Am I Free

For three years, I surrendered my nights and bartered my own prospects to build a flawless legitimate business empire for my fiancé, Domenico, the most feared heir in the mafia syndicate.

But as I was finishing the final ledger to secure his seat as Don, a flight confirmation popped up on his phone.

He had booked two first-class tickets to a high-level mafia summit in Sicily—for himself and Lyla, the girl who had been actively trying to destroy my life.

When Domenico walked into the room, he didn't explain. Instead, he complained I was working too slowly.

He used the threat of breaking our arranged marriage as a leash, demanding I finish his work.

Lyla rushed in, playing the innocent victim, and Domenico immediately wrapped a comforting arm around her waist.

He looked at me with cold, vacant eyes and issued his final ultimatum.

"Apologize to her, and know your place, or you will be nothing to the Family."

His soldiers sneered, waiting eagerly for me to crawl back and beg for the future Don's favor.

I stared at the arrogant man I had sacrificed my youth for.

The dutiful beat of my heart, which had hammered out a rhythm for him alone, simply went still. The great, heavy anchor of my loyalty dissolved into a strange weightlessness.

I didn't shed a single tear.

I calmly stood up, walked over to the industrial shredder, and fed every single page of his commercial blueprint into the blades.

"The betrothal is dead," I told him, watching his future turn to confetti. "I owe neither of you a single word."

Chapter 1

Sienna POV

As my pen laid down the last false integer in the ledger that would secure my fiancé's seat as Don of the Cosa Nostra, a flight confirmation for two first-class tickets he had purchased days earlier materialized on the screen of the phone he had left on my desk. My eyes fixed on the illuminated text, my mind not so much racing as grinding to a halt around a single, indigestible fact. The device gave a low hum against the mahogany, a vibration that seemed to run up my arm and into my chest.

It was for two first-class tickets to a high-level mafia summit in Sicily—booked for him and the girl who had been actively trying to destroy my life.

Without the portfolio I was to finish by midnight, the Capos would find his grasp on the legitimate front of his underworld empire questionable.

For three years, I had surrendered my nights, bartering my own prospects to burnish the flawless veneer of Domenico's Ivy League business image.

He was the most feared heir in the syndicate, a man whose hands were stained with a violence I had tried to ignore, and whose presence commanded an absolute, airless terror.

I stared at the screen, and a cold dread, slow and creeping as winter frost, began to form in my veins.

A moment later, the heavy oak door of the academy classroom swung inward. Domenico entered, his suit the colour of wet asphalt, radiating an aura of cold, immense weight.

The other syndicate heirs and associates fell silent at once, their bodies shifting to form a clear path for him as if by instinct.

He stopped beside my desk, the cuff of his sleeve tapping against the face of his gold watch. His expression was a blank, polished surface.

"You are working too slowly," his voice landed on the desk like a paperweight. Following it, the threat of a broken betrothal, his usual guillotine, was held over my head. It was his favorite weapon. He used the dissolution of our arranged marriage as a leash, knowing I valued his ascent in the Family above all else.

I looked up at his cold, arrogant face.

I thought about the tickets to Sicily with Lyla, and the intricate mechanism of my devotion simply ceased to function.

The dutiful beat of my heart, which for years had hammered out a rhythm for him alone, went still. The great, heavy anchor of my loyalty to this toxic man dissolved, leaving not freedom, but a strange and unnerving weightlessness.

I drew the heavy leather binder closed, the embossed crest cool against my fingertips. Within its covers lay three years of strategic blueprints and academic forgery.