Siena POV

The freezing morning wind whipped across the Master Suite balcony as I looked down at the sprawling estate courtyard. Below me, a black bulletproof SUV rolled to a halt near the marble fountain.

The heavy door opened, and Chiara stepped out. She looked exactly as I remembered—fragile, wide-eyed, and dressed in a modest pastel coat that screamed innocent vulnerability.

Before the Estate Guards could even reach for her designer luggage, Gia, my foolish Associate maid, practically sprinted across the cobblestones to fawn over her.

"Lady Chiara! It is such an honor," Gia chirped, her voice carrying clearly in the crisp air. She eagerly grabbed Chiara's bags. "Look at your elegance! Not even Elder Adeline's daughter, the high-and-mighty Princess Kaleigh, has such an aura. With the Don favoring our Queen so absolutely, those old Elders will soon have to look to you and your sister for their place."

From my vantage point, I saw the blood instantly drain from Chiara’s face. In the ruthless hierarchy of the Castillo family, a lowly Associate openly disrespecting an Elder's ancient bloodline was a death sentence. Chiara forced a stiff smile, her eyes darting around in sheer panic, mentally cursing the idiot maid who was about to get them both tortured.

But as Chiara glanced up and caught sight of me standing on the high balcony, her mask slipped for a fraction of a second. Behind her terrified, teary eyes, I saw the raw, burning jealousy. She hated that I was the one looking down at her.

I offered her a cold, dead smile.

Down in the courtyard, several muscular Estate Guards stepped forward to carry her trunks into the main house.

"Halt."

Rosa’s sharp voice cut through the courtyard. My loyal maid stepped out of the heavy oak doors, her face an unreadable mask of stone.

"The Mafia Queen has issued a command," Rosa announced loudly, ensuring every Associate and guard in the vicinity heard her. "Lady Chiara is forbidden from entering the main house. Her quarters have been reassigned to the standard rooms in the Associates' District at the far edge of the estate. Leave her luggage there."

The guards immediately dropped the bags and stepped back. Chiara froze, her fragile facade shattering into pure, unadulterated humiliation.

"Well, isn't this a pathetic sight?"

Isabella, the Capo's wife, paused on the courtyard steps, her lips curling into a malicious sneer. "Thrown out with the trash already? It seems our Queen finally realized her commoner sister doesn't belong breathing the same air as us."

Chiara’s hands balled into fists. For a second, the venomous viper I knew from my past life hissed. "Watch your mouth, Isabella," she snapped, her voice dripping with sudden, sharp malice.

Isabella blinked, momentarily taken aback by the sheer hatred in the "sweet" girl's eyes. Realizing her mistake, Chiara immediately shrank back, her eyes filling with large, trembling tears.

"Please, forgive my sister," Chiara whimpered loudly, ensuring the gathering crowd could hear. "Siena... she hasn't been well. Her mind is so fragile, so paranoid lately. She sees enemies everywhere. I only pray the Don can cure her madness."

I scoffed from the balcony. It was a masterful piece of psychological manipulation, painting me as a tyrannical, unstable monster. But I didn't care. Let them think I was a madwoman.

I turned away from the freezing wind and descended the sweeping marble staircase to the Grand Foyer.

I had barely reached the black-and-white marble floor when I found my path blocked. Elder Adeline, Elmira, and Isabella were standing near the archway of the East Wing.

"You make a mockery of the Family Bond, Siena," Adeline hissed, her aristocratic face tight with fury. "Banishing your own flesh and blood to the slums? You are turning the Castillo family into a laughingstock before the entire New York syndicate. You will rescind this order immediately."

"I will not have that commoner girl dumped in my husband's territory," Isabella added bitterly.

I stopped, my posture perfectly straight. "I am simply preserving the Don's peace," I replied, my voice echoing coldly in the foyer. "Isn't that what you preached this morning, Aunt Adeline? Hierarchy and order. My husband's sanctuary will not be disturbed."

The tension in the air grew thick enough to choke on. Then, Elmira stepped forward, her face softening into a mask of sickeningly sweet grace.

"There is no need for such hostility," Elmira murmured, playing the benevolent peacemaker. "If the Queen's nerves are too frayed to host her own sister, I will take the poor girl in. Chiara can stay in a guest room in my wing."

Adeline’s eyes gleamed with approval. "A true display of Castillo nobility, Elmira. Though I fear our Queen will only use the Don's favor to bully you for your kindness."

I stared at Elmira's gracious smile. She thought she was so clever, acquiring a vulnerable pawn to groom and use against me. She had no idea she had just invited a venomous snake into her bed.

"How generous of you, Elmira," I said softly, my eyes locking onto hers.

I walked past them without another word, my mind already drifting back to the last time Elmira had tried to play a deadly game of deception with me.

Siena POV

As I walked away from Elmira's sickeningly sweet smile in the Grand Foyer, my mind drifted to a memory from three months ago in the East Wing Suite.

Elmira had laced her own Earl Grey tea with a mild toxin, staging a pathetic frame-up to accuse me—the commoner Queen—of attempting to assassinate an Elder. She had wanted to use the Castillo bloodline to crush me.

But Dante hadn't even blinked. My Dark Don had simply unholstered his Glock, slamming the heavy metal onto the mahogany table with a deafening crack. *“If anyone touches my wife, I will have the Underboss and my Enforcers drag every maid in this wing to the Underground Interrogation Room. We will flay them alive until we find the truth.”*

Terrified by the sheer, suffocating bloodlust radiating from him, Elmira had immediately backed down, scapegoating a low-level Associate to save her own skin. Now, she thought she could outsmart me by using Chiara as her new pawn.

By noon, the battlefield shifted to the Formal Dining Room. Adeline had orchestrated a lavish luncheon, ostensibly to "teach" Chiara our rules, but truly to isolate me.

"It is a tragedy when youth and arrogance blind someone to the sacred Family Bond," Adeline drawled, swirling her expensive Bordeaux. She didn't look at me, but her target was obvious. Isabella smirked into her napkin, relishing the lecture. "A true Queen unites the bloodline; she doesn't trample it on a whim."

I scoffed, the sound slicing through the clinking of silver. I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping harshly against the marble floor. "Your hypocrisy is exhausting, Aunt Adeline. Enjoy your meal."

Before I could turn away, delicate fingers clamped onto my silk sleeve. Chiara looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with perfectly timed, unshed tears.

"Siena, please," she whimpered, her voice trembling with that familiar, sickening fragility. "Don't anger the Elders for my sake. I can bear the slums, I promise."

The sheer audacity of her performance made my blood run cold. This was the exact face she wore before the garrote wire tightened around my neck.

I didn't slap her. Instead, I flipped my hand, my fingers wrapping around her wrist like a vice. I squeezed until I felt the bones grind together, leaning down so my lips brushed her ear.

"One day," I whispered, my voice a demonic, hollow rasp meant only for her, "I will kill you with my own hands."

I released her abruptly. Chiara stumbled back, clutching her reddened wrist. The mask of the sweet victim shattered, replaced by raw, unadulterated shock. She stared at me as if looking at a monster, completely oblivious to the fact that she was the one who had created it.

I didn't wait for Adeline's inevitable praise of Chiara's "sacrifice." I walked out.

The adrenaline carried me all the way back to the Master Suite's Nursery. I needed silence. But the moment I stepped onto the plush wool rug, Maria, the Associate nanny, turned around with a bright smile.

In her arms was Leo. My five-month-old son, swaddled in expensive cashmere.

"He just woke up, *mia Regina*," Maria cooed, stepping toward me to present the heir. "Look who missed his mother."

She held him out.

*“I don't want a weak commoner for a mother!”*

The phantom wire sliced into my throat. White-hot fire exploded in my windpipe. I didn't see a pure, innocent infant. I saw the ten-year-old boy standing in the shadows of the interrogation room, his Castillo eyes dead and cold as he watched me choke on my own blood.

"No!" A raw, guttural scream tore from my throat.

I scrambled backward, my hip slamming violently into the vanity. Perfume bottles crashed to the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces. "Get him away! Get that monster away from me!"

Maria froze, her face draining of color. She clutched the baby to her chest, backing away in sheer terror. Sensing the panic, Leo began to wail, the high-pitched cries piercing my skull like shrapnel.

"My Queen!" Gia and Rosa rushed into the nursery, their eyes wide with alarm.

I couldn't breathe. I slid down the vanity, my knees hitting the floorboards amidst the broken glass. I curled into myself, trembling violently as the past and present collided in a horrifying mess. I didn't know how to look at the flesh and blood that had condemned me to hell.

In the suffocating darkness of my panic, my fractured mind craved only one thing. I needed Dante. I needed the terrifying, absolute protection of his arms, the only place in this blood-soaked world where the ghosts couldn't reach me.

Siena POV

I was still shivering on the nursery floor amidst the shattered perfume bottles when the heavy doors swung open. It wasn't Dante. It was Greta, Elder Adeline’s high-ranking maid, flanked by two muscular female Associates.

"The Elder has suffered a severe heart episode," Greta announced, her tone leaving no room for refusal. "She requests the Queen's presence immediately."

My mind was too fractured from the phantom feeling of the garrote wire to fight back. Rosa tried to intervene, but the Associates practically dragged my numb, pale body out of the room and down the corridor to the East Wing Suite.

The air inside Adeline's quarters was thick with the suffocating scent of expensive herbs and old perfume. Adeline lay in her massive four-poster bed, clutching her chest in a theatrical display of agony.

"You send your lowly maid, Gia, to the courtyard to mock my ancient bloodline," Adeline gasped out, her eyes sharp with calculated malice. "Is this how the commoner Queen repays the Castillo family? By instructing your servants to humiliate us?"

Before I could even formulate a response through my dissociation, the heavy suite doors crashed open.

Dante strode in. The sharp, metallic scent of gunpowder and fresh blood clung to his tailored suit—he had just returned from a high-level Commission meeting. His dark eyes swept the room, instantly assessing my trembling frame before locking onto the Elder.

"Aunt," Dante’s gravelly voice was a lethal purr as he approached the bed. "Are you suspecting I instructed my wife to insult your bloodline?"

The absolute, suffocating authority of the Dark Don instantly crushed the air out of the room. Adeline paled, her fake illness suddenly feeling terrifyingly real. Dante didn't wait for her answer. He picked up the glass of water and her heart pills from the nightstand, leaning over her. He pressed the pills to her lips with a forceful, undeniable dominance—a silent death warning.

"Drink. You need your strength," he commanded softly. Adeline swallowed, her hands shaking.

Dante turned his cold gaze to his Capo, Luca, who stood by the door. "Take the maid, Gia, to the Underground Interrogation Room. Twenty lashes with a garrote wire. Then throw her in the cells."

I flinched at the word *wire*, the phantom pain in my throat flaring, but Adeline looked visibly relieved by the brutal concession. Desperate to regain her footing, she pushed a beautiful young woman forward from the shadows.

"Dante, my granddaughter Ami is of pure blood," Adeline urged nervously. "She can assist you with estate matters while Siena is... unwell."

Luca stepped closer to Dante, completely ignoring Ami. "Boss," he whispered, "the Queen is shaking."

Dante didn't even glance at Ami. He crossed the room in two long strides, scooped me up bridal style against his hard, gun-metal-scented chest, and walked out, leaving Adeline seething in her bed.

Back in the absolute safety of the Master Suite, the estate doctor administered a mild sedative. I drifted into a feverish nightmare. Chiara’s face twisted in a grotesque sneer as the wire cut into my windpipe. Leo’s cold, dead eyes watched me choke on my own blood.

I jolted awake, gasping for air, my hands clawing at my throat.

"Siena."

Dante was sitting on the edge of the bed, his rough thumb gently stroking my pale cheek. I lunged upward, burying my face into the crook of his neck. My fingers dug desperately into his broad shoulders, clinging to him like a drowning woman to a raft.

"Shh, you are safe," Dante murmured, his massive arms wrapping around me, locking me in his embrace. He thought Adeline's ambush had terrified me. "Leo is secure in the nursery, and Chiara has been settled in the outer district. No one will touch your family."

Those names were pure acid in my veins. A violent sob tore from my throat. I clutched his shirt, my voice cracking with raw, hysterical desperation.

"I don't want them!" I cried out, trembling violently against his chest. "I don't want Leo, and I don't want Chiara! Dante, I only want you. Please, only look at me. Only protect me. Please!"

Dante froze. To him, a mother abandoning her flesh and blood and a sister forsaking her sibling was sheer madness. But as I pressed my tear-soaked face against his neck, begging for his singular devotion, I felt the dangerous, predatory shift in his muscles. Beneath his shock, the Dark Don’s twisted, possessive soul was deeply, darkly satisfied by my absolute submission.