Chapter 2

When my best friend Sloane came looking for me, she looked pale.

"Did you and Julian break up?"

"Why do you ask?" I looked up at her.

She gritted her teeth and simply shoved her phone right in front of my face: "Look for yourself."

Sloane and I used to play online shooters together at a dark web club, and she'd gotten close to one of the guys in Julian's crew.

That guy had a sudden crisis of conscience and sent her screenshots from an internal group chat for the Marchesi family's "made men."

Someone in the group asked Julian:

"Boss, how come we haven't seen you on missions with that wild little kitten from the dark web lately?"

Julian replied coldly:

"Dumped her."

The chat immediately exploded.

"Weren't you guys super hot and heavy? Why the sudden cut-off?"

"I always heard her voice acting all seductive and thought she was a top-tier babe. But in a photo she sent last time, half of a takeout receipt was showing. I tracked the location and had a hacker pull the street cameras."

"Turns out she's a hillbilly with coke-bottle glasses and hair like a steel wool pad. Boys, I almost puked my lunch all over my Cartier watch. Had to dump her."

Someone chimed in to jeer: "Hahaha, she's probably breathy from the air whistling through the metal in her mouth. The sweeter she sounds, the more disgusting she must look!"

"I remember that chick was crazy about you. She did whatever you asked. You think she'd really let you go?"

Julian's reply was casual. "Of course she didn't want to. So I sold her off to whoever bid highest on a burner ID I listed on the black market. She doesn't even know my real last name anyway."

Right after that, he posted a screenshot of the thread where he sold his dark web girlfriend.

His underlings immediately began kissing up to him:

"Holy shit, that's a genius move. You even made money off a girl you were done with."

"Now that ugly chick can never find you. Brilliant. You put up with her for a whole year, and now you're finally free."

"It must have been suffocating to be with that kind of trash for a year. How the hell did you stomach that for a year?"

Julian replied quickly: "Just got a taste for something new. The youngest daughter of one of the family's old-timers just got back. She's a total knockout, so pure and innocent."

As the son of a district Capo, Julian was generous with his money and casually tossed plenty of scraps to his men.

That crew was incredibly eager to flatter him.

Someone immediately asked: "Damn, only the prince of the Marchesi family could land a top-tier girl so fast."

"Only the hottest girls are worthy of climbing into your bed."

"Got any pictures? Let the boys feast their eyes!"

Julian dropped a photo into the chat.

The girl in the picture wore a white satin slip dress with a sheer knit cardigan over it. Her ash-blonde hair was tied in a loose low ponytail resting near her collarbone, and her eyes curved into crescents when she smiled.

She was undeniably beautiful.

I recognized her instantly. It was Gia from the Bianchi family.

Just a few days ago, she had posted a selfie in the underground club's youth chat. The moment that face appeared, all the guys were calling her their dream girl.

Sloane was so furious her knuckles turned white. "Julian dated you for over a year, dumped you just like that, and treated you like secondhand goods to sell on the net. Is that something a human being does?"

"Besides, how does Gia even compare to you now? With her plain look and fake innocent act, all she knows is how to drape a man's suit jacket over her shoulders and play the damsel!"

"Harper, if you post a picture of what you look like now in their group chat, he'll be kicking himself so hard."

I said nothing, merely lowering my head to continue looking at the screen.

Out of the hundreds of people in the group, only one low-level soldier cautiously spoke up for me.

"But that girl from before really cared about you, Boss. I remember during that shootout on the block, she was the one who got the intel, tipped you off, and fed you the strategy. She even got heat for it afterward. Isn't it a bit too cruel to treat her like this?"

A few minutes later, Julian replied dismissively:

"I only care about a pretty face. Is that my fault? The thought of flirting with that brace-faced hillbilly makes me nauseous."

"If she wants someone to blame, she should blame herself for being ugly."