I was sitting in the dark when my phone buzzed with a live broadcast from five years ago. On the screen, my younger self was about to accept a marriage proposal from Dante Russo. Right next to that broadcast, a new message popped up from my husband. It was a video of him sleeping with his latest mistress, and this time, the woman moaning on our bed was my closest confidante. For four years, Dante had systematically stripped my world away. He framed me, destroyed my independent design studio, and used my father's life-saving dialysis medication to chain me to his side as a prisoner. When my father discovered the truth about my suffering, he made an unbearable sacrifice to set me free. Even then, Dante just sneered and rejected my divorce, warning me not to throw a childish tantrum because he was confident I had nowhere else to go. I looked at my radiant past self on the screen, completely ignorant of the nightmare that awaited her. I couldn't understand how the boy who once swore to protect me with his life had become the monster who dragged me to hell. I didn't cry, and I didn't throw my phone. Instead, I accepted the video call from my past self and showed her the horrific future. "Leave him now, while there is still time." This time, I would make sure we severed the chain and never walked into his trap. Chapter 1 Siena POV A dull, insistent buzzing began in my palm, the metal edge of the telephone digging into the bone of my finger. On its screen, two images now occupy the same space: the first, a new video from my husband and his latest mistress; the second, a live broadcast from five years in the past, where a younger version of myself is about to accept a marriage proposal from that very same man. The device's cold, blue light cuts a sharp rectangle across the gloom of my bedchamber, illuminating nothing but dust motes dancing in the still air. There is no accounting for the phantom broadcast, this tear in the fabric of time that has somehow manifested on my telephone. I only know that the girl on the screen, squinting into the Sicilian sun, is a ghost of myself from a past I no longer recognize. The heat of the island has brought a high colour to her cheeks. She holds up her left hand to the camera, angling it so the light catches the stone, her mouth parted in a smile of profound, unblemished certainty. A blood-oath ring, heavy as a manacle, sits upon her fourth finger-the sigil of the Russo Famiglia. Her words come in a rush, telling the viewers that Dante Russo has just made her his. She describes how he had taken her aside on the balcony, his gaze fixed upon her with an intensity that left no room for air, a stare that devoured all else in its path. She repeats the vow he made as if it were scripture: a promise to shield her from the very syndicate that gave him his power. She speaks his name as if he were a guardian, a bulwark against the tide. I sit in the dark, the muscles at the corners of my mouth pulling into a tight, bloodless line that bears no resemblance to a smile. Dante Russo is no guardian. He is the man who can, with a single signature, halt the delivery of my father's dialysis medication. He is the architect of my isolation, the man who spent four years systematically stripping my world away until it consisted of nothing but these four walls. The telephone gives a sudden, jarring shudder in my hand, the motion causing the live stream to stutter and vanish. In its place, a new message from Dante occupies the screen. My thumb moves with a mechanical steadiness to open the message. The recording is a cacophony of wet, percussive sounds-of flesh striking flesh-punctuated by the thin, breathless cries of a woman I do not know. Dante's face is obscured as he presses it to the woman's, his hands clamped to her waist, pinning her to a bed framed by a gaudy, gilded headboard. For a single, calculated second, he turns his head, his gaze finding the lens. His eyes are flat, devoid of heat, a clear and deliberate acknowledgment that this performance is for me. It is a weekly ritual, this calculated campaign of humiliation. Each video is a fresh chisel, meant to chip away at the bedrock of my composure until nothing remains. I do not shed a single tear. I do not throw the phone across the room. Instead, I close the video. The capacity for feeling such betrayals has long since been cauterized. My thumb finds the icon to restore the live broadcast. The girl on the screen is still smiling, ignorant of the four years of sleepless nights, of the sound of a key in the lock that will soon make her stomach clench with acid. The chat box is a blur of text, a river of congratulations from syndicate men and civilian acquaintances alike, all wishing the future bride a lifetime of felicity. They speak of us as if we were figures from a storybook, the childhood sweethearts destined for a throne. I look at my past self, and when I lift my hand to the keyboard, the muscles in my thumb spasm, striking the wrong key twice before I can steady it. A cold weight settles in my chest as I compose two lines in the public chat. The first line reads: "You and Dante Russo-loving him to the end is nothing but a death sentence." The second line reads: "Leave him now, while there is still time." I press the send key and hold the air in my lungs, watching the warning materialize on her screen amidst the torrent of good wishes.

Siena POV The two lines I posted detonate in the live stream chat. The scroll of congratulations stutters to a halt, instantly choked by a torrent of accusations. Viewers brand me a troll, a creature of twisted envy. They call me a jealous outsider, someone who cannot bear the sight of a dynastic union. They decry my insolence, declaring that no shadow could ever fall between the future Don and his chosen Queen. On the luminous screen, my past self pauses. The radiant smile on her face falters for a fraction of a second. She summons a smile, a careful arrangement of facial muscles that does not reach her eyes. The corners of her mouth lift, but the orbicularis oculi, the muscles that would signal genuine feeling, remain slack-the precise mask required for a woman of her station. She addresses the camera directly, her voice a placid stream, telling the audience to be calm. She insists there is no need to be angered by a random internet troll, instructing everyone to simply ignore the provocation. With that, she ends the live stream with a practiced flick of her finger. The screen goes black. I sit in the suffocating dark, my hollow eyes staring at the reflection of my own emaciated face on the glass. Less than three minutes pass. The telephone, resting on the nightstand, gives a single, violent shudder. The vibration against the polished wood produces a dry, rasping buzz that scrapes against the room's silence. A friend request has appeared on my private social account. The verified username belongs to my past self. She did not ignore me. I accept the request without hesitation. The instant the connection goes through, she initiates a video call. My thumb hovers over the screen, the muscle at its base twitching, before I finally press 'accept'. The screen splits, displaying her face on the top half and mine on the bottom. She is sitting in a sun-drenched hotel room, her posture rigid, her jaw set. She demands to know who I am and how I know Dante Russo's name. She commands me to cease spreading what she calls "vile poison" about her fiancé. Raising her chin, she declares that Dante has sworn to protect her since he was seven years old-that he would rather die than allow any harm to befall her. But before she can finish her sentence, the words snag in her throat. She finally gets a clear look at my face on the lower half of her screen. The blood recedes from her face, leaving the skin under her eyes looking thin and bruised, like old parchment. She stares, her pupils dilating, at my sunken cheeks, the bruised hollows beneath my dead eyes, and the pallor of my skin, which seems to have no blood beneath it. Leaning closer to her phone, her breathing becomes a shallow, ragged affair. In a shocked whisper, she asks who I am-and why I look exactly like her. I open my mouth to speak, ready to tell her the truth. From the ground floor comes a sound that cuts through the call: the heavy, oiled report of the tumblers turning in the main door's lock. The sound stops my words cold. Footsteps strike the marble floor below-a slow, measured cadence that speaks of absolute authority. Dante is home.

Siena POV The girl on the screen-my younger self-is still demanding answers, her voice thinning with panic. I do not say a word. I silently flip my phone camera, changing the view from my face to the dark hallway outside my room. I point the lens down toward the grand entrance of the estate. The heavy mahogany doors swing inward, and Dante Russo walks through. He is not alone; his fingers are clamped around a woman's wrist, dragging her inside with him. They do not stop moving once they cross the threshold. Dante shoves the woman against the marble wall, his hands tangling in her hair. The woman kicks off her heels, wrapping her arms around his neck as they engage in a furious, bruising kiss. On the other side of the video call, I hear my past self gasp. Her face drains of all color. I watch the scene below me, a spectator to the Don's cruelty. Every time Dante takes a new mistress, he makes sure I know. He has played this game for four years, a slow and methodical demolition of my spirit. The noise at the door suddenly stops. Dante turns his head and notices me standing at the top of the stairs in the dark. He does not pull back from the woman. Instead, he walks toward the base of the stairs, his arm wrapped around her waist. He looks up at me, his eyes flat with contempt. His gaze travels over my pale complexion, and he scoffs, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "I already sent you the video," he tells me, "no need to wait up like a stray." I look at the woman leaning against his side. A knot of ice forms in my chest as I realize the mistress Dante chose this time is my closest confidante, Camilla Moretti. Camilla looks up at me and smiles, a slow, deliberate curve of her lips. "You truly are the most generous wife in the world, Siena," she calls up to me. She hooks her finger into Dante's waistband and pulls the Don toward the master bedroom. The bedroom door slams shut. The sounds that follow, muffled but unmistakable, begin to seep into the house's silence. I look back at my phone screen. The girl in the video is crying, her eyes red and swollen. I look at her and speak for the first time. "I am you," I tell her, my voice a hollow rasp. "Five years in the future. And this... this is the life that awaits you." She shakes her head, her voice a ragged whisper as she refuses to believe Dante could become this man. I do not argue with her. I simply forward her the explicit video Dante sent me an hour ago. She watches the video on her end, her face twisting into a mask of incredulity and horror. "Why don't you leave?" she demands. "Why do you stay in this house?" I feel the muscles around my mouth pull into that familiar, bloodless line. I realize how naive I used to be about the mechanics of the Famiglia. I walk back into my room and sit on the edge of the bed, staying awake the entire night. My phone screen stays lit for hours as she sends a barrage of messages, expressing shock over Camilla and questioning my imprisonment. I close my eyes in exhaustion, not replying to a single text. At dawn, I hear the front door open and close as Dante leaves for syndicate business. I walk downstairs to get a glass of water. Camilla steps out of the master bedroom, stretching lazily. She smiles triumphantly when she sees me in the kitchen. "God, Dante was too rough last night," she complains, rubbing her lower back. She raises her hand to fix her hair, displaying the raw, red marks on her neck. She taunts me, her voice sharpened to a fine point. "The Don will never divorce you. The sin you committed is a debt you can never repay." She leans across the counter and asks if I even dare to ask him for a divorce. I look at her, acknowledging internally that Dante will never let me go. I am a prisoner of his Vendetta. I remind myself that my father's failing health is entirely dependent on the underground medical resources controlled by the Don. I give Camilla no response, pouring my water in silence. Finding my silence boring, she rolls her eyes and leaves the estate. My telephone gives a low buzz. It is a new notification. My past self initiates another video call. She looks as though she has not slept either, her eyes completely bloodshot. The moment the call connects, she asks why I did not answer her messages and why I do not just walk away. My silence slowly extinguishes the remaining light in her eyes. She realizes something is terribly wrong. "Do you have nothing left?" her voice cracks as she asks. I nod. I walk to the window and point the camera at a pile of rubble two streets away. I explain that the ruins used to be my independent design studio, something I built from the ground up with legitimate money. I tell her that Dante used his authority to pressure my civilian clients into canceling contracts, then bought the entire building just to raze it to the ground. The girl in the video stammers in horror at the sight of the ruins. She begs to know why Dante became so ruthless and what happened to us. I lower my head, my voice dry. "You don't want to know," I warn her. I recount the winter four years ago when Dante's younger sister, Lucia, plunged to her death from a high-rise balcony. I explain how I was framed, drugged, and orchestrated to be found half-naked in the same bed as Lucia's fiancé, a Made Man. I tell her that Dante walked into that room and decreed that I was a traitor who broke Omertà and drove his own flesh and blood to suicide. I state that from that day on, the boy who swore to protect me died. I tell her Dante destroyed everything I had, chaining me to his side just to drag me to hell with him. I snap back from the bitter memories, looking at the screen. The girl in the video is drowning in despair. "Is there truly no way out for you?" she asks. I remain silent for a long time. I gently shake my head and tell her I have no way out. The heavy silence stretches between us. I look directly into her eyes and emphasize every single word. "But for you," I tell her, "there is still time."