My sister Rosalie always played the role of my gentle protector. On the night of my engagement, she insisted I take a secluded canyon road for my own safety.
In my past life, I didn’t know it was a deadly trap. I fell for the staged ambush and the rival mobster, Julian, who took a fake bullet to “save” me.
Because of my blind trust, my entire Falcone bloodline was annihilated overnight. My father was beheaded, my brothers were gunned down, and my sweet little sister was left to die in a filthy alley. I was even brainwashed into betraying my new husband, Damien Moretti. I shot the only man who truly protected me right through the heart, just before Rosalie drowned me in a freezing lake, laughing as she confessed she was just a bastard child stealing my life.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very night my nightmare began. I was trapped in a penthouse, a lethal drug melting my sanity, pinned beneath Damien. But after he brutally sweat the poison out of my veins, he didn’t look at me with love. He handed me a Plan B pill with a gaze full of ancient, chilling hatred.
“Swallow it,” he commanded, his voice a sheet of ice.
He remembers. The Dark Don remembers the past life where I murdered him. But this time, I won’t be a pawn. I wiped the blood of my traitorous maid from my hands, ready to drag my fake sister straight to hell.
Reborn To Ruin The Mafia Don Chapter 1
Isabella POV
The fire of the Angel’s Kiss was melting my sanity, turning my blood into liquid heat. I was trapped in a sprawling, dimly lit suite at the top of the Elysium Casino. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the neon lights of the city bled into the night, but inside, there was only the suffocating scent of aged whiskey, dark tobacco, and raw, dangerous masculinity.
And the crushing weight of the man pinning me to the black silk sheets.
Damien Moretti. The Dark Don of the Moretti family.
He wasn’t making love to me; he was exorcising a demon. His movements were brutal, an unforgiving rhythm designed to sweat the poison out of my veins. His hands, rough and calloused from years of violence, bruised my hips, holding me captive in a cage of muscle and dominance.
“Look at me,” he growled, his voice a dark rumble that vibrated against my chest. His obsidian eyes were lethal, burning with a possessive fury that terrified me. “Who am I? Say it.”
I thrashed beneath him, my mind fractured by the drug, but his grip only tightened.
“Say my name, Isabella,” he demanded, his jaw clenched.
“Damien,” I sobbed, the name tearing from my throat in a broken gasp. “Damien Moretti.”
As the syllables left my lips, the climax hit me with the force of a physical blow, shattering the last remnants of the drug. And in that blinding moment of release, the dam in my mind broke.
Memories—bloody, agonizing, and entirely impossible—crashed into my skull like a freight train.
A secluded highway. Julian Bellini stepping out of the shadows, a fake savior bleeding from a staged wound, whispering sweet, venomous lies of love and protection.
My engagement party. Damien’s soldiers storming the Falcone estate. The Dark Don dragging me away from Julian, declaring to the entire Chicago underworld that I was his Mafia Queen.
Blood. So much blood. My father, a proud Caporegime, beheaded in Colombia. My brothers, Leo and Ethan, riddled with sniper bullets. My sweet sister Sophia, dumped naked in a filthy alley with a needle in her arm. The Falcone line, annihilated overnight by Julian and my fake sister, Rosalie, while I blindly blamed my new husband.
My own treason. Whispering Moretti secrets into Julian’s ear. The orchestrated car crash that killed Damien’s mother. The agonizing screams of his little sister, Angelica, sold to a brutal Russian Bratva monster as a peace offering.
An abandoned warehouse. The silver Beretta trembling in my hands. Damien rushing in, alone and desperate to save me, only to find my trap. The look of profound betrayal in his eyes as I pulled the trigger, shooting the only man who had ever truly protected me through the heart.
The freezing, pitch-black water of Lake Michigan filling my lungs. Rosalie’s triumphant laughter echoing above the surface as she held me under, drowning me on the very day Julian was crowned ‘Don of Dons’.
And then, the void. Five years as a lingering ghost, watching a stranger—Atticus Carbone—rise like a vulture to unleash a merciless Vendetta. Watching him slaughter Julian and Rosalie, burning their empire to ash before burying my bones beside the husband I had wrongfully murdered.
I gasped, my eyes snapping wide open as I was violently yanked back to the present.
The drug was gone. The sweat on my skin turned ice-cold.
I was breathing. My heart was beating.
I stared up at the ceiling of the Elysium penthouse, my chest heaving. Slowly, agonizingly, I turned my head. Damien was pulling away from me, his broad, heavily scarred back flexing as he reached for his discarded trousers. He was alive.
I had been reborn on the very night my descent into hell began.
The silence in the suite was suddenly deafening, heavy with the scent of sex and unspoken threats. I pulled the ruined black silk sheets up to my trembling collarbones, staring at the broad shoulders of the man I had killed in another life. He didn’t look back at me with the desperate love I remembered from that warehouse. His posture was rigid, radiating a chilling, calculated hostility.
He reached for the phone on the nightstand, his profile carved from unyielding stone. The nightmare of my past life was over, but as I watched Damien dial a number with cold precision, I realized a new, far more terrifying reality had just begun.
Reborn To Ruin The Mafia Don Chapter 2
Isabella POV
Damien spoke rapid, hushed Italian into the receiver, his voice devoid of the raw, possessive heat that had just scorched my skin. He hung up and turned his back to me, adjusting his cuffs with the lethal precision of a Don preparing for war.
A sharp knock echoed through the penthouse. Damien didn’t flinch. He strode to the door, opening it just enough to allow a man in a tailored suit to step inside. The man—a family doctor, judging by the discreet black bag—kept his eyes strictly on the floor. He handed Damien a small paper cup and a glass of water, then vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
Damien walked back to the bed. His obsidian eyes were unreadable, stripped of any lingering desire. He held out the cup. Inside rested a single, stark white pill.
Plan B.
The message was deafeningly clear. Whether he remembered our past life or simply saw me as a nameless Falcone threat who had stumbled into his bed, he was severing any possibility of a future. He was denying me the chance to ever carry a Moretti heir, erasing the ghost of the son we once had before he even existed.
“Swallow it,” Damien commanded, his voice a sheet of ice.
My throat tightened, but I didn’t cry. The Isabella who would have wept for his affection had died in a freezing lake. I took the pill, placed it on my tongue, and drank the water, maintaining unbroken eye contact with the Dark Don.
Satisfied, Damien turned on his heel. He walked out of the suite without a backward glance. I scrambled to the door, clutching the ruined silk sheet to my chest, only to watch the private elevator doors slide shut, sealing him away.
The silence of the room crashed down on me. The sweat on my skin turned frigid, and suddenly, the chill wasn’t just from the air conditioning.
It was the water.
My knees buckled as the phantom sensation of Lake Michigan swallowed me whole. I could feel the pitch-black, freezing current dragging me down. I could hear Rosalie’s sweet, venomous voice whispering my failures on the pier, her manicured hands shoving me into the abyss while Julian Bellini watched with dead, indifferent eyes.
I gasped for air, my nails digging into the plush carpet. The memory shifted, violently tearing me from the lake and throwing me onto the damp grass of Calvary Cemetery.
The screech of van tires. The brutal hands of Julian’s associates grabbing my hair. And then, Bianca—my sweet, timid maid—slamming her body into my attackers.
“Run, Isa! Run!”
Her agonizing screams echoed in my skull as they dragged her into the van instead of me. She had died so I could live a few more miserable days.
I slowly pushed myself off the floor, my reflection in the hallway mirror catching my eye. Pale. Bruised. But alive. Damien Moretti was an enemy, Julian was a monster, and Rosalie was a parasite. I was entirely alone, but this time, I knew the rules of the game.
By the time I was transported back to St. Jude’s Sanctuary—the remote gothic retreat my family used as a cover for my temporary “disappearance”—the storm inside me had settled into a cold, calculated fury.
I stood in the shadowy loggia of the sanctuary, watching the midnight rain lash against the stone arches. Footsteps echoed behind me.
“Isa!”
I turned to see Bianca rushing down the corridor, her face pale with worry. She was alive. Whole. The sight of her made my chest ache, but I forced my expression to remain blank.
“Francesca just arrived with the car,” Bianca said breathlessly, wringing her hands. “She brought a message from Lady Rosalie. There are rumors of gang violence erupting on the main highway tonight. Rosalie insists we leave immediately and take the old canyon road back to the estate. She says it’s a much safer route.”
The canyon road.
A bitter, knowing smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. It was the exact same script. The “safe route” was a dead zone, the perfect stage for Rosalie’s hired thugs to ambush my car so Julian could swoop in, take a staged bullet for me, and bind my naive heart to his forever.
“Is something wrong, Isa?” Bianca asked, stepping closer.
“No, Bianca,” I said softly, my eyes drifting toward the gravel driveway where Francesca and the black Lincoln Town Car waited in the dark. “Tell Francesca we will take the canyon road. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my sister.”
Reborn To Ruin The Mafia Don Chapter 3
Isabella POV
Before stepping out into the freezing midnight air, I told Bianca I needed a moment to fetch my heavy coat from the parlor.
The sanctuary’s main hall was swallowed in shadows, smelling of damp earth and extinguished beeswax candles. On a mahogany side table sat an empty bourbon bottle, likely left behind by one of the night guards. I wrapped my hand in a thick velvet napkin and struck the base of the bottle against the stone edge of the fireplace. Crack.
The sound was sharp but muffled by the storm outside. I sifted through the wreckage with clinical precision, selecting a jagged, triangular shard of glass. It was heavy and lethal. I slid it up the sleeve of my wool coat, the razor-sharp edge resting dangerously close to my own pulse.
When I finally walked out to the gravel driveway, the black Lincoln Town Car was idling in the dark. Its exhaust plumed like dragon’s breath in the biting wind, and the vehicle itself looked less like a sanctuary and more like a polished hearse.
Francesca stood by the open rear door, her face pale but her eyes gleaming with a frantic, nervous energy.
“Isabella, thank God,” Francesca breathed, her voice dripping with manufactured relief. “We must hurry. Lady Rosalie sent word that the main highway is compromised. Rival families are clashing near the borders.”
I paused, pulling my coat tighter around myself. “Perhaps we should wait until dawn, Francesca,” I murmured, feigning a naive tremble. “The dark is so… unpredictable.”
“No,” Francesca insisted too quickly, her eyes darting toward the driver’s seat. “The secluded canyon road is much safer at night. We won’t draw any attention under the cover of darkness. Trust me, Isa.”
Trust me. The exact words she had used in my past life. The script was playing out flawlessly.
I gave a slow, obedient nod and climbed into the cavernous back seat. Bianca slid in beside me, her hands clasped nervously in her lap. Francesca took the rear-facing jump seat opposite us. The heavy doors slammed shut, sealing us inside a vault of black leather and tinted glass. The engine hummed, and the car lurched forward, plunging us into the pitch-black route Julian Bellini had meticulously designed for my demise.
The silence in the cabin was suffocating. The only sound was the rhythmic thud of the tires against the uneven asphalt as we ventured deeper into the desolate canyon.
I looked at Francesca’s shadowed face, watching the way she obsessively checked her wristwatch.
“Francesca,” I said softly, my voice barely rising above the hum of the engine.
She snapped her attention to me, forcing a tight smile. “Yes, Isa?”
“I was just thinking about my mother,” I lied, my tone wistful and vulnerable. “Do you remember that lullaby she used to sing to me when I was frightened? The one about the Sicilian fisherman?”
Francesca blinked, clearly caught off guard by the sentimental question. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before a sickeningly sweet, rehearsed warmth flooded her features.
“Of course, piccola mia,” she cooed, using an Italian endearment she had never once uttered in her life. “She sang it beautifully. It always brought you such peace.”
My mother had never sung to me. She despised the ocean, and she certainly never sang about fishermen.
Francesca was reciting a script, playing the role of the caring guardian right up until the moment she delivered me to the slaughter. The absolute confirmation of her betrayal washed over me, freezing the last drop of mercy in my veins.
I leaned back against the cold leather seat and closed my eyes. Beneath the heavy wool of my coat, my fingers curled inward, the jagged edge of the glass shard biting deeply into my palm.