Alexia POV

The monastery was a tomb of cold air. It smelled faintly of beeswax and ancient, damp stone.

I scrubbed the limestone floors until my knees bruised. I peeled mountains of potatoes. With my left hand, I played simple hymns on the chapel organ.

The nuns didn't ask questions. They knew who my husband was. In this part of Italy, everyone knew the Cummings family.

My right hand ached constantly, a dull, throbbing reminder of what I had lost. I had no pain medication. Jacob controlled the accounts, and I had left with nothing but the clothes on my back and a few euros.

I was hungry. Not the kind of hungry you feel when you skip lunch. It was the kind of hungry that hollows you out from the inside.

I remembered my mother. She used to skip meals so I could have piano lessons. She believed art would save me.

She was wrong. Power saves you. Money saves you. Art just makes you feel the pain more acutely.

It was raining the night he came.

I saw the headlights first, slicing through the gloom. A convoy of black SUVs cutting through the darkness like sharks in deep water. They stopped at the iron gates.

Jacob got out. He held a large black umbrella, shielding himself from the downpour while I stood exposed. He strode toward the main building with the air of a man who believed he owned God himself.

I met him in the courtyard. I didn't want him inside. I didn't want him tainting this place.

"You look thin," he observed, his voice devoid of warmth.

He handed me a box wrapped in crushed velvet.

"It's cold," he said. "Put this on."

I opened it. It was a shawl. Cashmere. Embroidered with a single red rose.

A memory flashed behind my eyes. Years ago, before the bitterness rotted us, he had brought me a rose from the garden. He had smiled then. A real smile.

"Thank you," I said, my voice stiff. I didn't put it on.

"Are you ready to come home?" he asked. "Anton misses you."

"Does he?" I asked. "Or does he miss having someone to do his laundry?"

Jacob sighed, the sound impatient. "Don't be difficult, Alexia. I have news. I pulled some strings. There is a position at the Vienna Royal Academy. A guest professorship. You can go. You can teach."

My breath hitched. Vienna.

"You remember," he said, stepping closer, invading my space. "You told me once. You wanted to play in the Golden Hall."

He was rewriting history.

"I told you I wanted to find my sister in Vienna," I said, the old wound tearing open. "I wanted to play so she might hear me. She was taken when I was six."

Jacob blinked. The romantic mask slipped for a fraction of a second.

"Right," he said, recovering quickly. "Well. The position is yours. If you come back. If you sign the papers."

Papers. There was always a contract.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

The sound shattered the rhythm of the rain. He pulled it out. His face changed instantly. The boredom vanished. Panic replaced it.

"Cassandra?" he barked into the phone. "Slow down. Where are you?"

He listened, and his knuckles turned white around the device.

"I'm coming," he said. "I'm coming now."

He hung up. He looked at me, but he didn't truly see me.

"She's been taken," he said. "The rival family. They have her."

He turned and ran. He sprinted back to the car. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't mention Vienna. He left the cashmere shawl falling into the mud, a discarded peace offering.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A burner phone I had bought with my potato-peeling money.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Did you enjoy the show?" a distorted voice asked.

"Who is this?"

"Jacob is chasing a ghost," the voice said, cold and metallic. "Cassandra isn't kidnapped. But you are about to be."

"What?"

"Look behind you."

I turned. Two men in masks were standing by the chapel door.

"You are the bait, Mrs. Cummings," the voice said. "Let's see who he chooses when the timer starts. You are in a warehouse. There is a bomb. Cassandra is 'missing'. It's the ultimate loyalty test."

I didn't fight as rough hands grabbed me.

I knew the answer to the test.

I knew who he would choose.

Alexia POV

I woke up to the rhythmic, incessant sound of beeping.

It wasn't a bomb. It was the steady cadence of a heart monitor.

I was in a bed. Stiff, sterile sheets. The acrid bite of antiseptic in the air.

I was alive.

I tried to sit up, but a searing, white-hot pain sliced through my side. I gasped, the air catching in my throat.

The door opened. It wasn't a nurse.

It was Jacob.

He looked wrecked. His shirt was rumpled, the top button undone, his jaw shadowed with stubble. He walked over to the bed and sat down, his movements heavy.

He took my hand—my good hand.

"You're awake," he said, his voice rough.

"The bomb," I croaked, my throat feeling like it was filled with glass.

"You got out," he said. "Just in time. The blast... it threw you clear."

He paused. He looked down at our joined hands, his thumb brushing my knuckles.

"Your kidney was ruptured, Alexia. It was bad. You were bleeding out."

I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"I gave you mine," he said.

The room tilted on its axis. Jacob gave me a kidney?

The man who left me in a burning car? The man who sprinted away to save his mistress while I was trapped?

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you are my wife," he said, his eyes locking onto mine. "Because we are family."

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a document.

"The doctors say you will recover," he said. "But we need to secure the future. The explosion... it drew attention. The Commission is asking questions. They think I can't control my house."

He laid the paper on the bed between us.

"Sign this," he said. "It's a statement. It says you were targeted because of my enemies. It reaffirms your loyalty to the Cummings Syndicate. It grants me power of attorney over your Bell family inheritance. To 'safeguard' it, of course."

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

He didn't give me a kidney to save me. He gave me a kidney to own me.

He put a piece of himself inside me so I could never be free of him. It was the ultimate brand. A biological leash.

"And Cassandra?" I asked. "Was she kidnapped?"

Jacob looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. "It was a misunderstanding. She is safe. She is... resting. The poor girl was very traumatized by the thought of you being hurt."

Liar.

I saw the news on the TV mounted on the wall. It was muted, but the headline was screaming in bold font: *Mafia Don's Mistress unharmed in daring rescue attempt.*

There were photos of them hugging.

He saved her "ghost." He let me blow up.

"If I sign," I said, keeping my voice flat, "I want to go to Vienna."

"Of course," he said quickly. "Once you are healed."

I took the pen. My left hand was shaking.

"Do you love her?" I asked.

"Alexia, don't start," he warned, his tone dipping into frustration.

"Do you?"

"She needs me," he said. "You... you are strong. You have always been strong."

Strong.

That was the word men used when they wanted to excuse their neglect. A compliment wrapped around a betrayal.

I signed the paper.

I signed my name.

But I had already made a decision.

While I was recovering, drifting in and out of consciousness before the surgery, I had access to the hospital Wi-Fi. I had sent an email.

It contained the ledger scans I had made months ago. The ones showing Cassandra skimming money from the drug shipments. The ones showing Jacob recording the private meetings of the other Dons.

It violated Omertà. The code of silence. The penalty was death.

I handed the paper back to him.

"Thank you for the kidney, Jacob," I said. "I will take good care of it."

He smiled. He thought he had won.

"Rest now," he said, standing up and buttoning his jacket. "I have to go check on Cassandra. She's having a panic attack."

He left.

I lay back against the pillows. I felt the fresh, tender scar on my side.

*Tick tock, Jacob.*

The email was scheduled to send to the Commission and the press in exactly one hour.

You wanted a loyalty test?

Here is my answer.

Alexia POV

This time, the explosion wasn't made of fire and shrapnel. It was binary.

It took less than forty-eight hours for the fallout to hit the servers.

The headlines morphed with every refresh.

*Cummings Syndicate in Freefall.*

*Mistress Implicated in Massive Embezzlement Scheme.*

*The Tapes: Jacob Cummings’ Secret Confessions Leaked.*

My hospital room, by contrast, was silent. Unnervingly so. The rotation of guards outside my door had vanished.

I forced myself upright. My side screamed—a hot, tearing agony where the incision was still fresh—but I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached.

I dressed slowly, every movement a negotiation with pain.

I packed my small bag.

I called a taxi.

I was one step away from freedom when my phone vibrated in my hand.

Jacob.

I slid the answer button across the screen.

"Where are you?" His voice was a guttural growl, barely audible over the cacophony in the background—shouting, the wail of approaching sirens.

"I'm leaving, Jacob."

"You did this," he hissed, the sound wet and frantic. "You leaked the ledgers."

"Cassandra stole from you," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I merely illuminated the truth."

"You ruined us! The Commission is calling for my head! Do you know what they do to traitors?"

"I'm not a traitor," I corrected him. "I'm a survivor. You broke the vow first. *To love and to cherish.* Remember?"

"I gave you my kidney!" he screamed, his voice cracking.

"And in exchange, you took my life," I replied. "You took my music. You took my dignity. Consider the kidney a rental fee."

I didn't wait for a response.

I ended the call, popped the SIM card tray, and snapped the chip in half.

I walked out of the hospital, leaving the plastic shards on the bedside table.

The taxi was idling at the curb.

"Airport," I said.

I didn't head for the chaos of the main terminal. Instead, I directed the driver to a small, private hangar on the perimeter.

The Bell family had cut me off years ago, exiling me for my marriage, but I had one contact left. My cousin. The only one who had looked at me with pity rather than disdain at the last gala.

He had arranged the flight.

I was halfway to Vienna, suspended thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, when the news broke on my tablet.

Jacob was trying to salvage the wreckage. He was holding an emergency press conference.

I tapped the screen to watch the live stream.

He stood on the steps of the courthouse, looking diminished. His tie was crooked, his eyes darting wildly. Cassandra was nowhere to be seen.

"My wife is mentally unstable!" he shouted into the thicket of microphones. "She has been manipulated by our enemies. The evidence is fabricated!"

Then, his expression shifted. The desperation hardened into something cruel.

"To prove my loyalty to the family," he announced, staring directly into the camera lens, "and to punish the betrayal of the Bell name... I have ordered the removal of the traitor's lineage from our sacred ground."

He paused for dramatic effect, letting the silence hang heavy.

"I have dug up her mother's grave. Her ashes have been cast into the sea. There is no place for traitors in our soil."

The tablet slipped from my numb fingers.

It hit the carpeted floor of the cabin with a dull thud.

My mother.

The only person who had ever truly loved me. The woman who had starved herself just so I could afford piano lessons.

He dug her up.

He threw her away like garbage.

A sound ripped out of my throat—a raw, animal noise that didn't sound human.

The flight attendant rushed over, her face pale. "Miss? Are you okay?"

I couldn't breathe. The cabin air felt thin, nonexistent.

He didn't just hurt me. He erased my history. He violated the one sacred thing I had left.

I looked out the window. The clouds were white and fluffy, utterly indifferent to my agony.

And then, the crying stopped.

The tears dried instantly, evaporated by a sudden, searing heat that started in my chest and spread to my fingertips.

I looked down at my right hand.

The claw.

I looked at the scar on my side, the place where his kidney filtered my blood.

"Miss?" the attendant asked again, her hand hovering tentatively over my shoulder.

I looked up at her. My eyes were bone dry.

"I'm fine," I said.

My voice was steady. It was colder than the stratosphere outside.

I wasn't the victim anymore. I wasn't the wife. I wasn't the bird in the cage.

Jacob thought he had buried me. He thought he had destroyed me by destroying my mother.

But he made a fatal calculation error.

He didn't bury me.

He planted me.

And I was going to grow into a nightmare he never saw coming.

"How long until Vienna?" I asked.

"Two hours," she stammered.

"Good," I said, turning back to the window.

"I have work to do."