Teaming Up With His Past Self to Destroy the Mafia Don

At Nico's funeral, the screen of the phone in my hand suddenly lit up, and I accidentally answered a FaceTime call from the Dario Falcone of three years ago.

On the screen, he was still wearing that faded leather jacket, the scar above his brow left from protecting me.

He was still a penniless bodyguard, clutching my ultrasound report with barely contained excitement, his eyes shining:

"Vittoria, isn't our baby adorable?"

"Do you think it's a strong little boy or a beautiful little girl?"

"No matter who he takes after, I'll protect him with my life."

I knelt on the cold floor, staring silently at him.

The Dario from three years ago sensed that something was wrong. The smile slowly froze on his face.

The next second, the heavy church doors were kicked open.

The priest's prayer came to an abrupt stop.

The Dario of three years later, the terrifying Mafia Don, strode inside.

His tailored suit was immaculate, while the bodyguards behind him roughly knocked over the wreaths lining the aisle.

He stopped in front of me, his voice cold and utterly emotionless.

"Vittoria, you actually staged a fake funeral for your own son just to get revenge on Colette. You really are sick."

I didn't look up or acknowledge his fury. I simply stared at the bodyguard on the screen from three years ago, the one who looked utterly bewildered.

Then, numb, I turned the phone around and pointed it at the tiny white coffin in the center of the hall.

Looking at the screen, I answered the man's question from three years ago.

"A boy. He was adorable, and he had eyes just like yours."

"But he's already dead."

On the screen, Dario's face from three years ago turned deathly pale as he stared at the coffin.

"No… That's impossible. It can't be."

The Dario of three years later finally lost his patience when he saw me continuing to ignore him for a broken old phone.

He strode forward and snatched it from my hand.

"Vittoria! You've been spreading news of Nico's death everywhere, yet you haven't shed a single tear. Who exactly are you putting on this act for?"

He hadn't finished speaking when his eyes landed on the screen.

Seeing his younger self in the cheap leather jacket, his eyes bloodshot, Dario suddenly froze.

After a brief silence, he let out an utterly contemptuous laugh.

"An AI deepfake? Vittoria, you actually paid hackers to make some ridiculous face-swap video just to make me feel guilty?"

On the other end of the screen, the younger Dario was furious and had just opened his mouth when the video abruptly cut off.

With a sharp crack, Dario snatched the phone away and smashed it against the wall.

The screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracks before the phone bounced heavily onto the floor.

He looked down at me as though I were some incomprehensible lunatic, his voice utterly flat.

"Enough with this sick act, Vittoria. Colette is practically being driven insane by your lies. Now get back to the estate and apologize."

I lowered my head and let out a hoarse laugh.

Colette Perrin—the impoverished college student I had once supported. She had shamelessly slept with my husband and poisoned my son.

Yet in the end, my husband wouldn't even go near that coffin to look at his own child.

Instead, he was forcing me to apologize to the murderer.

When I showed no reaction, Dario lost patience.

He waved a hand, and two of his men immediately came forward and dragged me away.

The moment the bodyguards grabbed me, I wrenched myself free, lunged to the floor, snatched up the shattered phone, and stuffed it into my pocket.

The next moment, I was roughly shoved into the back seat of a Cadillac.

The thirty-minute drive was deathly silent, the car filled with Dario's cigar smoke.

I said nothing, keeping one hand clenched tightly around the wreckage in my pocket, letting shards of glass bite into my palm.

The car stopped.

The door was yanked open.

I was dragged out and hauled inside before being thrown hard onto the floor of the estate's living room.

Before I could even get up, Colette approached.

She was wearing a silk robe and holding a dark glass dropper bottle.

She crouched in front of me, her voice dripping with false sympathy.

"Vittoria, the psychiatric hospital must have been awful. I had this nerve sedative specially prepared for you. It should help with your condition."

Then she looked past my shoulder toward the men in black outside the door and somehow managed to squeeze out two perfect tears.

"What about Nico? His homeopathic treatment can't stop. Those specially compounded heavy-metal chelators are crucial to his neurological recovery. Vittoria, how could you joke around with a child's treatment?"

She actually dared to say Nico's name.

Whatever sanity I had left shattered instantly.

I lunged forward, snatched the dropper bottle from her hand, and smashed it against the floor.

What kind of "treatment" was that?

Under the guise of alternative medicine, she had been forcing terrifying chemical mixtures down my three-year-old son's throat every day.

He couldn't even say a complete "Mama" yet before those so-called medicines destroyed his liver, and he died in agony, coughing up blood.

The pungent liquid splashed across Colette's lower legs along with shards of glass.

She screamed and stumbled backward.

Dario's expression turned frighteningly dark.

Without even using his hands, he stepped forward and kicked me hard in the ribs with his shoe.

A dull thud sounded as all the air was knocked from my lungs.

I crashed to the floor, both palms landing directly in the pool of medicine and broken glass.

The shards pierced through my flesh, but compared with the dead silence inside my chest, the pain meant nothing.

Dario didn't even look at me. He was too busy checking Colette's leg.

I stared at the back of the man who had once sworn he would "protect our child with his life" and forced a hoarse whisper from my throat.

"Dario… her medicine killed Nico."

His arms around Colette paused.

But he didn't even turn around.

He merely tilted his face slightly and delivered a sentence devoid of warmth.

"The doctors told us Nico was born with defects. Even if he died, it was because he was too weak. He never deserved to live under the Falcone name."

Disgust filled his eyes.

"Stop with your persecutory delusions. And stop tormenting Colette with your fabricated lies."

An overwhelming sense of suffocation pinned me in place.

Dario couldn't be bothered to waste another second. He carried his woman away, leaving the wreckage behind.

The empty room was left with nothing but me, slumped in a pool of blood and broken glass.

I lowered my head and let out a hoarse, hollow laugh.

I had actually expected a Mafia tyrant who killed without blinking to investigate the cause of my child's death.

Just then, the shattered old phone in my coat pocket vibrated faintly again.

With trembling, bloodstained fingers, I touched the answer button.

On the screen, Dario from three years ago stared at my blood-covered hands.

His eyes instantly reddened, his voice trembling.

"Vittoria… What happened? Why did things turn out like this?"