Chapter 3

The plane touched down in Munich.

My mother’s lakeside estate in Bavaria was the heart of the underworld empire she had built with my stepfather.

The moment I stepped through the arrival gate, I saw her waiting for me.

I hadn’t seen her in nearly ten years, but the woman who controlled one of the most powerful criminal empires abroad was still as formidable as ever. She wore a sharply tailored black suit, a Hermès Birkin resting casually at her side, with two suited bodyguards standing behind her.

I forced a smile and quietly hid my injured right hand behind my back.

Before I could say a word, my mother strode toward me and pulled me tightly into her arms.

“My baby,” she whispered. “You’ve gotten so thin.”

Her eyes were red. She turned away and quickly wiped at the corner of one eye.

In that instant, every bit of strength I had been holding together collapsed.

The tears came before I could stop them.

Years ago, after my mother remarried a mafia kingpin overseas, she had begged me again and again to come to Munich and inherit the family business.

For Liam, I had refused her every time.

After all those years, after all those wounds, I had finally come back to the person who loved me most.

Then my mother noticed the hand I was hiding.

She took it gently and turned my palm over.

The wound had started to heal, but it was still ugly and raw. Tiny fragments of glass remained embedded in the torn skin.

My mother went completely still.

She didn’t say anything.

But her hand began to tremble.

It was the first time I had ever seen my mother’s hand shake.

This was a woman known in the mafia world for her iron will. She had never backed down at a negotiation table. She had never blinked with a rival family’s gun pointed at her.

But now, looking at the wound in her daughter’s palm, her hand trembled so badly she could barely hold mine.

“If I had known what you were suffering in Berlin,” she said quietly, “if I had known the Miller family dared to treat you like this, I would have used every force I had and dragged you back myself.”

Her voice was low.

Every word was a blade dipped in ice.

I swallowed the ache in my throat and forced a smile.

“It’s over now. From now on, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay with you.”

My mother took a deep breath, then held my hand and led me outside.

“Every mafia asset your stepfather spent his life building will be yours. From now on, no one will dare to hurt you again.”

She paused, then added coldly, “Liam Miller included.”

My mother didn’t take me home first.

She sent me straight to a private physician.

After the doctor treated the wound on my palm, my mother ordered a full examination.

When the doctor lifted my clothes and revealed the scars across my body, the examination room went so quiet I could hear everyone breathing.

The X-ray showed the six steel pins in my legs.

The bruises and impact marks on my back still hadn’t faded.

On the CT scan of my skull, the fracture looked like an ugly centipede crawling across the image.

My mother stood in front of the screen, staring at it for a long time without moving.

In the end, she asked only one question.

“When did this happen?”

“A month ago.”

She said nothing after that.

She had known I had been hospitalized, but she had never known I had nearly died in that private medical facility.

With her connections, it would have taken only one call for her to uncover the truth.

But I didn’t wait for her to investigate.

Calmly, word by word, I told her everything.

The humiliation at the family dinner.

Being shoved down the stairs.

Liam’s coldness.

His betrayal.

All of it.

My mother didn’t interrupt me once.

She only held my hand from beginning to end and never let go.

When I finished, she pulled me into her arms and held me tightly.

“My daughter,” she said, her voice breaking in her throat. “You suffered so much these past ten years.”

That one simple sentence shattered every bit of restraint I had built over the past decade.

I was already a grown woman, but in my mother’s arms, I cried like a child.

The doctor said my recovery was going well. The steel pins didn’t need to be removed for now. We would wait until the bones had fully healed before making any further decisions.

Only then did my mother finally seem able to breathe again.

That night, back at the sprawling lakeside estate outside Munich, I slept peacefully for the first time since leaving the hospital.

The next morning, when I walked into the living room, I heard my mother on an international call.

Her voice was cold and razor-sharp, carrying the unquestionable authority of a mafia matriarch.

“You still have the nerve to call?”

I stopped in my tracks.

On the other end of the line, Liam’s voice came through clearly, furious and anxious.

My mother’s fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles turned white.