Reborn Beneath the Soil

Sonny stood in front of the mirror, tugging at the borrowed designer suit again and again.

Copying the Godfather in the movies, he stuffed a nearly wilted rose into his breast pocket and turned to look at me.

“What do you think, Angelina? Is this good enough to go meet Mr. Luca?”

Luca was the second-in-command of the Corleone family in Newford. This time, in their selection of a godson, his approval came first.

I leaned against the doorframe, a slim cigarette between my fingers.

Smoke blurred my face.

The suffocating feeling of being buried alive from my last life still lingered.

I looked at the familiar surroundings and knew with certainty I had been reborn back to this deadly night.

“Have you gone mute? I’m talking to you!”

Sonny strode over impatiently. The blade hidden in his sleeve pressed against my face, sliding slowly downward until it stopped at my carotid artery.

“Keep staring at me like that, and I’ll slash up your face and throw you into the Hudson to feed the fish. You’ve already served your purpose anyway.”

On the couch, my mother, Carmela, lounged in a silk robe, slowly painting her nails a deep red without lifting her head.

“Sonny, easy there. Don’t really ruin her face. She still has to go ‘serve’ Mr. Luca tonight. As long as she keeps him comfortable, that spot will land on you.”

By “serve”, they meant sending me to sleep with Luca, a man in his fifties who reeked of cigarette smoke.

If it worked, they would let me go and return the ID they had withheld from me for ten years.

In my last life, I knew it was a death trap and refused to let Sonny go through with it.

The result was that the three of them buried me alive.

This time, I reached out and gently pushed Sonny’s knife away, then casually straightened his wrinkled collar.

My cold fingertips deliberately brushed against his bobbing Adam’s apple.

“Sonny,” I said lazily, exhaling smoke, “you were born for this.”

Sonny’s eyes lit up.

“But if you want to step into the Corleone family,” I continued, my tone shifting, “selling your sister’s body and wearing borrowed skin isn’t enough. Don Corleone wants wolves that dare to bite, not dogs that only bark.”

“Then what do we do?!” Sonny blurted out.

I smiled, pulled a card from my bag, and slapped it onto the table.

“There’s five hundred thousand on it, which is all of my savings.

“Take it to the black market, buy a real gun, and prepare a ‘gift’ for Luca—one he can’t refuse.”

Lowering my voice, I spoke in the street tone he was used to. “You’ve got to show your determination. Show you’d do anything to enter the family.”

Sonny snatched the card and planted a greasy kiss on my cheek.

“Angelina! I knew you had money stashed away! If you’d taken it out earlier, we’d be done already!”

Carmela blew on her nails and squinted at me. “At least you still have some conscience.”

Vincent grinned, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

“Once Sonny gets close to Mr. Luca and becomes Don Corleone’s godson, our family will finally have backing. That’s my good daughter, doing her part for the family.”

I watched their excitement with a cold heart.

‘Take it. This five hundred thousand is just the advance payment on your coffins.

‘You’re all fools, just like me in my last life, who believed in something called family.’

In my previous life, I finally heard the truth from the hitman who came to silence me while I was suffocating after being buried alive.

All the talk about selecting a godson and finding a scapegoat was bullshit.

Don Corleone had staged all of this for one reason only. To find his biological daughter, whom he had lost twenty years ago, and the proof of her identity had been on me the whole time.

I turned and went back to my room, closing the door.

In the darkness, I pulled out a cold cross pendant from under my clothes.

The iris engraved on it glimmered faintly in the moonlight.

This time, the rules of the game would be set by me.