My Husband Chose Her, So I Chose Survival

That night, I dreamed of my last life.I remembered.Every ugly, humiliating piece of it.Because of Isabella, I had screamed at Lucas day after day. I had smashed glasses, overturned tables, and turned the Gambino house into a battlefield.In the end, during one of those fights, I shoved Lucas's mother away from me.She fell backward, struck her head against the marble floor, and never opened her eyes again.Lucas filed for divorce that same week.The moment the papers were signed, the family lost its balance.The capos started choosing sides. Old grudges surfaced. Men who had smiled at our table for years suddenly pulled knives from behind their backs.My father was ambushed outside one of our restaurants and gunned down in his own car.My mother collapsed at his funeral and never woke up.And I died in an alley in Queens on a freezing, rainy night, too weak to even call for help."Dad! Mom!"I shot up in bed, choking for air.Cold sweat ran down my face and soaked through the sheets

For the next week, I stayed locked in my study.Files covered my desk, and the walls were pinned with maps, account sheets, crew lists, and shipping routes.Halfway through the week, my mother pushed the door open."Baby, what on earth are you doing? It's a divorce, sweetheart. You don't have to destroy yourself over it.""Mom, I'm fine."I set my pen down and looked up at her."Can you get Dad in here? There's something I need both of you to hear."Ten minutes later, my parents were sitting across from me at the desk."Sophia," my father said, glancing at the walls, "what exactly have you been planning in here?"I took a breath and put the truth on the table."Dad, Mom. I want you to hand control of the family to Uncle Antonio. Then we leave New York and move to Miami. As soon as possible."My father's face darkened instantly."That's ridiculous. The Gambino name has owned a piece of New York for three generations. We don't just pack a few bags and walk away from it.""I know how this

In the end, Lucas made one last desperate play.He cut a deal with independent crews outside the Five Families.He signed away every asset, every marker owed to him, every last ounce of influence he had left in New York—all in exchange for getting the contract lifted.He walked out alive, a gutted ghost with nothing but the clothes on his back and the two women still clinging to the ruins of his life.They fled west to Chicago, chasing a place where they could disappear.Isabella fought him every mile of the way, her carefully crafted fragile-bird act finally cracking apart on the highway.She screamed that Lucas was an idiot who had thrown away a golden ticket to the Gambino table for a quick piece, that she had never signed up to run beside a dead man walking.The endless paranoia, the bitter cold, and the total collapse of everything she had known finally broke Anna.She had survived a lifetime in the underworld, watched empires rise and fall, but she could not survive being nobody

Liam had spared no expense, turning the sun-dappled lawns of our waterfront estate into something out of a dream, every detail shaped around the life I had always wanted but had never dared to ask for.Ivory rose petals covered the grass, soft string music drifted through the warm Miami breeze, and my father walked beside me with pride shining in his eyes—the kind of pride he had never allowed himself to show back in the old life.I walked toward Liam slowly, deliberately, my bouquet of white gardenias heavy in my hands.When I tossed it over my shoulder, bright laughter and a giddy scramble broke out behind us.As Liam pulled me into his arms for our first kiss as husband and wife, a cold ghost of a memory flickered at the edge of my mind.My first wedding to Lucas had taken place in a cramped, windowless judge's chambers, with no fanfare, no flowers, not even a proper wedding band.When I had begged for something that felt like mine, he had only frowned, sharp and dismissive."A big