A Six Dollar Jewel, A Priceless Revenge

The last time my fiancé, Julian Thorne, lashed out at me over something trivial, I didn't placate him like I always had.

I moved out of the home we shared and began taking back everything I had ever given him.

First, I canceled the wedding that the entire underworld had been anticipating.

Next, I cut off his mother's access to our family's private medical care. I also coldly refused his sister Brooke Thorne's demand for a new sports car.

Finally, I accepted my father's offer to go to Las Vegas and take over the family's entertainment empire.

The moment I boarded the private jet, I let myself imagine the fate awaiting Julian and his bloodsucking family without my protection—the protection of the Vescovi Principessa.

How would he cover his mother's exorbitant medical bills, appease his spendthrift sister, and keep that sultry vixen he treasured so dearly?

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1

"Miss Vescovi, as we discussed, once the wedding is officially canceled, all gifts and donations will be forwarded to the church. If you agree, please sign here."

After confirming the details with me one last time, the priest handed over the document and a heavy fountain pen. He explained everything once more, then gestured to the signature line. His eyes, clouded with age, held undisguised astonishment and curiosity. He looked as if he wanted to say something but ultimately held his tongue.

I couldn't blame him.

Three years ago, I had booked this very church, a long-time beneficiary of my family's patronage. My fiancé, Julian Thorne, and I had finalized our plans twice, and even the guest list was confirmed, but he had postponed both times with flimsy excuses.

To this day, the wedding had never materialized. And now, here I was, about to personally dismantle the dream.

Anyone would wonder what seismic shift could have caused this. But they would never know the truth: it only took a single night for me to go from longing to marry the man I’d loved for a decade to being determined to erase him from my world entirely.

What sealed my decision was a mirror in Julian's study and the tattoo it reflected on his back.

That day, I was organizing documents in his study when I accidentally knocked over a full-length mirror. The heavy frame slammed onto the hardwood, the crash echoing loud enough to startle Julian from his shower.

He rushed into the study wrapped in a bath towel, but the first thing he did wasn't to ask if I was hurt, nor was it to help me up. Instead, he stared at me, his face contorted with a fury I had never seen before.

"Alessia Vescovi, just because you're unhappy with your birthday gift, you have to retaliate by destroying my things?" he roared, his voice thick with rage.

Before I could even explain, he pointed to the door and ordered me out of his house. I stood outside that door all night, apologizing countless times, only for him to call the estate guards and have me "escorted" away on the grounds that I was disturbing his rest.

I returned to my own residence alone and, as was my humiliating habit, prepared to write a handwritten apology letter the next day. But I never sent it. Instead, I saw a picture of Julian on another woman's social media.

That woman, Scarlett Monroe, had posted a series of photos. They were taken backstage at a high-end private club, against a backdrop of decadent luxury. At the very center of the photo set was a highly provocative close-up—Julian's bare back, and on it, a "black swan" tattoo identical to my own.

The difference was that on the neck of his swan, a glaring letter "S" was branded into the skin.

"Thank you, Julian, for my exclusive mark! I'm so in love with this secret 'tattoo'! Sorry, haters, but owning a part of a man's body is the ultimate romance for me!"

Less than a minute after she posted it, Julian commented from his private account. "As long as you like it."

Scarlett's reply was just as swift. "Thank you, Julian. I can't believe I just mentioned it in passing, and you actually did it for me. I'm so happy!"

The two of them flirted intimately in the comment section.

To be honest, the comments weren't that outrageous. And yet, it felt like someone had poured straight liquor into my eyes. It stung, sharp and searing.

Last month was my thirty-third birthday, and I had hinted with great anticipation that I wanted a purebred Arabian racehorse. Julian had stared at me in surprise, then scoffed. "You're the Principessa of the Vescovi family. How can you still act like some new-money upstart? Raising horses is so crass, it's beneath you. You've been with me for ten years; do you still feel the need to prove something?"

His words were blunt and hurtful. Even so, he still gave me a piece of jewelry on my birthday.

I was ecstatic at the time. I thought it meant I was still special to him.

Who would have thought he'd take Scarlett's casual, suggestive request to heart? He'd endured the pain and risk of being branded without a second thought.

And I, his fiancée, received a birthday gift that the family jeweler later identified as a cheap knockoff.

Such blatant favoritism was a sting I, the heiress to the Vescovi family, had never felt before.

Only then did I realize the past decade had been a farce of my own making. I had welcomed a wolf into my home, and now, it was time to clean house.