Killed by the Ones I Loved

I was the cherished heir of a powerful mafia family, fiercely protected by my brother, the Don, and my fiancé, the family's lethal Enforcer.

But on my eighteenth birthday, they publicly framed me for the federal crimes committed by Chloe, a destitute orphan I had sponsored.

They stripped me of my title and threw me into the syndicate's subterranean prison.

For three months, I endured brutal electrocution and torture. When I was finally released, crippled and starving, I walked into my bedroom only to find my fiancé entangled with Chloe on my sheets.

To secure their pity, Chloe faked a suicide attempt.

My brother and fiancé dragged me to the clinic, pinning me down to forcefully drain my blood into Chloe as my penance.

Even when the doctor exposed my arms, covered in horrific burn scars from the prison, my brother coldly ordered him to continue the transfusion.

My heart, already failing from the repeated electrocutions, finally gave out.

As my spirit drifted above my lifeless body, I watched the doctor reveal that the blood drain had killed me. I watched them uncover Chloe's bribery of the guards and my final, despairing voice memos.

The two most ruthless men in the city fell to their knees, howling in agonizing remorse, begging my corpse for forgiveness.

But looking at their tears, I felt absolutely nothing.

I smiled, turned my back on their worthless apologies, and stepped into the blinding white light, leaving them to drown in a hell of their own making.

Chapter 1

Aria POV

On the evening of my eighteenth birthday, in the moments preceding my presentation to the Commission as the family's heir, my brother-a man whose name was a currency of fear in the city-shoved me, and the cold of the marble floor bit through the silk of my gown.

"We have harbored a cuckoo in this nest," he announced into the profound stillness of the hall. "Chloe is my sister by blood. It is Aria who will answer for her federal crimes this night."

Beside him stood the family's Enforcer, the boy I had known since childhood. Leo's gaze did not meet mine; it passed through my shoulder and settled on a lifeless plaster bust at the far end of the corridor.

"I have been with Chloe for months, Aria," he stated, his tone possessing the flat, abrasive quality of ground stone. "And I will see to it that she carries the legitimate bloodline."

I stared up at the two men who had, for a decade, formed a bulwark between me and the underworld's blades.

I screamed that Chloe was a destitute Associate, an orphan I had sponsored, brought inside the fortified walls of our Estate out of a complex instinct, part pity, part the casual noblesse oblige of the fortunate.

Dante did not even blink.

He gestured to a subordinate, who stepped forward and laid a sheaf of forged DNA records before the Five Families. The heavy vellum pages slid across the polished marble, coming to a rest near my hand, sealing my fate with a silent, bureaucratic flourish.

He handed me over to corrupt syndicate guards. He spoke my name with the same disinterest one might use to read an item off a list of assets for liquidation.

"Taking the fall for Chloe is a service, Aria. It is your final duty to the family."

The family crest inlaid in the marble beneath me seemed to warp then, its gilded lines twisting into a meaningless black knot.

I did not know, as the guards seized my arms and dragged me toward the subterranean cells, that my own brother had just signed my death warrant. I did not know that the boy I loved had already chosen another. All I knew, in that moment, was the cold weight of the shackles closing around my wrists-and the dawning, unbearable realization that the two men I would have died for had just buried me alive.