Too Late, Mafia Boss: Watch Me Shine

For three years, I played the fool, sacrificing my dignity to drag Luca back from the abyss so he could inherit the Falcone Family.

But at his grand swearing-in banquet, the woman he claimed as his own wasn't me. It was my illegitimate half-sister, Elena.

To please her, he laced my soup with poison and watched his men mock my agony.

When my mother was dying in the ICU and desperately needed my medical signature, Elena's enforcers pinned me to the floor of an underground fighting ring.

"Perform your jester routine, Claire. Make me laugh," Elena taunted.

Crying, I begged Luca to save my mother. But he just looked at me with cold disgust, wrapped his arms around Elena, and kissed her passionately right in front of me.

Driven by blinding desperation, I smeared filthy clown makeup on my face and tore my dignity to shreds just to beg for a merciful laugh.

But it was too late. Because of their twisted games, my mother flatlined and suffocated to death alone.

I didn't understand how eighteen years of blind devotion and three years of keeping him alive amounted to nothing, or why he so easily believed Elena's fabricated lies to destroy my life.

Staring at my ruined, painted face on the cold floor outside the hospital morgue, the last trace of my love for him turned to ash.

I wiped away the greasepaint, downloaded the hidden evidence of their crimes, and dialed an independent federal lawyer.

"I am breaking Omertà. File the lawsuit."

Chapter 1

Claire POV

I stood at the epicenter of the Syndicate's grand ballroom, the heat of the crystal chandeliers pressing down on my bare shoulders, waiting for the man I had spent three years coaxing back from the abyss to claim me.

But a shriek of feedback tore through the microphone, and the name Luca Falcone announced was not my own.

It was my illegitimate half-sister's.

The applause from the Made Men and Soldiers struck me like a physical wave, a roar of sound that seemed to suck the very air from the room.

A frantic, uneven rhythm pulsed in my throat. For three years, I had played the fool—the relentlessly optimistic jester in his court of shadows.

I had bartered my dignity for cheap laughs, swallowed insults like bitter pills, and dragged Luca piece by piece from the suffocating mire his mother's suicide had left him in.

I kept him fit to inherit the Falcone Family.

Now, he stood on the raised dais, his navy suit the exact shade of blue he always loved. His gaze swept the crowd with the dispassionate, lethal stillness of a man who owned every shadow in the city.

He did not look at me.

Elena Moretti emerged from the velvet darkness of the VIP booths.

She wore a gown the color of fresh blood, a sheath of crimson silk that clung to her limbs like a second skin. A line of cruel amusement pulled at one corner of her mouth.

A hush fell over the ballroom, thick and expectant. Everyone knew who I was. Everyone knew what I had done for him.

The Consigliere, an older man with a face of granite, cleared his throat, the sound a sharp crack of disapproval in the heavy air.

He stepped toward the microphone, his displeasure a palpable force.

Elena paid him no mind. She slammed her champagne flute onto the nearest table.

The crystal stem snapped with a sound like a gunshot.

She looked right at me, her voice cutting through the low murmur of the crowd.

"Look at her," she sneered. "Forever trailing three steps behind him, waiting for whatever scraps he might let fall from his fingers."

The words were a blow, but it was the sibilant whispers of the Capos and Associates that made my skin crawl.

They were laughing. They were pitying me.

The Consigliere grabbed Elena by the elbow, his grip tight enough to leave bruises on her pale skin, and pulled her aside to hiss a reprimand about Family decorum.

My mind was a sudden, stark void. The air in the ballroom grew thin and hot, the starched collar of my gown suddenly feeling like a garrote.

Under the crushing weight of their stares, I turned and pushed my way through the heavy oak doors.

I needed air. I needed an explanation.

The night air in the estate's courtyard was sharp with the coming frost.

I wrapped my arms around myself, my heels sinking into the damp, manicured grass.

A low murmur of voices drifted from the stone archway near the rose garden.

I found them there. Luca and Elena.

Luca was leaning against the stone wall, a rare, unguarded smile softening the hard lines of his face. He was telling her a joke.

He looked stripped of the formidable Don persona he wore inside, reduced to a simple, lovesick courtier.

He never smiled at me like that anymore.

Elena noticed me first. She rested a hand on his chest, her manicured nails tracing the lapel of his tailored suit.

Luca turned his head. His smile vanished, his expression shuttering as if a lamp had been extinguished from within.

"Well, look what the wind blew in," Elena murmured, her tone thick with a feigned sympathy. "The desperate little fool."

Luca scoffed. He pushed off the wall and took a step toward me.

His towering frame blotted out the moonlight.

"No one of real standing in The Family will have you, Claire?" he mocked, his voice a low, cruel rumble. "So you must follow me into the gardens and beg for scraps?"

I stared up at him.

I remembered the slick warmth of blood I had wiped from his knuckles after he fought in the underground rings to quiet the ghosts in his head.

I remembered the long nights I had stayed awake, humming forgotten lullabies until the nightmares released their grip.

"I sacrificed everything for you," I said, my voice a low tremor that refused to break. "For three years."

Luca let out a harsh, impatient breath. "Explain what?"

"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.

He cut me off. "You are delusional. You think a few shared moments meant a thing? Kissing you was a diversion. You were convenient."

He turned his back on me.

He faced Elena and raised his right hand, the one bearing the sprawling, dark tattoo of the Falcone crest.

"I swear my loyalty to you, Elena," he vowed, his voice ringing with a terrifying sincerity. "Only to you."

He intertwined his fingers with hers.

Standing in the cold night air, I felt the warmth in my veins turn to slush.

I watched his gaze remain fixed on her. He had discarded me as one would a broken tool.

Trapped by Syndicate law that forbade departure before the Don's first official banquet, I was forced to attend.

Hours later, the private Family dinner commenced in the east wing.

The long mahogany table was crowded with Capos and their wives.

I sat at the far end, a knot of hot iron twisting low in my belly.

I clutched my abdomen under the table, a cold sweat breaking out across my skin.

A shadow fell over my plate.

Luca stood beside my chair.

He picked up my silver spoon, dipped it into my bowl of clear broth, and held it to my lips.

I stared at the soup. My vision swam.

I remembered how he had fed me with that same spoon when a fever had laid me low two winters ago.

Lulled by the fleeting ghost of his former tenderness, I opened my mouth and swallowed the broth.

Luca dropped the spoon. It clattered against the porcelain bowl, the sound sharp enough to draw a few curious glances from the table.

He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear.

"That soup was laced with a toxin," he whispered, his tone flat, clinical. "A lesson in knowing one's place."

A cold numbness spread through my limbs, and I realized with sickening clarity—the man I had kept alive for three years had just poisoned me with his own hand.