Isabella POV

The cab ride away from The Onyx Club was suffocating. Hudson's fingers dug into my arm, his chest heaving with a mix of terror and misplaced rage. I kept my gaze fixed on the passing streetlamps of Chicago, ignoring his erratic muttering. I didn't need to look at him; my mind was miles behind us, lingering in the penthouse we had just fled.

Even though I wasn't there, the memories of my past life painted the scene with brutal clarity. Right now, Frederick 'Freddie' Solis—the Falcone family's snake-eyed Consigliere—was standing before Don Damien Falcone. Freddie would be laying out my life like a ledger: the daughter of a ruined legitimate family, the heavy dowry that bought my marriage to an Associate, and Hudson's pathetic gamble to trade me for a seat at the table. I knew Damien was listening in that terrifying, absolute silence of his, his dark eyes judging Hudson's worth. And I knew Hudson had already been found wanting.

But the swift execution I expected didn't come.

Days bled into one another inside the Higgins townhouse. The walls, paid for by my dowry, felt like a velvet-lined cage reeking of Hudson's cheap cologne and my own lingering gardenia perfume.

Hudson was unraveling. The silence from the Falcone estate was driving him mad. He paced the halls, jumping at every knock, desperate for the promotion he thought he had bought with my flesh. To soothe his bruised ego, he tried to reclaim his territory—me. Every night, he approached our bed with that sickening, entitled gleam in his eyes. And every night, I used my daughter as a shield.

Josie is crying, I would say, slipping out of his grasp. She needs her mother.

Hudson couldn't argue without looking like a monster. More importantly, his underlying fear of what the Don might do if he bruised his new possession kept his hands tied. He was forced to sleep in his study, leaving me alone in the dark.

Standing before the brass-rimmed mirror in my bedroom, I traced the line of my jaw. I practiced the fragile, shattered smile that had hooked Damien on the stairs. It was Adela's smile. Freddie had taught me how to mimic the Don's dead ghost in my past life, molding me into the perfect, compliant pet.

But my reflection mocked me. The timeline was wrong. By now, Freddie should have sent his men to collect me. Damien's inaction was a glaring deviation from the past. Had I overplayed my hand? Was the Don's paranoia stronger than his obsession? A cold knot of unease tightened in my stomach. I couldn't afford to be passive. If Damien Falcone was changing the rules of the game, I had to adapt. I would not be a victim again; I would be the architect of my own Vendetta.

A timid knock broke my concentration. "Ma'am," the maid murmured through the door. "Mr. Higgins is asking for you in his study."

I smoothed the skirt of my dress, masking my cold calculation with a veil of wifely obedience.

Hudson's study was a monument to his mediocrity, suffocating under the stench of stale cigars and cheap whiskey. When I pushed the heavy oak door open, I found him standing by the bar cart. His hands were shaking so violently that the amber liquid sloshed over the rim of his crystal glass, soaking into the lapel of his tailored suit.

He didn't even bother to curse. He just stared at the stain, his chest rising and falling in shallow, panicked breaths. When he looked up at me, his eyes were bloodshot, swimming with a pathetic, desperate anxiety. The silence from the Don was breaking him.

"Hudson?" I asked softly, playing my part.

He closed the distance between us, his sour breath washing over my face as he grabbed my hand. His grip was painfully tight, his knuckles white. He was a drowning man trying to anchor himself to the only thing he thought he still owned.

"Isabella," he rasped, his voice trembling with a sickening mix of fear and forced authority. "You're my wife. I need you to stay in our bed tonight. Leave Josie with the nanny. I need you with me."

Isabella POV

I looked down at his white-knuckled grip on my hand. The sheer desperation radiating from Hudson was pathetic. He wanted to use my body to ground himself, to prove he still owned something while the Don's silence stripped him of his sanity. He was trying to mask his possessive jealousy as a husband's need, but I knew better. He was terrified of the phantom touch of Don Damien Falcone on his property.

I slowly, deliberately pulled my hand from his grasp.

"Hudson," I murmured, injecting a perfect note of wifely apology into my voice. "Josie has been waking up in the middle of the night crying. She needs me. I can't leave her alone."

His jaw clenched, the rejection hitting him like a physical blow. But he couldn't argue against his own daughter without sounding like a monster. More importantly, he didn't have the courage to force the issue while his standing with the Falcone family was so precarious. Defeated, his shoulders slumped, and he turned back to his spilled whiskey.

The next morning, the suffocating tension in the townhouse finally snapped.

I was in the nursery, sitting on the plush rug and building wooden blocks with Josie, when heavy footsteps echoed in the hall. One of Hudson's low-level associates appeared in the doorway, breathless and wide-eyed.

"Mr. Higgins," the man panted as Hudson stepped out of his bedroom, still wearing his silk robe. "A message from Mr. Solis. He wants you at the Falcone private club downtown tonight. For a drink."

Hudson's face transformed. The sickly pallor of fear vanished, replaced by a blinding, arrogant ecstasy. Frederick 'Freddie' Solis. The Falcone family's Consigliere didn't just invite Associates for drinks. To Hudson, this was his coronation. This was the promotion he had tried to buy with my flesh.

"Get the car ready!" Hudson barked, not even bothering to dress properly before rushing down the hall, his mind already drunk on the illusion of power.

I pulled Josie into my lap, my heart hammering against my ribs. Freddie's summons meant Damien was finally making his move. But this was wrong. In my past life, there were no polite invitations for drinks. Freddie's men had simply kicked down the door and dragged me away. Damien was altering the rules of the game. He had investigated me, and now he was using his Consigliere to handle Hudson first. The unpredictability of the Don's new strategy sent a chill down my spine, but it also confirmed one thing: I had his attention.

That night, the master bedroom felt like a tomb waiting for a corpse.

When Hudson finally returned from the club, the arrogant swagger from this morning was entirely gone. He looked like a man walking to the gallows.

"Take Josie to the nursery," he ordered the nanny, his voice hollow and trembling.

I sat at the vanity, wearing a silk nightgown, pretending to brush my hair with sleepy indifference. Through the brass-rimmed mirror, I watched him sit heavily on the edge of our bed. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. It took him a few moments to force the tears, pinching his thigh until his eyes were bloodshot.

"Isabella," he choked out, playing the role of the broken, tragic hero to perfection. "I... I don't know how to say this."

I turned around, letting the hairbrush fall to my lap. "Hudson? What's wrong?"

He looked up, his face a mask of fabricated agony. "It's the Don. Damien Falcone." He swallowed hard, making sure I saw his 'pain'. "Freddie told me tonight. The Don... he saw you at the club. He wants you, Isabella. He demands that I give you to him."

I stared at him, letting the silence stretch. He was shifting the blame entirely, painting his greedy, calculated transaction as a tyrannical Don's Command. He wanted me to believe he was a victim of the Mafia's absolute power, just like me.

"No," I whispered, letting my voice tremble as I stood up, playing the terrified, devoted wife. "Hudson, I'm your wife. You can't."

"I have no choice!" he cried, standing to grab my shoulders. "It's a command! If I refuse, he'll kill me. He'll kill all of us! It's for the survival of this family!"

I let a tear slip down my cheek, masking the cold, burning hatred in my chest. "Then we leave," I pleaded, gripping his lapels, looking up at him with wide, desperate eyes. "We take my dowry and we run. We can go to a small town in Ohio, far away from Chicago. We can hide from him, Hudson. Please."

Isabella POV

"We can go to a small town in Ohio," I pleaded, my voice trembling with perfectly calibrated desperation. "Far away from Chicago. We can hide from him, Hudson. Please."

Hudson's face contorted in sheer, unadulterated horror. He gripped my arms so tightly his fingernails bit into my flesh. "Are you insane?" he hissed, his eyes darting toward the heavy bedroom door as if the Don's enforcers were already lurking in the hallway. "Defy a Don's Command? The Falcone family would hunt us down like dogs! There is no hiding from them, Isabella. They would kill us. They would kill Josie, your mother—everyone!"

He shook me slightly, his chest heaving as he wrapped his cowardice in the noble shroud of sacrifice. "I am doing this to protect us! It is for the survival of this family!"

I stared into his bloodshot eyes, letting his words wash over me. He was a phenomenal actor, but I knew the script. In my past life, I had eventually learned the devastating truth: Don Damien Falcone had offered Hudson a clear choice. His wife, or his life. Hudson hadn't hesitated to trade my body for his breathing rights and a promotion. He wasn't a victim of the Mafia's absolute power; he was a willing merchant.

The microscopic sliver of hope I hadn't even realized I was holding onto—the hope that maybe, just maybe, the man I had married possessed a shred of decency—shattered into dust. My heart turned to absolute ice. He was no longer my husband. He was the first name on my Vendetta list.

I let my shoulders sag, draining the fake desperation from my eyes until they were tragically hollow. I looked down at the floor.

"I understand, Hudson," I whispered, my voice deadened and defeated. "For Josie... I will do it."

The transformation was sickening.

His fabricated tears dried instantly. The heavy, tragic slump of his shoulders vanished, replaced by a breathless, greedy relief that he couldn't quite mask. He let go of my arms, exhaling a long, shaky breath.

"You're making the right choice, Isabella," he said, his tone shifting from a grieving husband to a pragmatic manager. "Remember, this is for Josie." He leaned in, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. "Tonight. A black car will be waiting in the back alley behind the townhouse. Take nothing with you. Just get in."

I gave him a single, numb nod. He turned away, already lost in the arrogant ecstasy of his impending rise within the Falcone ranks, completely oblivious to the monster he had just awakened in his own bedroom.

Hours later, the suffocating tension of the townhouse drove me into my private bathroom. I locked the heavy oak door behind me. The white marble floor was freezing beneath my bare feet, a stark contrast to the warm, thick steam billowing from the clawfoot tub the maid had drawn for me.

I walked over to my vanity and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out a small, unassuming glass vial. Gardenia essential oil.

I unscrewed the cap and let three heavy drops fall into the scalding water. The sweet, cloying, and almost fatal scent instantly bloomed in the humid air. It was the signature scent of Adela—the ghost who haunted the Don's cold heart, his dead first love. In my past life, I hadn't known why Damien Falcone looked at me with such violent, obsessive hunger until it was far too late. Now, I knew I was her exact replica. And this scent would be the first bullet in my gun.

I slipped out of my clothes and stood naked before the brass-rimmed mirror. I traced the reflection of my twenty-one-year-old body. Flawless, youthful, and entirely unaware of the brutal end it had met in my previous life. I remembered the freezing cold, the suffocating despair, and the way I had died at twenty-four, broken by the Falcone family's cruelty and the vicious rumors that had painted me as a willing whore.

Never again.

I stepped into the hot water, letting the gardenia scent seep into my pores, baptizing myself in the very obsession that was meant to destroy me. I wasn't walking into a cage tonight; I was walking onto a battlefield. They wanted a fragile, tragic pawn to manipulate. I would give them a queen forged in hellfire.

When I finally stepped out of the tub, my skin was flushed and radiating the intoxicating scent of the Don's dead lover. I slipped into a fresh white silk robe, tying it loosely at my waist. It was time to face the coward waiting on the other side of the door, and I knew exactly how to shatter the last pathetic remnants of his pride before the black Cadillac arrived.