All Chapters of The Real Daughter They Wanted Dead: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

When I forced my eyes open, all I could see was red.Blood clung to my lashes and my throat felt packed with broken glass. I tried to speak, but my chest seized before a sound could come out, and a mouthful of dark blood spilled over my lips.“Yvette!”My mother’s voice cracked on my name. Veronica DeLuca was not a woman who lost control. But when she dropped to the ground and gathered me into her arms—“Baby, look at me.” She brushed the blood from my mouth with trembling fingers. “Stay with me. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”Above us, at the rail of the glass tower, Kane leaned out and looked down like he was already sick of the whole scene.“Mom, don’t fall for this,” he called. “She jumped on purpose to pin it on Sofia. It’s two stories, for Christ’s sake. Nobody dies from a fall like that.”Sofia stood half behind him, pale and watery-eyed at exactly the right moment.“This is all my fault,” she sobbed. “If I hadn’t taken her place, she wouldn’t have gotten so upset. Kane, pleas

Chapter 2

I woke three days later under a dark gold canopy, with antiseptic and medicine thick in the air.My throat was so dry it felt scorched. I tried to lift my hand and discovered even my fingers were weak. My mother was sitting by the bed.In three days she seemed to have aged ten years. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her face hollowed with exhaustion. When she saw my eyes open, she lurched to her feet so quickly she nearly stumbled.“Yvette.” She turned toward the door. “Get the doctor—”“Did Kane deny it?”The second the words left me, pain sliced across my chest, and blood rose hot and metallic into my mouth. A thin line of it slipped from the corner of my lips.Her face crumpled. She snatched up a handkerchief and wiped it away.“Don’t worry about him right now. You’re losing too much blood. Your old lung injury flared up again. Your rhythm still won’t settle. The doctors said from now on it’ll be specialists, machines, and the best drugs money can buy. One wrong shock and—”Footsteps so

Chapter 3

The doctors worked on me for two hours before the numbers on the monitors stopped diving.“She’s critical,” he told my mother. “The fall already damaged her organs. That scene just now triggered another hemorrhage and several dangerous rhythm crashes. We can keep treating her, but at this point it’s maintenance, not recovery. Whether she lasts weeks, months, or less... that won’t be up to us.”My mother sat down like all the bones had gone out of her body.After that she cleared the room and kept watch beside me alone.Outside, the estate remained anything but quiet.Kane was being punished in the lower courtyard. I could hear every crack of the metal rod and every scream that followed. Sofia was kneeling in the rain, begging for mercy on his behalf. My father and Leon were both out there too.“Veronica!” my father roared through the storm. “Are you really going to burn the house down over someone who’s already halfway dead?”“Kane is your son!”I opened my eyes and looked at my mother

Chapter 4

That was the moment my mother stopped holding back.She sealed the entire estate before the blood on my sheets had even dried. Every entrance was taken over by Visconti men. Then she summoned the best cardiac specialist in the city in the middle of the night.He examined what remained of the medication, and his expression darkened.“Someone added enough stimulant to push her system into collapse,” he said. “In her condition, that’s attempted murder. If she survives the night, it will be by sheer luck.”My mother took a gun from one of her guards and headed straight for Sofia’s wing.The whole estate blew apart at once. And in the middle of all that chaos, my bedroom door opened.Kane rolled in, pushed by two men.His legs were still locked in braces. His face was pale from pain, but his eyes looked black and feverish.“Get her up,” he said.The men hesitated.“Sir, she may not survive being moved.”“Not my problem.” He spoke through his teeth. “That bitch framed Sofia and nearly got h

Chapter 5

For a second, nobody moved.The cellar went dead quiet. Sofia was still half turned toward the door, all the color gone from her face.Roland stared at her. “What did you just say?”Leon looked no better. “The steps. The medication. You did that?”Sofia dropped to her knees so fast her palms slapped the concrete.“No. That’s not what happened. Yvette threatened me. She said if I didn’t say what she wanted, she’d tell Veronica I tried to kill her.”My mother crossed the room and hit her hard enough to send her sideways.“You lying little snake.”Kane surged forward in his chair. “Mom, stop. Sofia panicked. She didn’t mean—”My mother backhanded him before he finished.“She poisoned your sister,” Veronica said. “You dragged Yvette down here to finish the job, and you still want to defend her?”Roland finally knelt beside me. One look at the blood on my mouth and the water soaking through my clothes, and his face drained.“Yvette.”He reached for me. My mother shoved him back.“Don’t touc

Chapter 6

By noon the whole city knew the DeLucas were finished.The Commission froze their accounts, stripped Roland of authority, pulled Leon’s succession, and transferred Kane and Sofia to a secure holding site pending sentence. Just like that, a family that had spent years acting untouchable became radioactive.I was no longer at the estate when the news broke.My mother moved me that same night into a Visconti brownstone in Manhattan that had never once been used for business. No meetings. No soldiers. Just locked gates, quiet halls, and staff she trusted.Recovery was slow and ugly, but it was happening.The bleeding eased. The oxygen came off. I could sit up without blacking out. Some days my chest still locked without warning, and my old lung injury made cold air feel like broken glass, but I was no longer waiting to die between one dose and the next.My mother fed me herself whenever she was home.“Another sip,” she said one afternoon, holding out broth.I made a face. “If I drink one m

Chapter 7

Commission holding was all steel, bleach, and concrete.My mother wouldn’t let me into the lower levels, so I watched from the observation room upstairs with a blanket over my knees and a live feed on the wall.Roland looked ten years older.He sat at a bolted metal table in a gray detention shirt, hands cuffed in front of him, every trace of polish gone.My mother walked in and stayed standing.“When Yvette was born,” she said, “who helped take her out of that hospital?”Roland stared at her. “What?”“Sofia’s biological parents came to my house today. They’re gutter trash. They could not have pulled off a switch in a secured hospital without help. So I’ll ask again. Who inside the family made it happen?”He looked genuinely stunned.“Veronica, I swear to God, I don’t know.”“Try harder.”“I was in Boston the week you gave birth,” he said. “Handling the Moretti port deal. You know that. I wasn’t even in the city.”“If you knew and stayed quiet, I’ll bury you. If you didn’t know, start

Chapter 8

The old matriarch’s death rippled through the city, but nobody said much where Alessandro Visconti could hear it.Without Commission cover, the DeLuca name had become something people preferred not to touch.Inside holding, things got worse fast.Kane’s leg never healed. Infection set in, then spread. Three days later he died burning with fever and cursing everyone in reach. When they told me, I felt nothing stronger than surprise.Sofia lasted longer.She screamed for two straight days after learning the old woman was dead. Screamed that she was the real daughter. the only daughter. the one who belonged.Nobody came.By then I was strong enough to walk short distances without help. When I told my mother I wanted to see Sofia before sentence was carried out, she studied me for a moment and nodded.“All right. We go in, we say what we came to say, and we leave.”Sofia looked terrible.Not dramatic terrible. Real terrible. Split mouth. hollow cheeks. hair hanging in dirty knots around he

Chapter 9

Roland and Leon were not executed.My mother wanted something slower.Alessandro stripped them of the DeLuca crest, their accounts, and every piece of territory still tied to their name. What was left of them got shipped south under Commission order to a failing port operation in the gulf marshes, the kind of place where men disappeared by inches rather than bullets.Men like Roland and Leon were not built for that kind of ending.On the morning they were transferred, my mother asked if I wanted to come.“Yes,” I said.The transport lot smelled of diesel and rain.Roland was already there in cuffs. Leon stood beside him, thinner than before, all the future knocked out of his face.The second Roland saw us, he dropped to his knees.“Veronica. Yvette. Please.”My mother did not move.Roland looked at me. “I know sorry means nothing. I know it doesn’t fix any of it. But I was blind. I let the wrong people run my house, and my daughter paid for it.”“You didn’t let the wrong people make de

Chapter 10

Three years later, the last of the DeLucas were gone.Roland died in his second year down south after a fever tore through the marsh camp and left half the dock crew delirious. Leon lasted a little longer. He got into a fight over ration money, took a pipe to the leg, and never really recovered. By winter, the infection had done the rest.When Alessandro’s man brought the news, I was in the courtyard trimming rosemary.My mother sat nearby with coffee and a shawl around her shoulders. She listened, dismissed the messenger, then looked at me.“How do you feel?”I set the shears down.The truth surprised me with how simple it was.“I don’t hate them anymore,” I said. “That would still mean they get space in my life.”A slow smile touched her mouth. “There she is.”It was early fall. The air smelled like leaves and wet stone. My lungs still hated sudden cold, but they no longer ruled every hour of my life. I had limits, bad days, and scars that were not going anywhere. But I also had morn

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