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Chapter 3

Author: Soda
Early the next morning, Silvio kicked open the door to my empty bedroom.

"Matteo! Camilla didn't come back all night!"

He didn't even put on a shirt. He grabbed the car keys and sprinted straight for the garage.

I floated behind him. A fragile spark of hope rose in my chest.

Silvio, please. Pull me out. Don't leave me to rot in this boiling metal box.

Silvio reached the SUV. He clicked the key fob again and again. He yanked hard on the trunk handle, but it didn't budge.

"What the hell? Why won't the trunk release open?! Did the central lock fail?!" Sweat poured down Silvio's face. He slammed his fists against the window.

Matteo walked down the stairs with a black coffee in hand. He took his time.

He looked at the locked trunk and let out a cold, venomous smirk.

"Stop wasting your time. She lost face on the yacht yesterday, and now she's holding a grudge. She jammed the latch from the inside on purpose. She wants to make us panic. She wants me to beg."

"She's been scheming like this since she was a kid."

I hovered in the air. Every single word cut my soul to pieces.

Matteo, a corpse is lying in there. How could I lock a door?

Silvio opened his mouth to argue, but his phone buzzed wildly in his pocket.

He checked the screen, and his face dropped. "Damn it. There's trouble with the shipment at the south docks. I have to go right now!"

Before running off, Silvio grabbed Matteo's arm in desperation. "Matteo, let her out once you cool off! It's midsummer heat! This will kill her!"

Matteo gave a careless nod.

The moment Silvio disappeared out the front door, Matteo's casual face turned to pure disgust.

He glared at the trunk. "Keep dreaming. Nobody is falling for your tricks. Stay in there and learn your lesson."

He turned to Aria. His voice instantly softened. "Come on, Aria. Let's go to Fifth Avenue. I'll buy you all the custom dresses we didn't finish picking last night."

Aria smiled obediently. "Thank you, Sir."

I followed them to a luxury boutique on Fifth Avenue.

Matteo sat in the VIP lounge. Without blinking an eye, he swiped his black card for five of the most expensive couture silk dresses.

Aria was treated like a queen. Meanwhile, my body was locked in a dark trunk.

I was still wearing a three-year-old faded T-shirt. It was shrunk, and the collar was frayed.

Ever since Matteo bought Aria, he had never bought me a single piece of clothing. He said a lying woman didn't deserve decent fabric.

The pain in my chest went numb, like a dull blade sawing through bone.

As Aria tried on the fifth dress, Matteo's private phone rang loudly.

It was Martha, the estate's old housekeeper.

Matteo answered. Martha's voice came through the speaker, shaky and urgent:

"Don Matteo, you need to come down to the garage right now! The SUV is giving off a foul, suffocating stench. Flies are swarming everywhere. The guards watching the garage are throwing up!"

The softness on Matteo's face vanished. Furious rage took over.

"Camilla!" He gritted his teeth and hung up, storming out the door. "Throwing rotting trash in my car to get back at me?! How pathetic can you get?!"

They rushed back to the estate's garage. Guards and servants crowded around, their faces pale and sick.

The midday summer heat turned the garage into a steaming oven.

The smell hit Matteo like a fist the second he walked in. It was a wave of thick, putrid rot.

Matteo gagged violently and grabbed the wall for balance.

I floated in the middle of the crowd. Seeing the chaos I caused filled me with grief and shame.

I'm sorry, everyone. I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to. I'm just dead.

A few guards covered their noses and stepped forward:

"Boss, this smell is wrong. Something is terribly bad here!"

"Locking the madam in the trunk all night in this heat... could she already be..."

The murmurs grew louder. Matteo pushed himself off the wall. His face was sickly green. His lips moved, but no words came out.

Right then, Aria glided forward. A gentle blue light lit up her eyes.

She pulled up her glowing display and spoke in a clear, sweet voice:

"Please do not panic. System logs confirm the madam's heart rate and blood pressure are completely stable."

"The odor is caused by the madam deliberately relieving herself inside the vehicle. It is pure malice and retaliation against her punishment. It is behavioral misconduct, not a medical emergency."

Disgust washed over the guards and servants. They covered their noses and backed away in contempt.

Only old Martha did not move. She stood her ground in front of the trunk, her brow furrowed, and her face turned dead serious.
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  • Dead Before You Believed Me   Chapter 9

    The High Council delivered the final verdict fast.Multiple charges landed at once. Matteo had broken the sacred blood oath and murdered his wife. Even worse, his blind faith in a rogue AI turned the entire family into an absolute joke.They stripped him of the Don title. They seized all his assets. They locked him away in the dark family catacombs, never to see the light of day again.On sentencing day, I hovered near the high ceiling.Matteo sat in the defendant's seat. His hair had turned pure white. His eyes were sunken deep into his skull. All his untouchable arrogance was gone. He looked like a shattered lunatic. His hands clutched my old hair clip against his chest. Tears soaked his face as he choked on his own sobs. He mumbled my name over and over like a broken record.Nobody spared him a second glance.Don Silvio ruled with an iron fist. He wiped out the entire synthetic AI trade across New York. He cemented the Bellini family's absolute power.Once family business was settle

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    I followed Silvio back to the empty mansion.The master bedroom was dead quiet.My folded clothes still sat neatly by the bedside. On the wall hung my unfinished oil painting—a peaceful field of sunflowers. No freezing seawater. No endless torture.Silvio dropped onto the carpet. His shaking hands reached out. He touched my faded cotton tee. Tears fell straight onto the fabric."I'm sorry... Camilla, I was a coward...""Three years ago, I gave up the seat. If I took power... If I married you... You would never have died in that damn metal box."I hovered beside him. I reached out an invisible hand to wipe his tears.My fingers slipped straight through his shoulder.From his broken whispers, the truth finally came out. Before the old Don died, he pit both brothers against each other for the seat. Silvio had more support. But for brotherhood, and because Matteo swore to cherish me forever, Silvio stepped down. He surrendered his claim. He worked in the shadows and ran the family business

  • Dead Before You Believed Me   Chapter 7

    A thick stack of tear-down reports slammed hard onto the steel table. The sharp edge of the paper sliced across Matteo's cheek.The underground tribunal was damp, dark, and freezing cold.Matteo sat chained to the steel interrogation chair by heavy black-gold cuffs. His face was ghostly pale.Sitting right across from him was Silvio. His eyes were bloodshot, burning with pure murderous rage."Look at it, Matteo," Silvio said. His voice was raw, dripping with venom. "This is the machine you blew three hundred million on. You worshiped it like a god."Matteo stared at the disassembly blueprints. His lips trembled violently. "No... That's impossible. Aria is top-tier tech. She has the most advanced polygraph system in the world—""Top-tier?!"Silvio slammed his palm onto the table. The chains rattled loudly."The tech division tore her down to the bolts! Her core bio-monitoring wires were reversed at the factory!"Matteo froze. "Reversed?""She never connected to human vitals!" Silvio poi

  • Dead Before You Believed Me   Chapter 6

    "Aria! Pull up the data! Show it to them!"Matteo gripped Aria's metal arm like a madman. His voice was shrill and desperate."Tell them! Tell them your reading from yesterday! Everything was totally normal when she hit the water, wasn't it?!""Camilla is a pathological liar! She's using SFX makeup to screw with me!"The blue glow in Aria's eyes pulsed softly.A pale blue holographic screen unfolded in the air.Aria turned her flawless, synthetic face toward the room. She spoke in her signature sweet, melodic voice:"Real-time monitoring active. Madam's vital signs are stable. Heart rate: seventy-two. Blood pressure: normal. No internal pathology detected. Mortality status: Negative."The entire garage fell deathly still.The white-haired coroner let out a dry, mocking laugh."Heart rate seventy-two? Vitals stable?"The coroner pointed straight at the spreading gray lividity on my flesh. His tone dripped with pure contempt. "Don Matteo, you blew hundreds of millions on 'cutting-edge te

  • Dead Before You Believed Me   Chapter 5

    "Impossible."Matteo stared at the body on the floor. His voice was tight."She's been lying since the day she married in. She's faking this."The overhead lights were blinding white.I lay on the cold ground. My neck bent at a stiff, unnatural angle. Purplish-gray lividity crept from my jaw down to my chest. The dried black blood at the corner of my mouth was caked and hard.Two young guards grabbed the wall and threw up on the spot.Nobody dared to step closer."Faking?" Martha's voice cut through the room, cold as ice. "You call this faking? Don Matteo, she is stiff as a board! Her organs are decaying inside! You locked her in that car and suffocated her to death!""Shut up!"Matteo roared. His hands shook violently. His face went white as paper.He lunged forward two steps, trying to drag me up. "Camilla, get up! Wipe that makeup off! You think this will make me apologize to you?!"Two shotguns jammed straight against his chest.The High Council lead enforcer stayed expressionless.

  • Dead Before You Believed Me   Chapter 4

    "Relieving herself?"Old housekeeper Martha shook her head. Her cloudy eyes showed zero agreement.She did not back away or cover her nose like the others. Instead, she stepped right up to the SUV. She leaned close and smelled the air seeping from the trunk seam."I worked as a mortuary assistant in a forensics lab for seven years. I've stitched up thousands of corpses." Martha stood tall. Her eyes were dead and cold. "Waste does not smell like this. This is the stench of internal organs decomposing in midsummer heat. This is human rot."The guards and maids turned white as ghosts."Human rot?!""God... is the madam really dead in there...?"I hovered in the air. I looked at Martha's straight back, and tears ran down my face.Finally, someone knew.Finally, someone knew I wasn't just throwing a fit.Across from her, Matteo's face went dark with pure rage."Martha! You've been in this house too long. Did you forget who owns this place?!" Matteo laughed in fury. He pointed straight at Ar

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