Chapter 3

Her eyes turned viciously calculated as she grabbed a steaming kettle of boiling water from the lounge's tea station. Lunging forward, she sneered, "Oh, you want a drink? Here, let me help you wash that down." With a sadistic smile, she aimed the scalding water directly at my face, trying to force it down my throat.

Panic flared through my fading consciousness. I knew she was trying to disfigure me.

Using the absolute last of my adrenaline, I reached out and desperately pushed the kettle away. The boiling water splashed everywhere, mostly over my own chest and arms, but Jenna used the momentum to trip backward, intentionally spilling a few drops on her own wrist. She let out a piercing, theatrical shriek.

"My hand! Isabella, how could you!"

The sudden chaos instantly drew everyone's attention. Before Ryan and his friends could fully process what was happening, Jenna lunged back down, grabbing a sharp cocktail fork from the table. As she shoved me violently onto the floor, she aimed straight for my face, slashing the sharp tines across my eye and cheek.

The impact exploded through my skull. The sharp metal sliced deep into my flesh, tearing a jagged line from my brow down to my cheekbone, narrowly missing my eye but leaving a horrific, open wound.

"Ah!" I screamed out, a wave of blinding, white-hot agony radiating from my face down to my toes as blood cascaded down my neck.

"Isabella, have you completely lost your mind?" Ryan shouted, pushing through the crowd. But when he saw my face drenched in thick, pouring blood, his pupils dilated in sudden horror. "Isabella... Oh my god, I need to get you to a hospital!"

He reached for his car keys on the table, his face turning pale.

But Jenna was faster. She cradled her slightly reddened wrist, tears squeezing out of her eyes as she pointed at me.

"Ryan, don't let her trick you! She attacked me first because she was jealous! That blood on her face? It’s just fake movie makeup. Every low-tier actress keeps blood capsules in her purse for attention. She probably popped one and scratched herself with a prop just to frame me because we were sharing the cake!"

Ryan stopped. He stared at my bleeding face, then at the kettle. The brief flash of worry in his eyes vanished, replaced by an icy, terrifying coldness. Every ounce of concern he had for me instantly withered away.

"Don't worry, I'll clean her up," Jenna purred maliciously, her tearful expression melting into a competitor's grin.

She grabbed me by my collar, dragging my limp, choking body out toward the VIP suite’s private outdoor patio, violently throwing me straight into the deep end of the lounge’s luxury swimming pool.

The moment my open facial wounds and fresh burns hit the chlorinated water, it felt like liquid fire dissolving my skin. The pain was so intense I could barely breathe. To make matters worse, I couldn't swim. The heavy water rushed into my nose and lungs, triggering a massive, hyper-accelerated anaphylactic surge in my heart rate.

I thrashed violently inside the water, splashing frantically, genuinely feeling like my life was ending.

"Look at that. She was playing dead a second ago, and now she’s got plenty of energy to splash around," Jenna’s mocking voice echoed from the pool deck above.

Before I could clear my eyes to break the surface, a hand slammed onto the back of my head, brutally shoving my face back under the water.

"Let's sober you up, brat. We wouldn't want you ruining Ryan's big night out here."

Through the rippling, distorted water, I could faintly see Ryan standing on the deck, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes filled with absolute disgust. He looked at me as if my very existence was a stain on his perfect evening.

My heart felt like it was going to explode. Terrified and desperate, I clawed at the slick tiles of the pool edge, trying to scream. But my lungs were filled with water and my throat was swollen shut. All that came out was a thick, metallic taste of blood.

I choked, coughing up a dark cloud of crimson into the water before I could manage a weak, rasping whisper.

"Ryan... my father... he is the head of the Moretti crime syndicate... if you don't stop this... he will destroy you..."

Hearing this, Ryan let out a cruel, mocking laugh that echoed underwater.

"The delusions are finally kicking in, huh? Let me educate you, Isabella. Don Vittorio Moretti is a billionaire mafia kingpin who could erase anyone in this city with a single phone call. I’m the only attorney in my firm who even has clearance to touch his legal files. You just happen to share a last name because you got lucky."

He leaned closer to the water's edge, his smile venomous. "Wake up. If you were actually the daughter of the Don, I’d cut my own head off and let you kick it like a soccer ball."

The entire room of corporate sycophants erupted into cruel laughter at his joke.

Ryan’s face remained twisted in absolute contempt. He crossed his arms, looking down at my drowning form like I was garbage. "Isabella, have some goddamn dignity. If you keep embarrassing me like this, we are finished."

My limbs were growing stiff, the oxygen completely leaving my brain. But as I looked through the glass pool fencing toward the doors of the VIP lounge, I caught sight of a familiar, towering silhouette marching through the hallway, flanked by heavily armed men.

My eyes turned blood-red with tears. I thrashed wildly against the hands holding me down, throwing every ounce of my remaining soul into one final, muffled cry.

"HELP!"

Ryan laughed out loud, looking down at me like a supreme ruler. "Who’s going to save you? Your fake mafia daddy? Or your pathetic little social media followers?"

The crowd laughed so hard tears came to their eyes. Egged on by the arrogance of the night, several of Ryan's friends stepped forward, their hands joining Jenna's to shove my head back down, pinning me deep under the surface.

My entire world went silent.

My blood pressure spiked to a lethal high. My mind went completely blank, and my muscles lost all strength to resist, going entirely limp beneath the water.

Just as my vision began to fade to black, the heavy double glass doors of the patio didn't just open—they exploded inward, splintering into a million pieces.

A roaring, blood-curdling shout echoed across the pool deck, shaking the very foundation of the building:

"YOU ARE ALL DEAD MEN!"