Chapter 1 – Zander’s Story

Zander’s POV

Two and a half years in the future

I heard him cock the gun. So, this is how it ends. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. I knew it would be risky to fall head over heels in love with a mafia princess, but I couldn’t stop. Everything about Isabella called to me: her captivating blue eyes, her soft caramel skin, every dip and curve of her voluptuous body was just the start. Isabella was smart, kind, and funny. The kind of girl you can’t help but fall in love with. I know she felt the same way as I did. We were drawn together like magnets.

Present Day

People say there is one defining moment in your life. I beg to differ. So far, I’ve had several, and many more are yet to come.

When I was five years old, my parents were killed in a horrific car accident. The only saving grace was that they were killed instantly. No suffering. Just a split second of pain, and then their spirits left their bodies. At five years old, I could not comprehend the finality and severity of it. My sister, Amelie, barely eight years old, tried to explain it to me. I was mad at myself for the longest time. Why did they leave? Did I do something wrong? Did they not love me? Amelie would tell me daily how much they cared about us and how much they missed us, just as we missed them.

My sister. Amelie. She was my everything. My protector, my guard, my person. All through foster care, she kept me safe and literally gave me the will to carry on.

As I grew up, I outgrew her, in strength and size, as boys usually do, but she was still the fierce one. She wasn’t afraid to step up to anyone who would make fun of me for being an orphan or that we were poor. I still remember when Patrick Mulhouse transferred to my school. I was nine years old. From the start, he didn’t like me, and the bullying began immediately. It didn’t last long, though. Three weeks later, Amelie gave him a right hook that knocked him out. He didn’t see it coming; in fact, he was flirting with Amelie right before, just like every boy did with her.

Amelie turned heads everywhere she went—big brown, doe eyes, wavy chestnut hair, and perfect features. Unfortunately, when I was 11 years old, our stepfather admired Amelie a little too much. I still remember coming home on Amelie’s fourteenth birthday and seeing her crying as Mr. Hoosier had his hands down Amelie’s pants. I dropped the small trinket I had bought her for her birthday on the floor. The seething anger that had been bubbling under the surface from all the hardships I had endured in my life came out in full force. I grabbed Mr. Hoosier by the back of his collar and rained punches down on him. Amelie begged me to stop and tried to pull me off him, but she was so tiny compared to me.

“Zander, stop. I love you,” Amelie pleaded. Her soft voice pulled me out of my rage, and I stood there covered in blood.

“Is this the first time he did this?” I breathed out.

“Yes,” Amelie said meekly. “We need to go. We have to leave. Grab your stuff and meet me at the back door. Change your shirt and wash your hands.”

We quickly raced to our rooms and grabbed our stuff. Honestly, we each stuffed it into the garbage bags we had been toting around from foster home to foster home. That was our life. No one cared enough even to buy us a suitcase.

We left that day and never went back. Amelie worked at the local diner, and her boss, Betty, gave us the small one-bedroom apartment above the diner for free. Amelie picked up extra shifts to make money and studied her heart out to become valedictorian of her graduating class and receive a full scholarship to Columbia University. I was so proud of her.

We moved to New York City and never looked back.

Amelie was working at a coffee shop and attending Columbia, and I had landed the starting quarterback position at my high school. It was all going so great until that November Day. I was on the field on a routine play when my breath just stopped, my knees went weak, and I clutched my chest due to the pain. Next thing I knew, I was lying in the hospital with tubes in me.  Amelie had said I needed heart surgery, but I knew we couldn’t afford it.

I don’t know if Mom and Dad were looking out for us or if fate just decided to reward nice people, but something happened that would change our lives forever.  In walked Nathan Michaels like a prince on his trusty steed. Amelie and Nathan had a whirlwind romance, and Nathan just happened to be a billionaire.  I had my surgery, and we went from living in a bug-infested apartment to a two-floor penthouse apartment.

What was to come next, though, was even more surprising.