THE BROKEN MAFIA PRINCESS

Isabella POV:

The sharp crack of the file hitting the marble coffee table should have shattered my composure. Instead, it crystallized it.

"Look at what you've done!"

Margaret Griffin—my fiancé's mother, my future mother-in-law—shrieked, her voice thin and sharp enough to cut glass. Her manicured finger, trembling with rage, jabbed toward the medical report on the table. An emergency room visit.

"You vicious, evil woman! You made Bobby lose my grandson!"

Beside her stood my fiancé, Jerrell Griffin. His face, usually handsome in a bland, predictable way, was twisted with disgust. He looked at me as if I were something he'd scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

And draped against his side, sobbing with theatrical little gasps, was Bobby Little—his mistress, the woman who had just accused me of shoving her down the stairs.

I didn't look at the report.

My gaze drifted past Margaret's apoplectic face, over Jerrell's condemnation, and settled on Bobby.

The scene was identical. A perfect, horrifying replica.

Because I had already lived this nightmare once.

In my previous life, I had stood in this very room, trembling and weeping, begging for a chance to explain. It hadn't mattered. They had branded me a monster, broken the engagement, and cast me out. My own family disowned me to save their business ties. I died two weeks later—destitute and broken in a cold, unforgiving city, alone and forgotten, with no one to even close my eyes.

But somehow, impossibly, I had opened them again.

I woke up this morning in my own bed, in my own body, before the wedding, before the accusations, before the ruin. The clock had turned back.

And now I understood: this was not a second chance to endure. This was a second chance to destroy.

A chill crept up my spine, but I didn't shiver. I smiled.

The nightmare flickered behind my eyes—the same accusations, the same room, the same faces. But this time, I wasn't the screaming, pleading girl from my dreams. This time, I would not beg. I would not explain.

I would strike before they could.

I finally spoke, my voice shockingly steady, cutting through Margaret's impending second wave of hysterics.

"Your grandson?" I asked, my tone soft, conversational. "Margaret, as far as I am aware, the only legitimate heir to the Griffin name can come from my bloodline."

The words hung in the air, a slap more resounding than any physical blow.

Margaret's mouth snapped shut. Blood rushed to her face, turning it a blotchy, unbecoming shade of purple.

"Isabella!" Jerrell roared, stepping forward. "Don't you dare! Bobby was carrying my child!"

My eyes shifted to him. For a fleeting moment, I felt a sliver of something akin to pity. He was a fool. A pawn in a game he didn't even know he was playing.

"Your child?" I tilted my head. "Jerrell, are you quite sure about that?"