THE BROKEN MAFIA PRINCESS

Isabella POV:

I died once. Betrayed. Broken. Left to bleed out in a cold alley with no one to close my eyes.

But I woke up. Back in my own body. Before the wedding. Before the lies. Before they destroyed me.

This time, when my fiancé's mistress screams that I pushed her down the stairs and killed her baby—I don't beg. I don't cry.

I smile.

Because I remember everything. And now I know exactly who I am.

I am Isabella Valeriano. Daughter of Chicago's most ruthless crime family. And the weapon they tried to bury is now aimed straight at their throats.

I summon my father's deadliest operative. I order the family doctor to examine the "grieving" mistress. And when her fake pregnancy shatters under cold clinical proof, I don't just walk away—I take everything.

The engagement? Terminated.

The Griffin empire? Crippled.

The man who chose a liar over me? On his knees, pen in hand, signing away his family's future.

They wanted a scapegoat. They got a queen.

My own brother shows up to challenge me, jealous and desperate. Let him. Power isn't given. It's taken. And I've already died once for being weak.

Never again.

They framed me. They shamed me. They thought I'd break.

Now they'll learn what happens when a Valeriano fights back.

I am Isabella Valeriano. And this time, I hold all the cards.

******

The sharp crack of the file hitting the marble coffee table echoed the splintering of my composure.

"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. A miscarriage.

"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 murderer, broken the engagement, and cast me out. My own family disowned me to save their business ties. I died two weeks later—bleeding in a cold, dark alley, 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 alley. 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.