The Lesson That Killed Me
Ruby · Completed · 6.5k Words
Introduction
Branded a traitor, stripped of my name, I spent three years scrubbing blood from dog kennels at the docks. I lost my hands, my music, and three babies I never got to hold.
Then I learned the truth: there was no hit. My parents and the man I loved staged it all—to teach me a lesson, because my adopted sister Isabella cried that I’d hurt her.
Now Dante is marrying Isabella. And he wants me there on my knees, pouring her champagne.
I said yes.
But I bled out on the concrete the night before.
They think I’m sulking. They smash everything I ever gave them to punish me for not showing up.
And when my body is finally wheeled into their wedding in a black bag, the most dangerous men in Gotham City will learn what they’ve done.
Too late.
Chapter 1
Valentina's POV
The morning of our wedding, Dante Russo led the hit that wiped out my family.
Branded a traitor, stripped of my name, I spent three years scrubbing blood from dog kennels at the docks. I lost my hands, my music, and three babies I never got to hold.
Then I learned the truth: there was no hit. My parents and the man I loved staged it all—to teach me a lesson, because my adopted sister Isabella cried that I'd hurt her.
Now Dante is marrying Isabella. And he wants me there on my knees, pouring her champagne.
I said yes.
But I bled out on the concrete the night before.
They think I'm sulking. They smash everything I ever gave them to punish me for not showing up.
And when my body is finally wheeled into their wedding in a black bag, the most dangerous men in Gotham City will learn what they've done.
Too late.
——
Today, dragging my shattered leg, I finished scrubbing blood off the concrete kennels. As I locked a snarling cane corso back in its steel pen, sneering voices drifted from behind the stacked shipping containers.
"Is this bullshit finally ending today? Wonder if the Mafia Princess is gonna be able to handle the truth when it drops."
"Who gives a shit if she can't? Three years ago, she told the Commission that Miss Isabella was a rat, nearly driving the poor girl to swallow a bottle of pills. She brought this on herself."
"Don Salvatore and Donna Rosa faked the hit. They sat down with Don Dante Russo and staged the whole coup. It was a setup to teach her a lesson she'd never forget."
It felt like a crowbar to the skull.
A sudden, tearing agony ripped through my lower abdomen, and my knees buckled. I collapsed onto the freezing, rain-slicked concrete.
One of Dante's capos stood a few paces away, lighting a cigarette, his nose wrinkled against the stench of dog shit and rot.
"Tomorrow, Don Dante marries Miss Isabella—on her twenty-fifth birthday. She wants the biggest Mafia wedding this city has ever seen at the Russo Estate."
The capo exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Don Dante says if you've truly learned your place, you are to come to the Russo Estate, raise a toast to Isabella, and acknowledge her as his betrothed before all the wedding guests."
"Well, Princess? Do you yield?"
"I yield."
The moment the truth was laid bare, I surrendered completely.
But Dante... I am bleeding out. I'm never going to make it to the estate.
The capo gave a curt, satisfied nod.
"Don Dante had his tailor finish this for you. It's that custom silk you used to look at in the designer catalogs."
"Don Dante expects you to look presentable tomorrow. Don't embarrass Miss Isabella."
With that, he signaled his muscle. They dropped a garment bag on a wooden pallet and walked away without looking back.
The exquisite gown spilled from the unzipped bag. A faint scent of bergamot and expensive cologne wafted from the fabric—a cruel contrast to the stench of wet dog and rusting iron that had seeped into my skin.
My trembling fingers reached out. The moment I grazed the silk, a thread snagged against my jagged fingernail.
I froze, staring blankly at my hands. A bitter, hollow laugh scraped up my throat. Three years of brutal, filthy labor had left my hands scarred, calloused, and ruined. Hands like these no longer deserved to touch custom couture.
As I pulled back, I noticed a heavy piece of cardstock resting beneath the plastic.
The handwriting belonged to Isabella.
I hope you don't mind the wrinkles, Valentina. Dante had this lovely gown bunched up around my waist while he fucked me last night. You can wear it for your little spectacle tomorrow—we both know you're just a prop for the cameras. But bring it back when you're done. The maid needs a new floor rag, and trash like you doesn't get to keep silk. No hard feelings, right?
It was a blatant, mocking provocation.
Yet, as if all the fight had been drained from my veins, I just smiled up into the icy rain.
"I don't mind. Because... I won't have the chance to care anymore."
Beneath me, the puddles of dirty rainwater turned a brilliant, horrifying crimson. The pool of my own blood spread wider across the asphalt.
My exhausted body finally gave out. My cheek struck the freezing concrete. The harsh floodlights of the docks blinded me, and the cold creeping up my spine felt absolute.
My vision blurred. My consciousness frayed into nothingness.
Suddenly, the crushing weight lifted. I drifted upward, hovering in the damp air, looking down at my own broken vessel lying in the dirt.
I was dead.
Just as I had foreseen, this shattered body would never walk into the Russo Estate.
When my father, my mother, and Dante realize I'm a no-show tomorrow, will they just assume I'm throwing another temper tantrum?
I don't know how much time passed before the rumble of a smuggling truck broke the silence.
The dock foreman crouched beside my corpse, his face draining of color as he scrambled for his flashlight.
"Valentina Falcone?!"
He stared in horror at my sunken cheeks, hollowed out by years of starvation, and the bruised, battered skin barely covered by grease-stained coveralls.
He unclasped the silver Falcone crest pendant from my frozen neck and shoved it into his runner's hand.
"Don Dante is prepping for tomorrow's wedding. Take this to him. Tell him Valentina is dead."
Last Chapters
You Might Like 😍
Rejected By My Family, Desired By The Mafia
While the real heiress struggled to survive, the nanny’s daughter, Talia, was raised in luxury as the beloved jewel of the Laurent family, pampered by Camille’s parents, adored by her three brothers, and even promised to the prestigious Matteo Devereux through a childhood engagement arranged by their grandparents.
Then the truth came out.
Six months ago, Camille was finally brought back to the Laurent family. To protect the family reputation and prove their devotion to their bloodline, the Laurent patriarch transferred 35% of his personal shares into Camille’s name overnight, instantly making her one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country.
It brought anxiety to all the Laurent family. But what they don’t know…is that Camille never needed them.
Behind her elegant smile lies a woman filled with secrets powerful enough to shake the whole family. She's a miraculous healer capable of curing the incurable poisons.
Yet despite everything, her family still chooses Talia.
Every accusation against Talia is forgiven. Every scheme against Camille is brushed aside. Even Matteo, the man who was supposed to be Camille’s fiancé—cannot let go of the woman he always believed belonged by his side.
But while the Laurent family underestimates Camille, another man begins to see exactly who she is.
Dante Moretti.
The ruthless heir of an old-money dynasty. A billionaire CEO worshipped by the public…and the merciless king of a criminal empire hidden beneath the city’s glittering surface. When Dante is poisoned by a rival syndicate with a deadly toxin no doctor can cure, he offers a fortune for anyone who can save him.
Only Camille can. Their deal is simple: she becomes his personal physician, and he gives her anything she wants.
THE CHRONO WITCH: BENDING TIME TO SAVE HIM
What she wasn't ready for was finding out Zayn Ponteris had been dead the entire time.
The grief shatters something inside her. And before anyone can stop it, Kayla does something no sorceress should be able to do—she travels back in time.
Suddenly she's fifteen again, standing at their end of year formal, with Zayn alive and right in front of her, completely unaware that in another timeline she watched his parents mourn him.
This time, Kayla is determined to save him. Except nothing goes according to plan.
Zayn has a girlfriend. And the closer Kayla gets to changing his fate, the more she realizes her powers are bigger and more dangerous than she ever imagined.
The supernatural world is closing in. The clock is running out. And the one person standing between Kayla and everything hunting her is the same boy she keeps bending time to protect.
Kayla has no idea what's in store for her.
Because when you bend time, fate bends back.
FROZEN HEART BURNING SOUL
Then the festival comes to her town, and with it comes Ryder Callahan a rough, loud, motorcycle-riding wildfire fighter who looks at her like she is not a monster. Like she is just a girl. A girl he really wants to know.
But Bella is hiding more than her powers. Someone dangerous is coming for her. And the closer she lets Ryder get, the more she puts him in danger.
He says he is not afraid of fire. She says she is not afraid of ice. Maybe together, they can survive the storm that is coming for them both if she does not freeze him out first.
The rejected white luna
The enforcer's redemption
Tyler Rodriguez is the most feared enforcer in professional hockey, six-foot-three of controlled aggression, paid to hurt people and too hollowed by guilt to care about the cost. When a brutal hit sends rival player Danny Martinez to the hospital, Tyler expects hate. What he doesn't expect is Danny's sister.
Sofia Martinez has spent two years rebuilding her life after escaping an abusive marriage, raising her daughter Emma alone, watching every exit, trusting no one who looks like violence. Tyler Rodriguez looks exactly like violence. She knows better than to let him in.
But Tyler keeps showing up. At the hospital. At her school. In the quiet spaces, she thought were hers alone. And for the first time in years, Sofia's threat assessment comes back wrong because the most dangerous thing about Tyler Rodriguez isn't his fists. It's that he listens.
As their forbidden connection deepens, Sofia's ex-husband, Marcus, is watching, and when he files for custody of their daughter, naming Tyler as evidence of Sofia's poor judgment, everything they've carefully built begins to crack.
Tyler must choose between the only language he's ever known and the man he's desperately trying to become. Sofia must decide whether protecting her daughter means keeping her walls up or finally letting the right person through them.
The Enforcer's Redemption is a sizzling, emotionally raw forbidden romance featuring a brooding hockey enforcer haunted by grief, a fiercely independent single mother rebuilding from trauma, and a slow-burn love story set against the backdrop of professional sports, custody battles, and the hardest question of all: can broken people protect each other without breaking again?
Perfect for fans of Elle Kennedy, Devney Perry, and Elsie Silver.
Bride To The Werewolf King
Where The Ice Gives Way
Blake Atlas scents his mate the moment Charlotte arrives. The bond hits hard and unmistakable, but Charlotte doesn’t recognise it. She doesn’t know why her chest keeps pulling toward the one boy she absolutely cannot afford to want. Blake is Charlie’s new hockey captain. Charlie’s chance at making something good. Charlie makes it clear; his sister is off-limits and Blake tries to do the right thing, but secrets don’t stay buried forever. Rogues prowl the edges of town. The ice cracks. The bond tightens. Then Charlotte’s rare white wolf awakens, the very thing that makes her powerful, also makes her a target.
Shanti needs Shakti. (Peace needs strength.)
Where the Ice Gives Way is a slow-burn YA paranormal romance filled with fated mates, protective alpha energy, fierce sibling loyalty, found family pack bonds, hurt/comfort, and quiet, aching tension. It’s a story about first belonging, learning to be cared for, and what happens when the girl who has always held everyone else up finally falls, and someone catches her.
The Softest Chains
Ex-Wife, Current Wife
For three years, she lived in the shadow of a loveless marriage. She was the woman everyone loved to hate, the one who supposedly "stole" him from his first love. She endured his cold indifference, raised their son—who struggles with a speech impediment—in silence, and traded her own brilliant career for the thankless role of a trophy wife.
But when his long-lost love returns, she is unceremoniously pushed aside to make room for the "real" family.
Enough was enough.
After he publicly humiliates her and chooses the mistress’s daughter over his own son during a birthday party, something inside her finally snaps. She doesn't just want out of the marriage; she wants her life back. With a secret talent for design and a newfound resolve, she walks away from the gilded cage of his estate.
But as she rises from the ashes of her failed marriage to reclaim her status as a top-tier designer, he realizes the woman he treated as a disposable pawn was the only one who truly held his world together.
Now, the woman who once begged for his attention is no longer looking back. Will he be able to earn her forgiveness, or is he finally too late?
The MC Hacker’s Stolen Princess
She did not come to find out her father had promised her to another man.
As the only daughter of Shane “Rook” Rourke, president of the Lost Coast Renegades MC, Taryn has always known club business comes first. But when Rook signs a treaty with the dangerous president of Iron Mesa, he crosses a line even she never imagined.
Safe passage through Arizona territory comes with a price.
Her.
Kellan Stroud is thirty, powerful, ruthless, and already waiting at Sturgis to meet the woman he expects to marry.
Taryn wants no part of him, no part of the agreement, and definitely no part of a future chosen for her by two men who think a signature is enough to decide where she belongs.
Then she meets Bobby Fuentes.
At twenty, Bobby is one of the youngest fully patched members of the Sons of Doom MC. He is quiet until he has something to say, dangerous when he needs to be, and smart enough to get into places no one else can. Hacking is what he does best.
Until Taryn gives him a new problem to solve.
One reckless connection at Sturgis becomes something neither of them can ignore, and when Bobby realizes exactly what Rook has promised away, walking away stops being an option.
But stealing another president’s future wife is not a misunderstanding.
It is an insult.
A betrayal.
And in the MC world, it can mean war.
Taryn refuses to be anyone’s property.
Bobby has never been good at following rules.
And Kellan Stroud does not forgive what he believes belongs to him.
The road out of Sturgis may cost them everything first.
Filled, Owned, and Fucked by My Best Friend’s Father
He was supposed to be off-limits. Untouchable. The kind of man you only fantasize about when you’re alone in the dark with your hand between your thighs.
But the night I caught him eating another woman alive by the pool, I couldn’t look away.
And he knew it.
The moment his dark eyes locked on mine through the glass, I became prey. His filthy smirk promised one thing—he saw me touching myself to him, and he wasn’t about to let me forget it.
Now, every time I’m in his house, I can’t breathe without thinking of his mouth between my legs.
I left my cheating boyfriend behind, only to fall into something even more dangerous:
a man who could ruin me, break me, and make me beg for his cock while his own daughter sleeps in the next room.
He’s too old. Too powerful. Too forbidden.
But Gianni doesn’t ask—he takes.
And I don’t want him to stop.
Let Them Kneel
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.
But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.
Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.
When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.
For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.
Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.
But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.
And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.
Especially him.
She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.
Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
