Chapter 1

A sharp thud came through the phone.

Sofia had tossed it onto the table, believing the call had ended.

She had forgotten to hang up.

I heard her laugh.

“How many minutes do you think she’ll last before she calls for help?”

Dad answered first. “Three. She’s been afraid of thunderstorms since she was a child.”

“I say two,” Sofia said eagerly. “The last time I locked her in the wine cellar, she called Dante in less than a minute.”

Mom offered a token warning. “Don’t take it too far. The engagement gala is in two days. Five minutes at most, or she’ll come home sulking again.”

“Relax. She’ll call Dante first.”

Then Sofia turned to him.

“Dante, when she begs you to come get her, you’ll go, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then make her wait five minutes.” She drew out the words in a coaxing whine. “You always rescue her so quickly that I never get to see her truly scared. Wait until she’s crying and begging before you go. Please?”

Silence filled the other end of the line.

Two seconds passed.

Then Dante said, “All right.”

Laughter erupted around the table.

They weren’t worried about whether I would make it home safely.

They were taking bets on how long it would take for fear to break me and send me crying to Dante.

The storms and darkness that had terrified me for years were nothing more than dinner entertainment to them.

I ended the call, cutting off their laughter.

Half an hour earlier, Sofia had posted an address in our family group chat. She claimed our parents had moved into a new house and told me to come over for dinner after work.

I followed the directions and found an abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere.

“Surprise! They didn’t move at all. It’s not my fault you’re so easy to fool.”

Then she had tossed the phone aside, waiting for me to do what I always did—call Dante and beg him to rescue me.

Once, Dante would never have agreed to this.

When Sofia secretly filmed one of my panic attacks and posted the video to humiliate me, he ordered his men to take down every copy and stayed beside me all night.

He told me that if the person being targeted wasn’t laughing, it wasn’t a joke.

But eventually, he stopped standing up to Sofia. He simply used his men to clean up the damage after every prank.

Tonight, he had finally become part of the game.

Sofia and I were twins.

When we were five, she was diagnosed with leukemia. On the day she finished treatment, our parents swore they would never let her suffer again.

From then on, Sofia’s happiness always mattered more than my pain.

When she was afraid to return to school, I gave up summer camp to stay with her. When she recovered and began playing cruel pranks on me, I told myself she was only trying to reclaim the childhood her illness had stolen.

Whenever I objected, my parents gave me the same answer.

“She almost died. She only wants to have a little fun. Why can’t you let her have this?”

No matter how often my parents chose Sofia, I believed Dante would always stand beside me.

Dante Moretti was not only my fiancé. He was the Don of the Moretti Family, a man who had once sworn that no one would ever hurt me again.

Tonight, I had heard him agree to leave me stranded in the storm for five more minutes, simply because my terror entertained Sofia.

That was when I knew it was time to leave.

I opened the email from Milan.

The offer of a ten-year transfer had been sitting in my inbox for seven days.

If I didn’t respond before midnight, the position would go to the next candidate. If I accepted, I would fly to Milan in two days to oversee the Group’s European mergers and acquisitions.

The flight left on the same day as my engagement gala.

Until tonight, I hadn’t been able to accept.

I couldn’t bear to leave my parents. I still worried about Sofia. And I didn’t want to walk away from Dante.

But now I finally understood.

They didn’t need me.

They needed a sister and a fiancée who never got angry, never said no, and never left—no matter how badly they treated her.

I clicked Accept.

A reply arrived one minute later.

Welcome to Milan headquarters. Please report for duty in two days.

Half an hour later, my phone rang.

Dante was finally calling.

I declined the call and slipped the phone back into my bag.