Chapter 1

Three years into their marriage, Luca Bellini took Isabella Moretti's gun and car keys away from her. Again. Her most trusted bodyguard was posted outside the bedroom door, and the heavy iron gates of the Bellini estate were locked tight. Without Luca's permission, she couldn't take a single step outside.

"Last month you snuck into underground bars twice. You ditched your bodyguards on your motorcycle, and then you got caught up in a shootout at the docks." Luca stood in front of her, his disappointment impossible to miss. "Isabella, when are you going to settle down and start acting the way Mrs. Bellini should?"

She glanced at the guns locked in the safe and let out a quiet laugh. "So being Mrs. Bellini means I need my husband's permission just to leave the house? Then how am I any different from a prisoner you keep locked up on your estate?"

Luca's face went cold. "If you didn't keep risking your life, I wouldn't have to rein you in at every turn. You're my wife. As Mrs. Bellini, you represent this family. You're not some ordinary woman who can come and go as she pleases."

"It's always the family, always the rules!" Isabella looked up at him, her eyes red. "I just want to be myself. I don't want to spend my whole life locked in the safe little cage you built for me."

After a long silence, Luca said flatly, "You can be Mrs. Bellini, or someone else can."

Fear took hold of her.

Before he could turn and walk out, Isabella swallowed her pride for the first time in her life. "Okay. Don't leave me. I'll learn to listen."

After that, she gave up racing. She stopped going out alone with a gun, and she stopped talking back to the Bellini elders in public. That lasted until the night of a grand banquet for both families. A woman she had never seen before was wearing the emerald necklace Isabella's late mother had left behind, and she viciously mocked the dead woman in front of everyone.

Isabella couldn't hold herself back anymore. She raised her hand and slapped the woman across the face.

The next second, she heard her father, Antonio Moretti, say the woman's name in a low, heavy voice. "Viola.

"She's my daughter too."

Isabella froze where she stood.

Luca looked at the bright red handprint on Viola's cheek. Then he walked over to Isabella and took the gun off her hip himself.

"I should have kept my wife in line.

"Isabella, apologize to her."

Five years of dating, three years of marriage. She had filed down every sharp edge for him. And what did she get for it? One offhand remark: "I should have kept her in line."

Isabella turned and ran out of the glittering banquet hall.

Ten minutes later, she was ambushed at the street corner.

The instant the first shot cracked through the air, she reached for her hip on instinct. But her fingers found only an empty holster.

When she opened her eyes again, she had been reborn.

Back to the time before she married Luca.

In my last life, I died ten minutes after Luca took my gun.

It was the third year of the marriage alliance between the Moretti and Bellini families. At a joint banquet, Viola walked up to me with a wineglass in her hand. Her eyes landed on the emerald necklace at my throat, the one my mother had left me. Her smile was sickly sweet.

"Sis, it looks so good on you."

She paused for a second. Her tone was casual, but every word that came next was pure ice. "No wonder Dad always says a dead woman's things only go to waste if nobody alive is wearing them."

A glass slammed down on the table with a harsh thud.

That was my mother she was talking about.

For the six months my mother lay dying, my father never once stayed with her through the night. All that time, he was with Rosa Ferri, comforting his illegitimate daughter, who was living elsewhere.

I stood up and slapped Viola across the face as hard as I could.

The whole banquet hall went dead silent. Viola pressed a hand to her cheek, and tears spilled down her face in an instant. My father's face darkened, and he was about to lay into me, but Luca had already reached my side.

Part of me still hoped. I thought he would at least ask what had happened first.

But all he did was grab my wrist and unbuckle the holster at my hip with practiced ease.

"Luca." I stared right at him. "What are you doing?"

"You're too worked up right now."

He handed the gun to one of his men behind him, then slid the car keys out of my hand. His voice was low. "Isabella, that's enough."

The sheer absurdity of it made me furious. "She used my dead mother to humiliate me, and you won't even ask why?"

Luca turned to look at Viola. The handprint stood out bright on her face, and her shoulders wouldn't stop trembling.

"Even if she crossed a line, you could have come to me."

"So?"

"You shouldn't have hit her in front of everyone."

As he spoke, his thumb rubbed the inside of my wrist out of habit. Years ago, when we'd just started dating, I went with him to a warehouse for the first time. Gunshots suddenly rang out outside, and I froze, my fingers stiff with fear. He held me just like this and said softly, "Don't be scared. I've got you."

After that, gunshots never scared me again.

But more and more, what scared me was hearing him say "I've got you."

I couldn't tell you when it started, but those words were always followed by an unspoken demand: So you do what I say.

"Come back when you've learned how to behave."

Luca pulled my coat closed around me, and his voice was almost gentle. "The driver's right outside. I'll have him take you back to the Bellini estate."

I looked at him for a few seconds. Then I turned and walked away. Someone behind me called my name, but I didn't look back. I didn't wait for the driver he'd arranged, either. I walked out of the hotel alone in my heels.

The first shot went off the moment I reached the street corner.

A black SUV came tearing out of nowhere. I reached for my hip on reflex, and my fingers brushed nothing but an empty holster.

The second bullet shattered the glass beside me.

The third tore straight through my shoulder.

I stumbled behind a parked car for cover, my hand slick with warm blood. I could hear someone returning fire in the distance, but I had no weapon. I couldn't do the most basic thing: protect myself.

As I lay dying, I almost wanted to laugh.

Luca always said he took my gun to keep me safe.

In the end, his so-called protection was exactly what got me killed.

When I woke up again, there were no gunshots ringing in my ears. All I heard was my father's impatient voice. "The guest list for the engagement banquet is final. Don't go changing it at the last minute."

I looked up in a daze.

The mirror showed me at 24. There was none of the exhaustion that three years of marriage had worn into my face, and no scabbed-over bullet wound on my shoulder. A gold-embossed engagement invitation lay open on the table. The banquet was only three weeks away.

I had been reborn before the engagement.

My father kept talking. "The Bellini family has already confirmed the seating, and Luca has no objections. All you have to do is show up on time and not—"

My eyes stopped on the guest list.

Rosa Ferri.

Viola Moretti.

Seated at the Moretti family table.

In my last life, I didn't find out until after the engagement that my father had been planning to move them into the Moretti estate all along. I lost it back then. I screamed, I cried, I smashed things, and Luca held me all night and gave me sips of water himself until I calmed down.

He told me, "What your father did won't change anything between the two of us."

After that, every time Viola and I clashed, he gave me the same speech.

She's only your sister.

You already have so much.

Would it kill you to give her a little?

I closed the list.

My father frowned. "What is it this time?"

"Nothing."

I took out my phone and made a call right in front of him.

When my lawyer, Colin Shaw, picked up, I said, "Colin, it's Isabella."

My father's expression changed.

I ignored him and kept my voice even. "I want to revoke Antonio Moretti's authority to manage my shares, property, and trust. Start the process today."

For a moment, the room went dead silent.

"Isabella!" My father shot to his feet.

I kept talking into the phone. "Also, retrieve my mother's European residency and citizenship papers. I want this done as soon as possible."

I hung up, and my father slammed his hand down on the table. "Have you lost your mind?!"

"I'm just taking back what was always mine."

"When have I ever touched any of your assets?"

I flipped the list back open and pushed the page with Viola's name on it in front of him. "Then who's this?"

The color drained from my father's face.

"Rosa has been your mistress for over 20 years, and Viola is your illegitimate daughter." I looked at him. "Want me to keep going?"

The shock in my father's eyes slowly turned into wariness. "Where did you hear that?"

"Does it matter?"

He was quiet for a moment, then gave me the same old line. "She's your sister too."

Of course.

Word for word, just like my last life.

Not one word of apology to me. Not one word of explanation for betraying my mother. The first thing out of his mouth was a reminder. She's your sister too.

I leaned back in my chair. I didn't even have the energy to fight anymore.

"Fine.

"If you all think she's such a sweet, good girl and she fits in here so well, then go ahead and keep her."

My father was clearly thrown.

He'd expected me to smash a glass. He'd expected me to go confront Rosa, or to call Luca in tears.

The one thing he hadn't seen coming was this calm.

He stared at me for a long time, then warned me in a low voice, "Don't mess with the engagement just because you're mad."

"I won't."

I looked down at the asset list Colin had just sent over.

"Not anymore. Not ever again."

After my father left, I dug my passport out of the very back of a drawer and slid it into a folder along with the asset papers.

Ten minutes later, Colin texted me.

Among the property my mother had left me was a seaside safe house registered in my name alone.

But Rosa and Viola were living there now, of all people.

I stared at the words on the screen and picked up my car keys.

In this life, I wasn't going to sit around waiting for someone else to hand me what they called justice.