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Chapter 2

Penulis: Shirley
The fire in my veins intensified. My consciousness began to spiral into darkness.

Strength drained from my body. Even the sting of steel cuffs chafing my wrists raw began to feel distant.

Sylvia's voice was sickly sweet, laced with malice. "Look, it's working! Soon everyone will know how vicious this bitch really is!"

The men below whispered and pointed.

"Goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover. An ungrateful snake like her should be fitted for cement shoes and dropped in the ocean!"

"She always acted so quiet, like some kind of saint, but she's twisted inside."

"She should look in the mirror. A piece of trash like her thinks she's worthy of being the Don's wife? Good thing she's not our future Donna, or the Corleone family would be done for."

Rocco's face was impassive. He watched as if I were a piece of trash being tossed into an incinerator.

Everyone was waiting. Waiting for me to break, to confess, to recount every detail of my conspiracy with the Petrovs.

I was semi-conscious, broken words escaping my lips.

"Brother... hold on... get in the car..."

"Don't feel the pain... as long as he lives... take my nerves..."

"Let him go... if you want someone, come for me..."

Louder laughter and mockery erupted from the crowd below.

"Listen to her spouting nonsense. 'Brother'? Does she think playing the family card will make the Capo spare her now?"

"Making up stories to play the victim. Disgusting."

No one took my words seriously. They thought I was faking madness to escape punishment.

My breathing grew ragged, convulsions spreading from my fingertips through my body. The taste of blood filled my throat. The lines on the monitor spiked erratically as a piercing alarm blared.

Just then, the heavy oak doors of the tribunal were thrown open from the outside.

Old Tomasso, my bodyguard of over a decade, stumbled in, covered in blood. His suit jacket was riddled with bullet holes. He clutched his abdomen with one hand, the other holding a still-smoking pistol.

Gunshots echoed from the corridor, the sounds of the guards he had just taken down.

He staggered to the dais, pulled a black USB drive from his pocket, and slammed it on the table.

"You... you want the truth?" he rasped, spitting out flecks of blood. "This is the truth! The evidence Miss Vera nearly died to get! It was her trump card, her only protection, and even now, she refused to use it against you!"

The hall exploded into chaos.

Sylvia's smile froze, then twisted into a smirk. She was certain that whatever was on that drive would be the final nail in my coffin.

Old Tomasso's hand trembled as he shoved the USB drive into the port for the hall's large screen.

Everyone held their breath, waiting to see footage of me plotting with the Petrovs.

But the moment the screen lit up, the hall fell dead silent.

It was unedited footage from the docks. The first shot was clearly from a hidden dashcam, showing the outline of a dashboard. It then cut to footage from the docks' security cameras, painstakingly restored at great expense.

Timestamp: Five years ago, Blackwood Pier, 3:17 AM.

The scene was an abandoned seafood warehouse. The sea breeze carried the stench of salt and low tide. Shipping containers were stacked like a maze.

In the deepest part of the warehouse, a young man in a bespoke suit leaned against a bullet-riddled steel column. Blood gushed from his left calf, staining his suit pants a deep brown.

His slide was jammed, his magazine empty.

He was surrounded by the bodies of his own men as dozens of enemy gunmen closed in. Bullets sparked against the walls around him.

On the dais, Miles's body jolted, the color draining from his face.

That was him.

Every member of the family recognized it. The most humiliating and hopeless deathtrap of his mafia career.

In the footage, an enemy threw a live grenade. The metal canister rolled across the concrete toward Miles.

"Shit! Where's my backup!" his curse echoed through the recording's static.

He had lost his usual composure, able only to clutch his wound and flounder in the blood-slicked water.

At that moment, a black pickup truck smashed through the corrugated iron wall of the warehouse.

The truck's front was smoking as the engine roared, charging in. It fishtailed as it rolled over the grenade, its chassis absorbing the entire blast.

The driver kicked open the warped door and jumped out. It was me, nineteen years old.

I was dressed in black motorcycle leathers. My hair was a mess from the sea wind, but my eyes blazed with determination. I carried a shotgun in one hand, with two Molotov cocktails tucked into my belt.

The security footage cut to other angles.

In the preceding minutes, the oil tanks on the east side of the pier had been set ablaze and three shipping containers detonated, drawing two-thirds of the enemy's firepower away.

All that chaos was my doing, and mine alone.

I was new to the family business, but my aim was unpolished. To save my brother, I didn't care.

"Miles!" I screamed in the video, firing the shotgun twice, sending two approaching gunmen flying.

I rushed to Miles's side, grabbed his collar, and started dragging him toward the truck. He was semi-conscious, his bleeding leg leaving a long red smear on the concrete.

BANG!

The moment I hauled him into the passenger seat, a sniper pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed the car door. I flinched but kept pulling, my teeth clamped down so hard I tasted blood.

"Brother, hold on! Get in the car!" A faint groan escaped Miles's lips.

A glint of metal flashed from a sniper's nest high above. A large-caliber bullet sped straight for Miles's chest. There was no way to dodge.

In the video, without a second's hesitation, I threw myself over Miles, shielding him with my back.

The searing slug tore through my flesh. Pain made my vision go black.

The impact slammed me against the door frame.

I felt the bullet burrow beside my spine as blood gushed from the hole in my leather jacket.

Gritting my teeth, I started the engine, slammed it into gear, and floored it. The pickup crashed through a barricade and vanished from view.

The footage switched.

At the back door of the warehouse, Sylvia emerged from the shadows of a shipping container.

Not a speck of dust on her. Her beige trench coat was clean enough to have just been bought. She glanced back in the direction I had driven, and a flash of malice crossed her face.

Then she turned and walked away along the waterfront.

The screen went black.

The tribunal was silent.

All eyes fell on Miles. His face was ashen, his lips trembling.
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  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 11

    Rocco carried me all the way to the abandoned pier in the south of the city.It was the same place where I had taken a bullet for Miles five years ago.He rented a berth on a dilapidated fishing boat at the end of the pier.No one knew where he was going. And no one dared to ask.The boat sailed into the darkness of the night.From then on, the name Don Rocco Corrini was never heard again in the underworld, only scattered rumors.Some said they saw a disheveled man in a Central American port bar, clutching a small, sealed casket, ready to kill anyone who touched it.Some said that on a small island in the Mediterranean, a mad foreigner sat on a cliff every day, talking to himself, shouting a woman's name to the sea.Others said he was long dead. Died in some nameless alley, still holding that casket.No one knew which was true.Only an old servant who had followed him said on his deathbed, his words slurred, "The Don never let her go. He combed her hair every day, changed her clothes,

  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 10

    A terrified scream was caught in Sylvia's throat.Rocco dragged her like a sack of garbage to the metal cart with the IV stand. The syringe still contained the unused poison.Rocco tore off the needle.The family doctor tried to step forward, but a single look from Miles forced him back against the wall.With one hand, Rocco forced Sylvia's jaw open.Then, he poured the rest of the dark red poison into her mouth.A choked gurgle was the only sound as the toxin burned through Sylvia's nerves, inch by inch.Her body convulsed violently, the whites of her eyes rolled back. Her rosy cheeks hollowed and turned a deathly gray in seconds. Her eyes, which had always been so good at blinking out innocent tears, were now shot through with blood.She collapsed to the floor, her limbs twitching like a crushed insect.Rocco grabbed a letter opener from the dais.It was a silver-handled blade used by generations of Corleone Dons to open letters, its four-inch blade having only ever cut through wax s

  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 9

    Time seemed to freeze.The entire tribunal hall was suffocatingly silent, not even the sound of a breath could be heard.All eyes were on the accused's chair.The last wisp of a smile was frozen on her lips, her head tilted gently to one side.She was dead.At the very moment all the lies had been torn to shreds, at the very moment the truth had come crashing down on everyone's heads, she died.She died in front of the entire family.She died in front of the three men she had loved her whole life."No..."A ragged, inhuman sob tore through the silence.It was Rocco.He stumbled forward.With trembling hands, he ripped open the metal cuffs on my wrists and ankles. They clattered heavily against the marble floor.He gathered my cooling body into a tight embrace."Vera...""Baby, open your eyes, look at me...""I was wrong. I know everything now... I know everything..."He screamed my name like a man possessed.He tried to warm my cooling face with his own. He pressed his lips to my foreh

  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 8

    This last piece of footage was not the cold, static-filled feed from a security camera.It was a video I recorded myself, the camera focused on my face.I recorded it the night before the tribunal, alone in my bedroom.In the video, my face was already pale, without a trace of blood. I was wrapped in a simple cashmere shawl, propped up against the headboard, my right hand still trembling uncontrollably.My voice was soft, slow, as if afraid to disturb something."If you are seeing this video," I smiled faintly at the camera, "then I suppose I am already gone."The entire tribunal hall held its breath.In the video, I looked first toward something off-camera."Rocco." My voice was soft. Rocco jolted."I was twelve the first time I saw you, at my father's party. You were wearing a black suit, standing beside my father, and the corners of your eyes would crinkle when you smiled.""I knew in that moment that I was going to marry you.""Later, you were engaged to me. Then you became the Don

  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 7

    The last of the security footage on the large screen faded to black.The third piece of irrefutable evidence had been played.The vast meeting hall was deathly silent.The brutal truth shattered the men in the room.They all turned to look at the woman strapped to the steel chair, her face pale, her life hanging by a thread.The girl they had accused of being a "traitor," the one they had tortured with the cruelest poison.The disdain in their eyes slowly turned to shock, then to guilt, and finally to a fear they could not name.She wasn't some bitch who conspired with the Petrovs.She was the one who had used her own life, time and again, to carry this family on her back.And today, they had condemned her in this very chair."No... it can't be..."Miles was on his knees, slamming his fist into the marble floor again and again, until his knuckles were raw and bloody.He remembered every cold glance he had given me over the past five years. Every time he had belittled me in front of th

  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 6

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    The last file on the drive began to play. The footage was dated two years ago.Location: A city in South America, controlled by a drug cartel.Caleb was tied to a metal chair, covered in blood, his left eye swollen shut. His suit was in rags, his chest and ribs pockmarked with cigarette burns.The C

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  • After I Was Sentenced to Death by the Three Men I Loved, Their True Punishment Began   Chapter 1

    I was brought before the family tribunal, accused of plotting to murder our future Donna.My beloved, my brother, and my childhood friend, the three men I had protected with my life, were all waiting with the others to see me ruined.But they didn't know. When the poison entered my veins and the tru

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