Sienna POV

Matteo gathered the papers, his complexion turned the color of ash. He stared at me as if I were some impossible apparition that had just passed through a solid wall.

"The Family will provide a modest allowance," he said slowly, slipping the documents into his dark suit jacket.

"Keep it," I replied, my voice as flat and empty as the room itself.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. The linoleum floor, through the thin fabric of my hospital socks, sent a damp chill into the soles of my feet.

I moved toward the window, where outside, the winter trees stood bare and skeletal against a bleak, slate-gray sky.

I was finally done with the mafia. I was done suffocating in that top-floor apartment with its bulletproof glass and private elevator that only activated with his fingerprint.

It was time to reclaim the scalpel I had so foolishly abandoned for a man who never loved me.

The heavy oak door of the sickroom groaned open.

Carmela Cavalli strode in.

My mother-in-law, the formidable Matriarch of the Famiglia, was draped in a tailored wool suit and a strand of pearls that cost more than most people's homes.

She looked at me with that familiar, elitist curl of her lip. She had always despised my civilian blood.

In my past life, this woman had made every waking moment a living hell.

She had isolated me, poisoned Dante's mind with her venom, and actively orchestrated every barrier between us to ensure he never showed me an ounce of affection.

Carmela marched to the bedside table, dropping a thick legal contract next to my water glass with a heavy thud.

"Since you were foolish enough to sign the annulment, we need to finalize the assets," she stated, each word weighted with a malicious triumph. "And don't think for a second that the pathetic allowance Matteo promised you will ever materialize. I am the Matriarch, and I override his weak sympathies."

I glanced at the document, already knowing exactly what those pages contained.

It dictated that the penthouse, the offshore accounts, the luxury cars—and even the dowry my late parents had left me—now belonged solely to the Cavalli Famiglia.

"You will leave with nothing," Carmela sneered, her eyes gleaming with vindictive pleasure. "I will not allow you to take a single cent of our money. You take just the clothes on your back and whatever pathetic civilian trash you brought into this family."

She expected a fight. She desperately wanted to watch me break down, to see the crushing realization hit me that I was now a beggar on the streets.

Instead, I turned my back on her and walked to the small closet in the corner of the room.

From it, I pulled a simple canvas duffel bag, tossed the few old medical journals I had secretly hoarded under my mattress inside, and grabbed my old, worn winter coat.

I completely ignored the designer gowns and the velvet boxes of diamond necklaces sitting in the drawers; they had only ever felt like heavy, suffocating chains anyway.

I zipped the bag shut and slung it over my shoulder.

"Fine," I said simply.

Carmela blinked, her smug, aristocratic expression faltering for a fraction of a second.

I walked toward the door, pausing just inches away from her rigid posture.

I looked directly into her harsh, aging eyes, refusing to shrink away.

"Signora Cavalli," I murmured, my voice pitched low and even. "The blood debt your son owes me could never be repaid in this lifetime, anyway."

Carmela's face twisted into an ugly mask of sudden fury. Her mouth opened, but shock stole her words.

Without waiting for a response, I stepped around her and walked out into the corridor, where the fluorescent lights hummed with a low-frequency current.

I didn't look back.

Halfway down the hall, I saw her.

Elena Falcone.

She was the daughter of Don Salvatore, a woman blessed with a face of breathtaking beauty and cursed with a thoroughly rotten core.

In my past life, I had only learned on my deathbed that Elena was the true mastermind behind my divorce, having used her father's powerful seat on the Commission to force Dante's hand.

Now, she stood right in the middle of the hallway, cradling a massive, ostentatious bouquet of yellow roses.

As I approached, her lips stretched into a sickeningly sweet, practiced smile.

"Sienna," Elena cooed, her voice coated in a thick, false pity. "I heard the terrible news. The life of the Famiglia is just so incredibly cruel. I am so, so sorry."

She held out the vibrant yellow roses—a gesture that was nothing less than a subtle threat, a gloating victory lap.

I stopped dead in front of her.

For a long moment, I looked down at the bright yellow petals, and then I shifted my gaze to the stainless-steel trash can sitting against the wall.

Without a word, I took the bouquet from her manicured hands.

I took two deliberate steps to the right and dropped the expensive flowers directly into the garbage.

"Excuse me," I said, controlling my vocal cords, making each syllable emerge as tonelessly as if I were reading from a telephone directory. "I despise roses."

The triumphant smile froze on her lips. A faint, uncontrollable tremor began at the corner of her mouth. I savored it—the first taste of a victory that was entirely, irrevocably mine.

Sienna POV

Elena quickly recovered her mask, taking a step toward me with eyes that flashed with hidden venom.

"You have nothing now, Sienna," she whispered, her voice thick with a feigned concern. "Let me help you. I can call a car."

"I have no ties to the Don anymore," I replied, without turning to look at her. "And I certainly have no ties to you."

The coarse strap of the canvas bag dug into my collarbone. I walked right past her and straight out of the heavily guarded Cavalli compound.

The biting chill of the December wind hit my face; it was freezing, but it was the very taste of freedom.

On the sidewalk, my fingers found the contents of my coat pocket: a crumpled twenty-dollar bill and an old city transit pass.

It was all the money I had left in the world.

In my past life, this moment would have sent me into a panic. Today, however, a fierce fire ignited in my chest.

I needed to find Dr. Thomas Rossi.

He was a legendary surgeon and my former mentor before the mafia swallowed me whole. He had once sent me a letter begging me to return to medicine. Back then, I was too trapped by the laws of Omertà and my duties as a mafia wife to even reply.

The wind cut through my thin coat, and I pulled the collar tight as I walked to the station and bought a one-way Greyhound ticket out of the Famiglia's territory.

The six-hour ride smelled of old coffee and diesel fuel.

As I watched the dark trees blur past the window, my thoughts drifted to Dante—to his cold eyes and his bloody hands.

I forced the image of him from my mind. He belonged to another life, another woman.

By the time I arrived in the city, the sun had already set. With barely three dollars left, my stomach ached with hunger, but I refused to waste my last coins on a stale sandwich.

I trudged for forty minutes through the dark streets until the towering iron gates of the state medical university loomed ahead.

At the small security booth, I found an elderly gatekeeper sitting inside, reading a newspaper.

I knocked on the glass.

He slid the window open with a scrape.

"Excuse me," I said. "I am looking for Dr. Thomas Rossi's office or his home address."

The gatekeeper studied my face, squinting in the dim light before his eyes suddenly went wide.

"Sienna?" he breathed.

I was stunned that he recognized me, but I nodded slowly.

He immediately snatched up the heavy rotary phone on his desk, dialing a number with shaking fingers.

He spoke rapidly into the receiver, then slammed it down and looked back at me.

"Go to the faculty housing," the gatekeeper urged, his voice thick with emotion. "Building four. Dr. Rossi has been waiting for you for a long time."

My eyes burned, and a hot lump formed in my throat.

I hurried across the quiet campus until I found building four. I climbed the stairs to his door, but before my knuckles could even graze the wood, the door was pulled open.

Dr. Rossi stood in the doorway. His back was hunched with age, and his hair, which used to be a crisp salt and pepper, was now completely white.

He looked down at my cheap coat and my single duffel bag.

His eyes reddened with unshed tears.

"You foolish girl," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "You finally remembered me."

I dropped my bag to the floor. I bowed my head, my gaze fixed on the worn floorboards of his hallway, the shame of thirty lost years a physical weight on my shoulders.

"I want to return to medicine," I whispered, the words raw with a desperate resolve. "I want to wield a scalpel again."

Dr. Rossi turned around, marching over to his heavy oak desk and slamming his hand down on the wood.

"It is about damn time!" he barked.

He immediately started pulling massive stacks of medical texts from his shelves, slamming them onto the table in a cloud of dust.

He turned back to me, his eyes burning with a fierce, familiar intensity.

"You have six months to pass all your board recertification exams," he demanded, pointing a trembling finger at me. "Or I will throw you out myself."

I looked at the mountain of books, a small smile finally breaking through my exhaustion.

“I will,” I said, the words a vow. And for the first time in two lifetimes, I knew—bone-deep—that I meant it.

But I didn't know then that a moldering chapter of my past was about to lie, bleeding, upon my operating table.