My mafia husband, Vincent Santoro, was born a monster, incapable of loving anyone.

But one day, I discovered he was hiding a ‘forbidden fruit’.

A girl from the slums, Claire Murphy. Scarred by life, yet as beautiful as a wildflower growing through concrete.

For a man who'd waded through blood his whole life, she was a fatal attraction he never saw coming.

He thought he'd covered his tracks. He was wrong.

At the Santoro family's annual dinner, I confronted him about Claire, tears streaking down my face.

He just lightly frowned, then had his consigliere slide the divorce papers across the table to me.

"Isabella. Sign it. The three North Side docks and the shipping lines are yours."

I tore the papers to shreds. He just kept raising the offer.

He had me thrown into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan.

He blew up my family's distillery—the Romano family's legacy.

Finally, he took my parents. Tied them in an abandoned warehouse and made one watch as he set the other on fire.

"Sign, or watch them burn. Your choice."

I begged him on my knees, but the world was consumed by a roar of flames—

The heat seared my skin, the ash of my parents clinging to my face.

"No... NO!"

When I opened my eyes, I was back. Back on the day I first learned about Claire.

This time, no tears, no drama.

That night, I called my family in Sicily and set my escape in motion.

But the moment I vanished from his world… Vincent Santoro went insane.

My mafia husband, Vincent Santoro, was born a monster, incapable of loving anyone.

But one day, I discovered he was hiding a ‘forbidden fruit’.

A girl from the slums, Claire Murphy. Scarred by life, yet as beautiful as a wildflower growing through concrete.

For a man who'd waded through blood his whole life, she was a fatal attraction he never saw coming.

He thought he'd covered his tracks. He was wrong.

At the Santoro family's annual dinner, I confronted him about Claire, tears streaking down my face.

He just lightly frowned, then had his consigliere slide the divorce papers across the table to me.

"Isabella. Sign it. The three North Side docks and the shipping lines are yours."

I tore the papers to shreds. He just kept raising the offer.

He had me thrown into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan.

He blew up my family's distillery—the Romano family's legacy.

Finally, he took my parents. Tied them in an abandoned warehouse and made one watch as he set the other on fire.

"Sign, or watch them burn. Your choice."

I begged him on my knees, but the world was consumed by a roar of flames—

The heat seared my skin, the ash of my parents clinging to my face.

"No... NO!"

When I opened my eyes, I was back. Back on the day I first learned about Claire.

This time, no tears, no drama.

That night, I called my family in Sicily and set my escape in motion.

But the moment I vanished from his world… Vincent Santoro went insane.

...

In the life I lived before, I'd only ever seen a photo of Claire in Vincent's study.

This time, I wanted to see for myself what was so special about this girl… what kind of magic she possessed to make a soulless man feel something.

"Uncle Tony, I need you to get my parents to Sicily. This week. Make sure there's no trace. I'll follow when I can."

After the call, I had the family lawyer draw up separation papers.

Then I went to the South Side.

To the run-down Irish dive bar where she worked.

She was on her tiptoes under a single, dim yellow bulb, using sign language to interpret the news on the TV for a few deaf patrons.

The light, filtering through shelves of dusty glasses, dappled her skin.

A gentleness, an innocence... it had no place in this city of sin.

No wonder Vincent was hooked.

"Watch out—!"

Suddenly, the old ceiling fan overhead came crashing down.

I flinched back, but Claire lunged forward, taking the full force of the metal blades with her back to protect me.

BAM!

The rusty metal tore through her back, blood instantly soaking her cheap white shirt.

She barely winced, just turned to the terrified customers and signed:

"It's okay, just an accident."

I just stood there, stunned.

Her blood dripped onto the grimy floor, each drop a crimson stain on the filth.

Half an hour later, I was in the bar's cramped back room, cleaning her wound.

Her skin was so thin I could see the veins. A nasty old scar ran across her collarbone.

"This is...?"

She smiled and signed, "A broken bottle from when I was a kid. Doesn't hurt anymore."

But I knew. On the South Side, you treated wounds with whiskey and a prayer, if you were lucky.

She suddenly took my wrist, her finger tracing letters onto my palm:

Miss, your hands are trembling.

I snatched my hand back.

She was right. I was trembling.

Because these were the same hands that had held his; the hands of a woman married to the man who burned my parents alive.

"Wait here."

I pulled the check I'd prepared from my Hermès bag and pressed it into her hand.

"A month from now, I'll have a much better gift for you."

A month from now, the divorce would be final.

Claire shook her head, pushing the check back to me. She signed:

"I don't help people for money."

Just then, her old phone vibrated.

I only needed a glance to recognize the profile picture—

Vincent Santoro's private account.

She answered, holding the phone to her ear, but it was obvious she couldn't hear well.

On the screen, his voice was being transcribed into text.

The man's low, cold voice came through:

"Where are you hurt?"

She looked down at the screen, her lashes fluttering. The tips of her ears turned pink.

She typed back fast:

"I'm fine, just a scratch, you don't have to come…"

But the roar of a sports car engine was already coming through the phone.

From the Santoro family's nightclub headquarters to the South Side, his custom-built Maserati would make the trip in twenty minutes, tops.

He really does have eyes everywhere. Claire gets a scratch, and he's on the phone instantly.

But it seems his "eyes" only see Claire.

Not the wife he's been married to for ten years.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips.

The last time I was attacked by one of Vincent's rivals, I was in the hospital for three days.

All he did was have his underboss send a bouquet of white roses.

The card held a single, typed line.

"Don't die in the hospital. I don't have the time to claim your body."

So, it wasn't that he didn't have time.

It was that I wasn't worth it.

My mind drifted back to our third year of marriage.

There had been a brief, fragile time when he was almost tender with me.

It was the night he'd finally trusted me with his greatest secret: he was born with congenital analgesia, the inability to feel physical pain.

It was his one true vulnerability, and he had made me its sole keeper.

Then, somehow, the secret was leaked. Armed with that knowledge, his rivals set a trap during a sit-down.

They took a blowtorch and knives to his skin, searching for the crack in his composure.

He made it out alive, but his trust in me was dead.

He never accused me.

He never even asked.

He simply decided I was guilty.

From that day on, the look he gave me was the same one he reserved for traitors before sending them to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

And now, seeing the impossible tenderness he showed Claire, that old, familiar bitterness threatened to swallow me whole.

He hadn't even glanced my way.

My eyes were fixed on his back, but my whisper was lost in the bar.

"You've got company. I should go."

I waited until Vincent had collected Claire.

Then I took the divorce papers to the Santoro family headquarters—his flagship nightclub.

"Mrs. Santoro, the Don is busy right now. Please wait."

Vincent's top man, a guy with a scar down his face, stopped me respectfully.

Busy?

Busy worrying about Claire?

The blinds weren't pulled completely shut.

I could see him. The man who wouldn't flinch at a bullet in his own chest was now on one knee before Claire.

He was gently dabbing her back with a sterile gauze pad.

And Claire… she was sitting in his high-backed leather chair, his throne.

Her simple white dress was smudged with grime, her faded canvas shoes a stark contrast to the opulence of the office.

She looked like an angel who had stumbled into hell's antechamber.

And Vincent, the man who once had a traitor's fingers crushed one by one, was frowning. Like the scrape on her skin was worse than any gunshot wound he'd ever seen.

I used to be afraid of pain, too.

But on our wedding night, I cut my hand on a broken champagne flute. He just stared at me coldly and said, "If you're bleeding, deal with it. I don't want to smell blood."

After that day, I never even used a Band-Aid in front of him.

"Ma'am..." his man shifted uncomfortably behind me.

I forced a smile. "It's fine. When will he be free? I have something he needs to sign."

His man took the papers and, knowing his place, slipped them to the bottom of a stack of contracts.

I thought Vincent would at least hesitate.

But he didn't even read it.

He just flipped to the last page and scrawled his signature.

When his man handed the agreement back to me, my hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold the paper.

I was fifteen when I learned I was engaged to a man named Vincent Santoro.

A man who, by all accounts, was incapable of feeling pain.

A man indifferent to everyone and everything.

He hated the warmth of any living thing.

He would never love me, but he wouldn't love anyone else, either.

So I thought if I was obedient enough, useful enough, I could one day make him feel something for me.

I was his shadow for ten years.

And now, that decade-long fantasy was finally over.

Back at the estate, I told the maid, Maria, to take my wedding dress to the incinerator in the backyard.

Maria was confused. "Ma'am, isn't this Vera Wang your most prized possession?"

It was. I used to see it as my trophy.

See? I thought back then. This heartless monster is my husband now.

But it was time to wake up.

"There will be a new lady of the house soon," I said calmly. "And the new Mrs. Santoro shouldn't have to look at it."

Fifteen days left until the divorce was finalized by the court.

Vincent never came home.

One night, bored, I found myself back on the South Side.

I didn't expect to see Claire in the community church, praying.

She was still in that same faded dress, looking at the statue of the Virgin Mary with such devotion.

Suddenly, as if she felt something, she turned her head slightly.

Her eyes found me in the crowd and lit up. She hurried over.

She took my hands in hers, her finger tracing on my palm.

"I'm so sorry about the other day. My boyfriend showed up unexpectedly. I'd love to buy you dinner to make up for it."

In my past life, Vincent said she was different from us, from people with blood on their hands.

He said her soul was pure, that she was an angel on earth.

I scoffed at that back then.

How innocent could a girl working in a South Side dive bar really be? She was just putting on an act for him.

But seeing her now… maybe he was right.

"I should be the one thanking you. Come on, my treat."

I took her to a quiet Italian place nearby.

When the waiter brought out her risotto, her eyes started to well up.

"What's wrong?"

She wiped a tear away and wrote on the notepad she carried with her.

"I gave up everything for him. But ever since I got pregnant, he's been pulling away."

So, they'd slept together.

I should have expected it, but the words still hit my heart like a bullet.

"Does he… have a wife?"

Her question sent a chill down my spine.

The pain I'd felt a second ago was replaced by a wave of absolute terror.

"No, of course not," I forced a smile. "You're a blessing. If I were him, I'd spoil you rotten. Why would a man ever run from that?"

If she found out Vincent was married, she would leave him.

And Vincent would assume I'd planned it.

I couldn't even imagine what he would do to my parents, all the way in Sicily.

You can't bet on a devil's humanity.

I made an excuse and slipped away to the restroom. I called my mother.

Only after she confirmed they had arrived safely at the family's old castle in Sicily did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

My mother could hear the tension in my voice.

"Isabella, is something wrong? Between you and Vincent?"

My eyes burned, and I wanted to tell her everything.

But the words wouldn't come out.

In my first life, after my parents' death, Vincent faked my death certificate and married Claire, leaving me locked in that warehouse.

I was shot trying to escape a fire I'd set myself.

He faked my death certificate, burned me alive, and married Claire.

I hated him. And I hated Claire. I hated everyone who had ever hurt me.

I tried everything to escape.

I even stole a lighter from one of the men he sent to bring me food.

One night, I set a fire, hoping to escape in the chaos.

But the second I ran out of the flames, one of his men put a bullet through my heart.

"Isabella," my mother's voice was soft, a balm on my frayed nerves, "whatever you decide, we will support you. We can always start over. Your father and I just want you to be safe, and to be happy."

"Thanks, Mamma. I know what I have to do now."