The Lesson That Killed Me

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."