Chapter 2

"Are you out of your fucking mind, Alice?!" Mom’s voice shattered the dead silence of the ICU.

She closed the distance to my bed in seconds.

Her eyes were darting with panic, but she forced that familiar, iron-clad authority into her tone, desperate to paint me as the liar. "Lilia was at the compound when you got shot!"

"And not only that," Mom snapped, her breath hitching. "When she heard you got hit, Lilia went into severe cardiac arrest. We almost lost her. Thank God they found a donor heart just in time."

A ragged, dark laugh tore up my throat.

I locked my dead eyes on hers.

"Wow. Hell of a coincidence, isn't it?" I sneered. "The exact second a hitman ruins my heart, Lilia miraculously shoots to the top of the donor list for a perfect match?"

A suffocating silence dropped over the room.

All the blood drained from Mom's face. Her lips parted, trembling, but she couldn't force a single word out.

Looking at their guilt-hollowed faces, a bone-deep exhaustion washed over me. I didn't want to hear another syllable of their bullshit excuses.

"Relax," I whispered, closing my eyes to hide the absolute venom in them. "It was a joke. Go be with Lilia. I'm exhausted."

They froze, then exchanged a look of pure relief before practically fleeing the room.

Only Damian remained. The syndicate's ruthless underboss was still on his knees beside my bed, his dark eyes swimming with agonizing guilt.

"You too," I rasped, "Go check on Lilia. Come back and give me the play-by-play."

Damian’s jaw flexed. He hesitated, but eventually pushed himself off the floor and walked out.

The second the door clicked shut, the room plunged into absolute silence.

Ignoring the white-hot agony in my stitches, I blindly reached under my pillow for my phone.

My mind drifted to the bargain I'd struck with the shadows—the demon collecting the sins of my family as collateral, and in return, my soul when I finally flatlined.

I had demanded proof. The demon delivered two hidden security files.

I watched the first video on a loop: my blood relatives, gathered like a pack of wolves, coldly orchestrating the theft of my heart.

Then, I clicked the second video. I watched Mom draped in surgical scrubs. I watched her crack my sternum open and lift my still-beating heart right out of my chest, just to hand it over to Lilia.

Staring at their triumphant, sickening faces on the screen. I was so fucking glad I hadn't died yet. Bleeding out today would have been way too easy on them.

Over the next few days, I endured the sickening hypocrisy of their "hospital shifts."

They would send one person a day to sit by my bed, only for them to rush off after barely ten minutes.

Desperate for the bathroom, I dragged myself out of bed. Clinging to my IV pole, I made my way down the hall.

As I passed the VIP wing, a burst of warm laughter slipped through a cracked door.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

There they were. My flesh and blood. Hovering around Lilia’s bed like she hung the fucking moon. Damian was perched on the edge of her mattress, blowing on a spoonful of chicken stew before feeding it to her.

Mom hovered nearby, her voice sickeningly sweet—a tone I hadn't heard aimed at me in months. "Take it slow, sweetheart. The broth is rich, and your new heart is still adjusting. You have to be careful."

Lilia pouted, pressing closer to Damian’s side. "I can't help it! Dad made it from scratch. It’s too good to waste."

Then, she rolled her eyes playfully. "Besides, you guys are suffocating me. I can't even sneak a bag of chips with all of you breathing down my neck."

My nails dug into my palms so hard I broke the skin.

While I was left to choke down stale hospital bread without a single drop of hot soup, Lilia had the entire ruling family of the Corsican syndicate playing nursemaid, eating meals my dad cooked himself.

Bile clawed up my throat. I turned to leave, but as I passed the nurse's station, a hushed conversation nailed my feet to the floor.

"Wait, I thought Alice was the biological kid?"

"She is," another nurse whispered back. "But Dr. Corsica is ice-cold. She specifically ordered me to pump Alice full of nutrient IVs around the clock."

"To get her strength up?"

"Hell no. To fatten her up like a blood bank. If Lilia's body starts rejecting the heart, they’re planning to drain Alice for a full-body transfusion."

I stood completely paralyzed. The phantom incision on my chest felt like it was being ripped open with a dull blade. The chill seeped straight into my marrow.

There was a time when a simple scrape on my knee would send Mom into a frantic spiral. She literally became the best cardiothoracic surgeon in New York just to take better care of me.

I was a sick kid. When I was on my deathbed, my parents aged a decade in a single night.

Dad expanded the syndicate's empire purely to build an impenetrable fortress around me. My brother, Luca, dropped millions on elite medical teams just to formulate my post-op recovery plans.

And Damian... I literally begged my family to pull him out of a bloodbath when he was just a foot soldier.

Everyone in the New York underworld knew Alice Corsica was untouchable. I had unknowingly saved Damian, which he remembered for years, pursuing me for three before we got engaged.

On that night, he handed over control of his entire arms-trafficking network to me. As the most spoiled, protected girl in the mafia, I thought I had it all.

Until I turned twenty. Kidnapped by rivals, trafficked to a remote island overseas, I nearly rotted there.

In that absolute abyss, I accidentally bled on an ancient ward, waking a demon trapped within. Bound by ancient laws, he couldn't take a soul by force; he needed a willing host. So, he attached himself to my shadow, waiting.

Five years later, the syndicate finally found me. My family clung to my hands, weeping violently.

Mom, Dad, and Luca sat me down and fed me their sob story: "Alice, don't mind Lilia. She's old Costa's kid. He died in a shootout for the family, and her mom followed soon after. During the five years you were gone, your dad saw her, thought she looked a bit like you, and couldn't bear to leave her. She has a bad heart. Just treat her like a little sister who needs looking after. You are still our only precious girl."

Like a naive fool, I bought it. I genuinely treated Lilia like my own flesh and blood.

But from that moment on, the shift began.

If Lilia so much as gasped and clutched her chest, Mom would whip around and glare at me. "What the hell did you say to upset her, Alice?"

When Dad cooked, he only made Lilia's favorite dishes, things I was allergic to or couldn't stomach.

Luca's million-dollar medical teams pivoted entirely to researching "miracle cures for Lilia's heart."

And Damian... during our fights, he would actually snap at me, "Jesus, Alice, why can't you be more like Lilia? Try being sweet for once instead of such a hardass."

It had been premeditated all along. Now, they were even capable of conspiring to butcher me for my heart, planning to cage me as livestock to bleed dry whenever their precious Lilia needed it!

A violent, suffocating wave of grief crashed over me. My chest ached so deeply it felt entirely hollowed out. I just wanted to get the fuck away from this sickening place.

I moved too fast. My bare foot slipped on the slick tile, and I crashed hard onto the floor.

Riiiiiip.

The sutures across my stomach and chest tore open simultaneously. Hot blood instantly soaked through my hospital gown. Blinding agony forced me to curl into a fetal position as the edges of my vision faded to black.

Pure, pathetic physiological instinct ripped a weak whisper from my lips. "Mom..."

Right before I blacked out, I heard the frantic stampede of footsteps. Through blurred eyes, I saw my family and Damian hauling ass toward me.

Mom reached me first, grabbing my arms to pull me up from the pool of blood.

For one fleeting second, I thought she was holding me out of love. But as her eyes landed on my torn, bleeding wounds, her brow instantly knitted into a tight knot.

She looked down at me, her eyes blazing with undisguised disgust.

"Alice!" she hissed, her voice venomous. "Are you fucking kidding me? You saw us with Lilia, so you rip your own stitches open for attention? You are unbelievable!"