Her Soul Was Shattered, So Her Twin Chose Violence

My sister and I shared one body, Twin Souls bound together since birth, fighting over control for as long as I could remember.

The year we came of age, I gave my heart to the ninth-born son, Romeo. She fell for the heir apparent, Dante.

Our father laid down the rule: whichever girl's beloved claimed the seat of power would claim the body for good.

A year later, Dante Griffin was crowned Don.

He married my sister with a ceremony that shut down half the city, made her his blood-bound bride before every Capo on the Eastern Seaboard.

And I, as promised, sank into dormancy.

I thought I would never wake again.

Until a night of bitter wind tore through me and I opened my eyes to find myself drenched in blood.

Dante Griffin kicked open the doors of the abandoned wing, his eyes shot through with red.

"Chiara Valente. Lucrezia only accidentally lost your child again, and you curse her with infant spirits haunting her every dream?"

"When did you become this vicious?"

I watched my sister's beloved glare at her as though he wanted to tear her apart.

Rage boiled through me.

Dante Griffin had no idea. My sweet sister was soft-hearted and kind, the sort of soul who lived to save others.

But me? I was born from malice. The only creed I knew was an eye for an eye.

……

Pain bored through my body like a drill through bone.

Hot copper surged up my throat.

Dante seized my jaw, his gaze cold and venomous.

"Try your filthy tricks again, and I'll dig that wretched child of yours out of the ground and burn it in the old chamber!"

"So it never dares come back!"

My pupils shrank to pinpoints.

The boy my sister once loved, the one who used to frown over a wounded sparrow.

Now he stood here saying this to her, words so depraved they defied God himself?

I locked my fingers around his wrist and snarled through my teeth.

"Dante Griffin, when exactly did you become this monstrous? Was that not your own child?"

Dante went rigid. His breath caught.

I saw something flicker in his eyes.

Only for an instant.

The next second, he slammed me into the ground.

He looked down at me from above, the disgust in his gaze deepening another layer.

"With a mother like you, dying early was a mercy."

"The interrogator says Lucrezia's nightmares can be cured with the blood from your heart."

"Since you refuse to confess, don't blame me for being merciless. Soldiers!"

I stared at Dante through hooded eyes, a strand of his hair still clenched between my fingertips where I'd torn it free.

Soldiers closed in around me on every side.

Their formation was practiced, seamless. This was clearly not the first time.

"Stand down. I'll do it myself." My voice cut through them like a blade.

I rose to my feet and picked up the silver needle.

In full view of every last one of them, I ripped open my sleeping gown without a shred of hesitation.

Dante's expression twisted. He whipped toward the soldiers and roared, "Close your eyes! All of you!"

I let out a cold, mocking laugh.

He was the one who sent these soldiers. What exactly was he pretending to protect?

I looked down at my own chest.

There, over the sternum, across the center of the body where the old families said the soul was anchored, were seven puncture wounds.

Three to shatter the soul. Seven to strip the spirit.

This was the Traitor's Brand taken further than any code permitted, a method designed to scatter a person's soul into nothing, to ensure my sister couldn't even become a ghost.

Dante's gaze darkened as it settled on the wounds across my body. He rubbed the scar on his left palm without seeming to know he was doing it.

"Chiara, Lucrezia and I did this for your own good. The cleansing ritual was always meant to purge the darkness inside you."

"You even tried to fake your death to escape the compound, claiming the ritual would kill you, that the baby would die too. And yet here you are, alive and well, and the child was born safely. Stop being so ungrateful."

The words hit me like a fist closing around my heart. Cold spread through every limb, every vein, all at once.

"You drove the Traitor's Brand into Chiara while she was still carrying her child?"

When those nails pierced flesh, it was like ten thousand steel needles driving in from every direction, then ripping back out.

They punctured the soul until it was riddled with holes, until the spirit scattered so completely it could never be pieced together again.

My sister must have burned through the very essence of her soul to shield both the baby and me.

And the child she'd gambled her life and her soul to save.