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Chapter 2

Author: 张小小
"She is the only woman I have ever loved." Victor bent over me and roughly stroked the false beauty mark beside my eye, cruelty filling his gaze.

"All you have to do is play her properly, and your position as Donna will remain secure."

"Play her? Victor, you make me sick." Something inside me shattered. I snatched a letter opener from the display case and slashed at the false beauty mark beside my right eye without hesitation.

I would rather be disfigured than live with a dead woman's mark on me.

"Have you lost your mind?" Victor snatched the blade from my hand and backhanded me to the floor.

As he stared at the blood seeping from the corner of my eye, I saw no trace of concern, only the fury of a man whose property had been damaged.

He pulled out his phone and made a call. "Bring your equipment and get to the study. Now!"

Ten minutes later, a terrified tattooist entered carrying a case.

Victor's bodyguards pinned me to a chair, leaving me unable to move.

"Tattoo that beauty mark into her flesh. Make it permanent." Victor towered over me.

"Victor, I'm Elena! I'm a living, breathing person!" I fought them desperately, but the needle pierced the skin beside my eye anyway.

Victor's icy words echoed in my ears. "Not one inch of this body belongs to you. You don't even have the right to damage it."

At that moment, thunder exploded outside.

Victor clutched his head in agony.

Seven years of habit took hold. Instinctively, I reached out to massage the base of his skull and ease the pain.

"Get away from me!" Victor struck my hand aside. "Do you think I keep you here for those pathetic medical skills of yours?"

As he stared at my hand suspended between us, something sick flickered in his eyes.

"Isabella was a gentle painter. She hated the smell of blood and butchers who used knives."

At a wave from him, the bodyguards brought over a metal basin and a stack of papers. On top lay my medical license and a custom-made scalpel.

Seven years ago, that same blade had removed a deadly fragment lodged beside his brainstem in a squalid back-alley clinic.

"Burn this filth. All of it." Victor tossed a lighter at my feet. "As of today, Dr. Elena no longer exists."

"You can't do this..." Trembling all over, I clutched everything to my chest. This was all I had left.

"Burn it." Victor fisted a hand in my blonde hair and leaned close to whisper in my ear like the devil himself. "Or I'll have someone chop off your medical mentor's hands. You know I can do it."

Tears spilled beyond my control. I set fire to it all with my own hands, and the flames consumed the last of my hope piece by piece.

He flung a box containing a diamond ring in front of me, then brutally shoved the ring onto my finger.

"Tomorrow, you will go to your final fitting without complaint and get your hair colour sorted.

"If anything goes wrong at the wedding, I promise you'll learn what real hell feels like."

I touched the permanent beauty mark beside my eye, then looked down at the diamond ring that weighed like a shackle. Nothing remained inside me but ash.

At that moment, the entire building shook violently as an explosion thundered through it.

A sixty-five-foot wall of bulletproof glass exploded inward.

Wind and shards of glass tore through the hall. In the darkness, dozens of heavily armed men in black and wearing skull masks rappelled into the room.

"They're from the Bruno Family! We're under attack!"

A sniper's round blew the captain of the guard's head apart before he could finish the warning.

The alarm shrilled as a barrage of submachine-gun fire shredded the living room's priceless antiques and furniture.

Victor dove out of the way the instant the explosion hit.

"Elena, find cover!" He drew his weapon, returned fire, and dropped four attackers with perfect headshots.

He laid down suppressing fire with one hand, seized my wrist with the other, and tried to drag me to safety.

Then a burst of gunfire tore into the study. The concealed door blew apart, exposing Isabella's portraits and belongings inside.

"Isabella!"

The instant Victor saw the painting surrounded by flames, he lost control completely.

At the same moment, a blood-soaked attacker charged from the smoke with a combat knife, heading straight for me where the blast had knocked me down.

"Victor!" I screamed for help on instinct.

Only three paces separated us. With Victor's aim and reflexes, a single shot could have killed the attacker cleanly.

But in that life-or-death instant, Victor merely flicked a glance at me where I lay.

Like a madman, he turned and charged into the hidden room, shielding Isabella's portrait with his body.

"Isabella!" Victor's gut-wrenching roar echoed through the wreckage.

As I watched him abandon me without hesitation, the last trace of love I had for him vanished.
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  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 10

    One year later, in Manhattan, New York.In a damp basement untouched by sunlight sat a gray-haired man with paralyzed legs.The sharp odor of antiseptic filled the room, the final trace Elena had left him.Victor's legs had been shattered during the civil war, condemning him to a wheelchair for life. The basement walls no longer displayed paintings of a blonde woman. Instead, they were covered with candid photographs he had obsessively collected from international news reports.In them, a woman with neat, short dark brown hair laughed brightly in the sunlight, her white coat covered in dirt, or saved lives in a field hospital with a scalpel in her left hand. In every photograph, the tall mercenary stood just behind her, never a step away, shielding her from every hardship.Victor's hand trembled as he traced the woman's face in the photographs, tears of regret spilling down his cheeks.He had spent his life chasing a false specter, only to bury his own salvation with his own hands. For

  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 9

    A half-collapsed church in Aleppo, in the Middle East.The setting sun washed over its bullet-riddled dome.I stood in a plain white coat, my short hair flying in the wind and a healing scar beside my right eye.Leo wore black combat gear and the supreme commander's insignia on his chest. He held my damaged right hand, the one bearing his rough shell-casing ring.The old priest held his Bible and began the vows. "In the face of war and death, do you..."Helicopter blades thundered overhead. Three armed Moretti Family helicopters forced themselves into a hover above the ruins, while dozens of fully armed Mafia soldiers surrounded the church doors.Victor's face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot.He clutched the fifty-million-dollar diamond ring in one hand and a bloodstained lockbox containing Isabella's severed head in the other.He charged into the church like a madman. "Elena, I killed her! I killed Isabella with my own hands!" Victor's voice echoed through the church. Then he finally

  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 8

    The familiar scent of tobacco pulled me awake.When I opened my eyes, Leo was propped against the headboard, his face still pale. "My chief surgeon, you've been asleep for thirty hours."I pushed myself upright and instinctively touched his forehead. "Normal temperature. No secondary infection in the wound. You still need to rest."Leo reached beneath his pillow, took something out, and placed it in my hand.It was a rough brass ring, handmade from a shell casing.Two sets of coordinates were engraved inside the band: the ruins where we had met and this underground operating room."It's made from the bullet they dug out from behind my sternum, two millimeters from my heart."Leo looked at me with a sincerity I had never seen in his eyes before."I can't give you a fifty-million-dollar diamond ring or an estate in Manhattan. I even owe you three lives."If you ever want to leave, throw this ring in my face. I'll personally see you safely on your way."Unlike Victor, he did not force it

  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 7

    At two in the morning, the earth trembled beneath an artillery barrage.Anti-government forces assaulted our sector for four straight hours.When Leo's men finally dragged him into the bunker, his body blackened by fire, he collapsed onto an iron cot. His back was torn to pieces. Worst of all, a barbed shell fragment was lodged deep between two bones, less than a quarter of an inch from his aorta."Commander, the medical store was just destroyed! Every anesthetic and painkiller is gone!" His second collapsed to his knees in despair."Elena..." Leo raised his bloodstained face. "Don't listen to them... just cut it out."He snatched a half-full bottle of vodka from the table, poured all of it over the wound on his back, and clamped his teeth around the neck of the bottle.Removing a barbed fragment from bone without anesthesia would cause pain no human being should be able to endure.I stepped forward calmly. "Bite down."He trusted me, so I trusted him.The instant I cut into the necrot

  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 6

    The clinic settled into an uneasy calm, but the alarm inside my body never lifted.The scars of seven years of twisted conditioning remained wound tight through every part of me.When the supply crew carried in several cartons of disinfecting wipes with a faint white-floral scent, so similar to Venetian white iris, my stomach cramped violently and I began retching beyond my control.Whenever a helicopter thundered overhead or something heavy crashed nearby, I instinctively covered the back of my head and folded into a corner, sometimes forgetting to breathe.In Manhattan, one sound Victor disliked or one wrong move meant an entire night of suffocating restraint.An iron door slammed against the corridor wall. I stumbled back against the wall and slid to the floor, gasping like a dying fish.Suddenly, an arm swept around my shoulders and pulled me firmly against a body hot enough to burn.Leo did not rage at my loss of control the way Victor would have. Nor did he force me to stand.The

  • The Don's Perfect Forgery   Chapter 5

    Ten minutes later, inside an underground clinic.The stench of decay mingled with the moans of the wounded."A doctor! Hurry, look at this mercenary! He was caught in a close-range blast. His spleen is hemorrhaging, and we can't even get a blood-pressure reading."I drew a deep breath, pulled on gloves, and strode to the operating table. Out of habit, I reached for the scalpel with my right hand.But three of my fingers hung limp and refused to close. The scalpel slipped through them and clattered to the floor.The trauma room went dead silent."The doctor's hand is useless?" The mercenaries by the door erupted. "You have to be kidding! Commander, she can't even hold a scalpel. She'll get Kane killed!"Leo leaned against the doorframe and lit another cigarette. His expression darkened as he watched my right hand tremble.Leo said, "Found her by the roadside..."The humiliation Victor had left me with was exposed, raw and bleeding, before this band of hardened men."Her right hand is us

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