Chapter 1

I have the kind of body men stare at and women whisper about.

I’m also the bastard daughter of a small-time mafia Don, and nobody ever lets me forget it.

Ten years ago, I slept with my sister’s husband, and my sister died the next day.

At least, that’s the story everyone tells.

Her husband was Lorenzo Castellano, Don of the most powerful mafia family. After that night, he kept me. Not as his wife. As his mistress.

And everyone decided I’d seduced him on purpose. That I’d killed my own sister to get into his bed.

So I spent ten years trying to prove I wasn’t that kind of woman.

I stopped laughing out loud. I dressed dowdier than the old housekeeper. I raised Leo, the son my dead sister left behind, as if he were my own.

Ten years of that, and they finally let me in. Lorenzo announced he was going to marry me.

Then I showed up to my own engagement party in my dead sister’s wedding dress.

The man I’ve shared a bed with for a decade looks at me like he can’t stand the sight of me.

"Gianna’s dress? You think if you put on her dress, you get to be her? Still scheming, after all these years."

Leo, who called me Mom just last night, sticks his tongue out at me.

"Playing dress-up? You’re just Dad’s mistress. Did you really think you could take my mom’s place?"

The gift I spent six months carving for him is lying under his shoe.

Every eye in the ballroom is on me, and not one of them is kind.

A cold draft cuts in through the terrace doors. I look at the two of them, father and son, the same disgust on both their faces, and my voice comes out rough.

"If I’d had any choice, I never would have been your mistress."

Lorenzo’s face darkens.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Ava?"

Before I can answer, someone at one of the tables laughs.

"What do you think it means? Being his mistress isn’t enough anymore. She wants to be the Donna."

"A bastard in the Don’s bed should be grateful she got that far. And now she wants to be his wife?"

"Ten years ago she crawled into her own sister’s marriage bed. Tonight she shows up in her sister’s wedding dress. That girl doesn’t know when to stop."

Their eyes crawl over my body, like they could strip the satin right off me.

"Look at that waist. No good girl is built like that."

"I bet that night was no accident, either."

Ten years ago, I was engaged to Caleb Hayes.

He was a mechanic’s kid from Queens with nothing to his name. But he’d promised to marry me the right way. In a church, in white, like I actually mattered.

Then my older sister, Gianna, got sick.

She was dying and wanted to see her sisters one last time, so I went to the Castellano estate with the rest of them.

That night, a maid I’d never seen before came to tell me Gianna was waiting for me in the garden house.

The second I stepped inside, the door locked behind me.

Lorenzo was in there, out of his mind on whatever someone had slipped into his drink.

I screamed. I pounded on the door until my hands bled. No one came.

By morning, it was done, and there was no taking it back.

Gianna found out within the hour. She coughed up blood, and she was dead before nightfall.

And just like that, I became the girl who killed her own sister.

So for ten years, no matter how coldly Lorenzo treated me, no matter how Leo screamed at me, I told myself I deserved it. I owed them.

But looking back now, nothing about that night makes sense.

The maid who led me to the garden house was gone by the next morning. A week later, someone said she’d drowned in the river. Nobody ever asked why.

Gianna’s mother, my father’s wife, Carla, has wanted me dead for as long as I can remember.

If she really believed I’d killed her daughter, why am I still breathing? Why did she quietly clean up the mess herself, then talk Lorenzo into keeping me?

She even took my hand and said, "Leo has no mother now. You’ll raise him for Gianna."

So I did. For ten years.

Lorenzo sees my bowed head and reads it as guilt. His voice turns to ice.

"Take it off."

Two of his men step forward. In front of every guest, they rip the dress open down the back.

The satin tears. Cold air hits my bare skin. I’m left standing there in nothing but my slip.

I’m so numb inside I can’t even find the strength to fight back.

Leo crosses his arms and smirks. "Sorry yet?"

I look at his face. He’s still just a kid. The kid I raised with my own two hands.

"You’re the one who handed me this dress last night. Remember?"

The smirk freezes on Leo’s face.