I WAS ALREADY DEAD WHEN THE ROSES ARRIVED My sister Bianca had always loved "joking" with me. When we were little, she joked that no one remembered my birthday—and kept the gag going until I cried, only then producing the birthday cake. On a family camping trip, she had Dad drive off and secretly filmed me chasing the car. Whenever I got angry, she said I just couldn't take a joke. Then, on the day of my proposal, she came up with a "Mafia Queen of the Skies" photoshoot—and I was hoisted on a rusted crane, dangling nearly five meters above the ground. I screamed until my voice broke, begging my fiancé—the mafia Godfather, Lorenzo—to let me down. He didn't save me. He turned his back without a moment's hesitation. "It's only a few minutes. Bianca put a lot of work into planning this 'Mafia Queen of the Skies' shoot. Don't spoil it for everyone." They drove off together to collect the flowers for the proposal, leaving me hanging alone beneath a rope about to snap, with nothing but a promise: "We'll let you down in ten minutes." "She's just putting on an act—she only wants attention," my brother sneered, with no idea that at that very moment I lay sprawled on the ground, blood gushing from me and pooling into a dark stain in the mud. Why did my family's love have to be built on my endless terror? Why did the cold Godfather who had once sworn a blood oath to protect me walk away without a backward glance while I begged for my life? Only when they returned to the estate and saw my shattered, blood-soaked corpse did their lofty, arrogant world finally collapse around them. I watched them fall to their knees, all of them, sobbing and pleading for a forgiveness I would never give. But I could never come back. Chapter 1 I hung nearly five meters in the air beneath a rusted crane cable, screaming desperately for my fiancé to let me down. But Lorenzo Falcone—the most feared mafia Godfather in the entire Syndicate—only turned and walked away with cold indifference, off to collect the roses he had prepared for his proposal surprise. He left me exactly four minutes to watch, with my own eyes, as the cable frayed and snapped. The icy wind whipped at my face and set my long white dress billowing—the dress Bianca had forced me into. Below, the abandoned estate was overrun with weeds, and the cracked concrete ground stretched out like a silent graveyard. I was perched on the broken edge of an old foundation, a slab of weathered cement where a house had once stood. Walls and rubble tumbled down the steep slope behind the estate all the way to the bottom; beyond the slab's edge the hillside plunged away, choked with impenetrable brush that ran down into the black depths of the woods. The crane was parked right at the edge of the concrete platform, and I hung directly above the steepest part of the drop. I gripped the arms of the iron chair until my knuckles went white as bone. I had severe acrophobia. That bottomless terror locked my whole body rigid; I couldn't move. And every member of my family knew it perfectly well—and had turned it into a weapon to torment me, again and again. "Lorenzo, please!" I sobbed, looking down at the man who was about to become my husband. "I can't breathe... Please, tell them to let me down." Lorenzo stopped at the edge of the clearing. In the entire underworld, his name alone made people go pale. Before he was even twenty-five, he had personally ordered the eradication of two rival families, cementing his rule as the supreme Godfather of our mafia. Merely by standing there, he could silence even the most hardened, blood-soaked hitmen and make them bow their heads. Yet in this moment, faced with my tears, there was nothing in his eyes but a flicker of impatience at having his mood spoiled. "It's only a few minutes, Anya," Lorenzo called out, his tone so level it carried not a trace of urgency. "Bianca put a lot of work into planning this 'Mafia Queen of the Skies' shoot. Don't spoil it for everyone." I looked over at Bianca. My own sister stood beside the crane's control console, a venomous smile playing on her lips. In her hands she clutched a huge bundle of helium balloons, pretending to strain against them—mocking me, acting as if the balloons were what held me aloft. "Stop blubbering like a giant baby, Anya," Bianca laughed out loud, her jeering voice echoing across the empty estate. "You always have to make everything about you. The Godfather was kind enough to give you a perfect proposal day, and this is how you throw your little tantrum?" My mother walked to Bianca's side and folded her arms, her face full of severity and disgust. "Your sister is right," my mother snapped. "You are the eldest daughter of a crime boss. Put away that weak, useless display! Stop shaming this family." As for my father—the boss himself, high and mighty—he never even looked at me. He was staring down at the luxury watch on his wrist, wholly indifferent to the panic attack churning through my chest. "Luca, did you get it all on video?" Bianca asked, turning to our brother. Luca held up his phone, the lens fixed squarely on my tear-streaked face. As a formally inducted core member of the Syndicate, he was a killer who never blinked—but his favorite pastime in all the world was recording every instant of my humiliation. "Got it all," Luca snickered under his breath. "The boys back at the warehouse are going to love this." "Please..." I made one last plea. A violent gust of wind slammed into me, the chair lurched, and the sickening swing over the drop churned my stomach; my voice came out thin, almost inaudible. Lorenzo did not look back. He settled into the back seat of his bulletproof SUV, and my family filed into the convoy behind him. They planned to be gone from the estate for fifteen minutes—just long enough to collect the final, most crucial prop for this grand proposal surprise. Before getting into the car, Lorenzo made a point of rolling down his window and calling to the estate's steward at the crane console: "Let her down in ten minutes. Take her behind the flower arch to touch up her makeup. When we get back, we start the proposal immediately." The steward bowed. But before the convoy had even cleared the gates, Bianca leaned out of her window and shouted to him: "Forget her for now! Go switch on the power for the big screen in the front courtyard and hang the fairy lights—the Godfather's grand entrance matters more than anything!" The steward hesitated a beat, then turned and ran toward the front courtyard. I did not know it then, but the last pair of eyes watching over me on that estate had just been deliberately pulled away—minutes before I fell. The engines rumbled low; tires crunched over gravel and tore away into the distance. The deafening mechanical roar, mixed with the howling wind, buried every other sound in that clearing. And then I was utterly alone in the sky. The silence of the abandoned lot was suffocating. The wind shoved at the iron chair again. And directly above my head, a sound cut through the stillness—the kind of sound that turns the blood to ice. Snap. I jerked my head up. The heavy industrial rope holding the chair was fraying apart at a heart-stopping speed. The rough fibers were snapping one after another. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out of my throat. The last thread of fiber parted. The fall lasted only an instant; the raging wind tore the air from my lungs. The snapped cable whipped back with brutal force, hurling the iron chair toward the outer edge of the concrete platform—that slanted slab of cement rushing up to meet me. A dull, heavy thud, mixed with the crack of shattering bone. I struck the edge, bounced half a foot into the air, then tumbled over the rim, chair and all, and crashed down the steep slope into the dense, impenetrable brush. Then—silence. No pain. No fear. Only an endless, boundless cold swallowing everything. I opened my eyes. I was standing at the top of the slope, on the edge of the concrete platform, looking down. A vivid smear of blood scored the concrete edge, trailing down into the darkness below; the brush had been smashed open into a jagged gash. I followed that gash with my eyes—and saw my own body, twisted into a horrible, unnatural posture, wedged in the waist-high thorns at the bottom of the slope. Blood welled steadily from the back of my head, staining the pristine white gown a shocking, ugly crimson. The shattered wreckage of the iron chair lay scattered beside me. From anywhere in the clearing, the bottom of that slope was invisible. I was dead. A strange pulling sensation seized my chest and wrenched me away from the bloody scene. The world blurred and twisted—and in the next instant I was standing inside an upscale flower shop downtown, one owned by the Syndicate. The air smelled of fresh earth and expensive perfume. My family and Lorenzo were gathered around the open trunk of a pure-black SUV. Packed inside were one thousand roses, blood-red and glistening. Lorenzo leaned against the mountain of flowers, his broad shoulders relaxed and at ease. He slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his tailored suit, drew out a velvet ring box, and flicked it open with his thumb. Inside lay an enormous, heirloom diamond ring—the very one I had stared at for a long time in a catalog three months ago. So that one idle murmur of mine—he had remembered it all along. I stepped forward and reached out with a trembling hand to touch that brilliant stone. But my fingers passed straight through the cold setting and the gem, closing on nothing but empty air. I drew my hand back and stared at my translucent skin. A bitter, bottomless despair surged up: I would never wear that ring. "The Godfather really spared no expense for our family's little crybaby," my mother said with a laugh, her face all fawning warmth and doting affection. "Marrying him is the luckiest thing that could ever happen to that girl," my father chimed in, giving Lorenzo an approving slap on the shoulder. Luca sauntered to the middle of the shop and cast his phone screen onto the large smart TV mounted on the flower shop's wall. "Hey, Godfather," Luca called out, "come look at the show I filmed before we left." The screen flared to life. There I was, hanging in midair, my face white as paper, my eyes bulging with sheer terror, tears streaming down my cheeks as I begged them to let me down. The whole room erupted in laughter. Bianca giggled and leaned against her best friend Clara—also a peripheral member of the family, a junior florist. "She's such a drama queen," Bianca jeered. "Look at her shaking. What a pathetic sight!" Clara laughed along, but her guilty eyes flicked away from the screen for half a second. "Leaving her alone up that high—is that really okay?" "What could possibly happen?" my mother cut in with a careless wave of her hand. "It'll do her good. Toughen her up." Lorenzo stared hard at the screen, and the smile on his lips slowly stiffened and died. In the video, my chest heaved violently, my eyes brimming with desperate, cornered horror. A heavy silence settled over him. He turned abruptly, his jaw tightening. He strode toward the flower shop door and pressed his hand against the glass. "I'm driving back to check on her," Lorenzo said, his low voice threaded with a sudden, inexplicable restlessness. Bianca rushed forward and grabbed his arm. "Oh, come on—you can't!" she whined, cajoling him as she pulled him away from the door. "You'll ruin the big dramatic entrance! Lorenzo, that rope is industrial grade. She's perfectly safe!" "She looked terrified," Lorenzo murmured, his gaze drifting back to the screen despite himself. "She's faking," Luca put in, fanning the flames. "You know how Anya is. She lives for attention." Lorenzo's eyes returned to the door handle. He stood there for a long moment. The one chance to save my life had been right there, within reach of his fingertips. In the end, he let go. "All right," Lorenzo sighed softly and stepped back into the room. "We'll finish up here first." Bianca clapped her hands in delight. "We still haven't picked the photo for the estate's big screen! The one they'll play right before you walk in with the roses." She swiped through Luca's phone, throwing one frozen frame after another onto the big screen. Finally, her fingertip stopped on a close-up. It was the shot taken near the end of the video, just before it cut off: me, reaching desperately toward the camera, my face contorted with pain and raw terror, silently screaming for someone—anyone—to save me. "That one," Lorenzo said, gazing at my despairing face, and for once his eyes turned soft. "Use that one." "Why on earth would you use that hideous crying face?" Bianca rolled her eyes. "Because she's reaching for me," Lorenzo murmured, the corner of his mouth lifting into a tender, devoted smile. "She's waiting for me to come over and take her hand."

The old wall clock in the boutique flower shop ticked away, hollow and heavy. Twelve minutes until the proposal. "Lorenzo, you have to rehearse first," Bianca said, planting herself directly in front of him, her tone that of an order. "The Godfather of an underworld family cannot stammer and stumble in front of the whole family." Lorenzo raked a big hand through his black hair, irritation all over him, the tight line of his jaw betraying the anger he was swallowing. He was a man who could decide the fate of thousands with a flick of his wrist—yet again and again he folded, bending his own bottom line to please my family. His crown rested on my father's guns, money, and territory—an old debt that even a Godfather could not simply wave away. "I know what to say," Lorenzo replied, cold and clipped. "Just one run-through," my mother coaxed, patting him on the back. "Let Bianca stand in for Anya. It'll take the edge off your nerves." I stood by the counter, an invisible, untraceable ghost, and watched the grotesque little pageant unfold. Lorenzo exhaled heavily. He took half a step back, squared his broad shoulders, and lowered his gaze to my sister. Then the most ruthless mafia Godfather in the city slowly sank down on one knee, onto the gleaming marble floor. "Anya," Lorenzo began—and he spoke my name while looking straight into my sister's scheming eyes. "You are the only peace I have ever known in this life." He reached into the black velvet box and took out the heirloom diamond ring. It caught the light of the crystal chandelier overhead and threw off a dazzling blaze of brilliance—and it looked obscene. Lorenzo raised his hand, took Bianca's left one, and slid my dream ring, slowly, onto my sister's ring finger. A hollow cold spread through my chest. Even after death, nothing that belonged to me had ever truly been mine. Our entire childhood, Bianca had taken my dresses, my toys, my friends. And now, before I had even had the chance to see my own engagement ring on my own hand, it was already on hers. "Um... isn't this going a little too far?" Clara murmured from the corner. She shifted uneasily, discomfort all over her face. "If Anya finds out Bianca wore her ring first, she might be upset." Bianca turned the ring on her finger, admiring the fractured rainbows it threw. "Oh, shut up, Clara," Bianca snorted without even lifting her eyes. "Anya doesn't care about trivial things like this. She won't mind at all." "Anya has always been gracious and understanding," my mother chimed in immediately, smoothing a wrinkle from her designer coat. "She knows Bianca is only doing her a favor." Lorenzo rose to his feet. He held out his hand for the ring, but my mother was already smoothing things over—"Let her wear it a moment, it's a family piece, she's only doing her sister a favor"—and, as always with my family, he let it go. He walked to the florist's counter and picked up a sheet of thick, fine cardstock and a gold-tipped fountain pen. "I need to write a card for the roses," Lorenzo said, his voice tight. I drifted over and looked past his broad shoulder. His handwriting was sharp and slanted, every stroke aggressive, bristling with the hunger for control. He wrote: Wherever you are, whenever you need me, I will be there. I stared at the line, and the bitter memories drowned me like a rising tide. The year I turned sixteen, Bianca talked the whole family into abandoning me in a remote cabin deep in the woods. I chased their car down the muddy track until I lost my shoes, sobbing until I coughed blood. That night, Lorenzo found me huddled on the freezing porch. He held me while I shook with crying, and he swore a blood oath to me. He promised that whenever I called his name, he would come for me. No matter what. And today, I screamed his name until my lungs nearly tore—and he walked away without so much as a glance over his shoulder. Nine minutes until the proposal. The shop staff loaded the last of the scarlet roses into the SUV. The Syndicate soldier doubling as the driver approached Lorenzo. "Boss, the convoy's ready," the man reported with a respectful dip of his chin. "Will you ride up front and head back to the estate? Get an early start on the surprise?" Lorenzo nodded. He walked out of the flower shop onto the sunlit sidewalk and wrapped his heavy hand around the SUV's door handle. Now! If he left right now, he would find my body before the animals in the woods did. He was finally going to learn the truth. "Wait!" Bianca came running out of the shop, the diamond—my diamond—still glittering on her finger. Lorenzo froze, his hand still gripping the door handle. "The Godfather's entrance has to be grand—the whole family around him, every eye on him," Bianca insisted, seizing the lapel of his coat. "Let's run the vows one more time. You hesitated on the second line just now. A proposal has to be flawless!" My father said nothing at all. He only looked at Lorenzo—slowly, deliberately, the way a creditor looks at a debtor—and that silent look weighed more than any argument. Lorenzo glanced at the SUV, then down the street toward the distant estate. That familiar, instinctive unease surfaced again in the depths of his eyes; a shadow fell across his handsome face. Somewhere beneath his skin, he had sensed something. But he let go of the door handle. "Fine," Lorenzo said, turning his back on the car—and on his own instincts. "One last time." The driver shut the door, took his seat, and pulled the car over to the curb to wait. Lorenzo walked back across the sidewalk to face my sister, his eyes dull and obedient, and sank to one knee before Bianca once more. "Anya," he recited, his low voice thick with counterfeit tenderness. "You are the only peace I have ever known in this life." I stood at the curb, watching the man I loved rehearse eternal vows for the people who tortured me—while only a few miles away, my blood was seeping, drop by drop, into the freezing soil.

Six minutes left. Bianca pulled out her phone and dialed the estate steward. She paced the sidewalk, agitated, the enormous diamond on her finger flashing all the while. "Listen to me," she snapped into the receiver. "When we get there, I want you to play the video Luca shot on the big screen. The one where the Godfather proposes to me." Clara came out of the flower shop and gasped. "Bianca, you can't do that! That's cruel." "It'll be hilarious," Bianca shot back, cupping a hand over the mouthpiece. "Anya's probably up there crying her eyes out right this second. We'll show her the video of Lorenzo proposing to me, and once she's completely broken, then we wheel out the roses. With contrast like that, the surprise will taste even sweeter." Lorenzo heard every word. He rose to his feet, and his expression darkened into something ominous and terrible. The easygoing, accommodating fiancé vanished in an instant; in his place stood the feared Godfather of the Syndicate. He strode over and snatched the phone out of Bianca's hand. "Cancel that order," Lorenzo growled into the phone, his voice carrying a killing chill. "If that video appears on my screen, I will put a bullet in your head myself." He cut the call and shoved the phone hard back into Bianca's arms. Bianca flinched, tears of phony grievance welling up. "Lorenzo, I was only trying to liven things up..." My mother rushed over at once and sheltered Bianca with her body. "Lorenzo, there's no need for such a temper. She's still just a child; it was a harmless joke. You know Anya will forgive her." In all the years I had been with Lorenzo, this was the first time he had ever refused to yield to my mother. "That was not a joke," Lorenzo said coldly, closing in on my mother with crushing, suffocating pressure. "This is my proposal. Today, no one embarrasses my future wife. Do you understand me?" My mother swallowed hard and nodded quickly, utterly cowed. I watched him stand up for me. Watched him finally draw his line in the sand and defend my dignity—this thing I had begged him for, a thousand times, while I was alive. What a beautiful, sweeping gesture. And how utterly, hopelessly useless. The phone in Lorenzo's pocket buzzed. He pulled it out and answered fast. It was the steward, calling back. "Boss, something's wrong!" The man's panicked, breathless voice burst from the speaker. "I'd barely finished with the screen in the front courtyard when I ran straight back to the crane to lower the young lady as promised—but she was gone! There was nothing left in the air but the frayed end of the cable, swinging from the hook. The chair, the girl... everything was gone!" Lorenzo's brow furrowed; confusion flooded his deep-set eyes. "What do you mean, gone? Where is Anya?" "I searched the entire clearing, Boss. Not a soul in sight." Bianca rolled her eyes theatrically and folded her arms. "I knew it," she huffed. "Anya's throwing another fit. She must have cut the rope herself and dragged the chair into the brush to hide it—just to wreck the mood today." "How petty," my father sneered, shaking his head in disgust. "She has no love for this family at all! On the most important day of her life, she carries on like a spoiled brat." "She's deliberately humiliating us in front of the Godfather," my mother agreed, red-faced with fury. "When I find her, I'll lock her in her room for a week to reflect." I was standing right beside her, screaming at her, hysterical. I told her I was dead. I told her I was lying in the weeds, bleeding out my last breath. And she just kept rattling on about my terrible attitude. "Wait," Clara interjected, her voice trembling slightly. "She was hanging nearly five meters up. How could she cut the rope, land safely, and not break her legs? And how could she possibly move that heavy industrial equipment alone?" Everyone froze at once, swallowed by a stunned silence. "She must have found a way," Bianca shrilled, glaring venomously at Clara. "Anya's always been calculating. She's doing this on purpose—getting back at us for leaving her up there." Lorenzo ignored all of them. He opened his messages and typed at furious speed, thumbs hammering the screen. Then he dialed my number. The phone rang and rang, shrill in his ear, until it finally clicked over to voicemail. "Everyone. In the cars. Now." Lorenzo's command brooked no argument. Two minutes left. I drifted weightlessly through the window of Lorenzo's speeding SUV and settled into the passenger seat beside him. He was driving like a madman, slicing violently through gridlocked traffic. In the back seat, my parents and Luca were still chattering. "I can't believe she'd pull a stunt like this," my mother sighed heavily. "The ingratitude of that girl." "Let her throw her tantrum," Luca sneered. "The second she sees that rock on her finger, she'll come crawling right back." Lorenzo's dark eyes were locked on the road, both hands strangling the steering wheel, knuckles bone-white. Every few seconds he threw a restless glance at the phone in the cup holder, waiting desperately for a message that would never arrive. I reached out my weightless fingers and gently traced the hard line of his jaw. I knew, with perfect clarity, that in less than two minutes, the entire world he had built for himself would shatter into billions of pieces that could never be put back together.