinking.

I prophesied in a flat, hollow voice that one day, she would be the one eating insects on her hands and knees, begging me for mercy.

Bianca shrieked. Without warning. She swung at the other side of my face with the back of her hand, and the pavé diamonds on her ring scraped across my cheekbone. Beads of blood began to well.

The motion of my body recoiling from the blow sent a wave of water over the side, washing away the last thick layer of foam, my only remaining shield.

A restless murmur went through the men as my bare legs and shoulders were fully exposed beneath the clear water.

They complained loudly about losing their bets on how long I would last. They threatened to drag me out and use me right now to get their money's worth.

Cassius produced a cigar from his jacket. He lit it, drew on it deeply, and stated through the smoke that he was not quite done playing with his canary yet.

Bianca pouted. She walked over to him and wound her arms tightly around his neck in a blatant display of ownership.

She pleaded with him to end his ties with the civilian this instant-she wanted me thrown out on the streets tonight.

Cassius looked at her, smiled, and agreed to her demand without a fraction of hesitation.

In that moment, I absorbed the ultimate lesson in underworld cruelty. The last ember of warmth in my chest went out, leaving only cold ash.

Cassius looked at me through a cloud of smoke. He claimed he once had real feelings for me, but my lack of mafia pedigree meant this was the end of the line.

He told me to curse my own low birth, shifting the blame to my bloodline instead of his betrayal.

An associate stepped into the bathroom. He crushed a cockroach under his heavy combat boot, then bent down, scooped up the mangled carcass, and threw it at my face.

The dead insect struck my cheek and fell into the water, its impact sending faint ripples across the surface.

I glared at every single man in the room, my eyes burning with a pure, murderous intent.

The men sneered back. They dismissed my intellect and my beauty as traits useful only for a high-end escort, insisting I was entirely unfit to survive the ruthless world of the Family. They stepped closer to the tub to finally take what they believed was theirs.