All Chapters of Dead Before You Believed Me: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

"Jump."The night wind in international waters was freezing. Matteo stood on the yacht's deck, looking down at me.The pitch-black ocean churned below us, like an open grave waiting to swallow me whole.I have a severe phobia of water. I nearly drowned as a child, and the terror never left. On top of that, my heart had been aching for days. Staring into the dark, violent waves, my entire body shook."Matteo, please..." I clutched my chest in agony, tears streaming down my face. "I really can't breathe. My heart hurts so bad..."Matteo frowned. His dark eyes held zero warmth.Beside him, Aria's eyes glowed with a faint blue light. A holographic screen popped up in front of her.Aria spoke in her sweetest, most obedient voice:"Report: The madam's body scan is completely normal. Her elevated heart rate is merely a stress reaction from lying. She has no heart condition. She is faking illness to defy your orders."The last trace of hesitation in Matteo's eyes vanished, replaced by pure dis

Early the next morning, Silvio kicked open the door to my empty bedroom."Matteo! Camilla didn't come back all night!"He didn't even put on a shirt. He grabbed the car keys and sprinted straight for the garage.I floated behind him. A fragile spark of hope rose in my chest.Silvio, please. Pull me out. Don't leave me to rot in this boiling metal box.Silvio reached the SUV. He clicked the key fob again and again. He yanked hard on the trunk handle, but it didn't budge."What the hell? Why won't the trunk release open?! Did the central lock fail?!" Sweat poured down Silvio's face. He slammed his fists against the window.Matteo walked down the stairs with a black coffee in hand. He took his time.He looked at the locked trunk and let out a cold, venomous smirk."Stop wasting your time. She lost face on the yacht yesterday, and now she's holding a grudge. She jammed the latch from the inside on purpose. She wants to make us panic. She wants me to beg.""She's been scheming like this sin

"Impossible."Matteo stared at the body on the floor. His voice was tight."She's been lying since the day she married in. She's faking this."The overhead lights were blinding white.I lay on the cold ground. My neck bent at a stiff, unnatural angle. Purplish-gray lividity crept from my jaw down to my chest. The dried black blood at the corner of my mouth was caked and hard.Two young guards grabbed the wall and threw up on the spot.Nobody dared to step closer."Faking?" Martha's voice cut through the room, cold as ice. "You call this faking? Don Matteo, she is stiff as a board! Her organs are decaying inside! You locked her in that car and suffocated her to death!""Shut up!"Matteo roared. His hands shook violently. His face went white as paper.He lunged forward two steps, trying to drag me up. "Camilla, get up! Wipe that makeup off! You think this will make me apologize to you?!"Two shotguns jammed straight against his chest.The High Council lead enforcer stayed expressionless.

A thick stack of tear-down reports slammed hard onto the steel table. The sharp edge of the paper sliced across Matteo's cheek.The underground tribunal was damp, dark, and freezing cold.Matteo sat chained to the steel interrogation chair by heavy black-gold cuffs. His face was ghostly pale.Sitting right across from him was Silvio. His eyes were bloodshot, burning with pure murderous rage."Look at it, Matteo," Silvio said. His voice was raw, dripping with venom. "This is the machine you blew three hundred million on. You worshiped it like a god."Matteo stared at the disassembly blueprints. His lips trembled violently. "No... That's impossible. Aria is top-tier tech. She has the most advanced polygraph system in the world—""Top-tier?!"Silvio slammed his palm onto the table. The chains rattled loudly."The tech division tore her down to the bolts! Her core bio-monitoring wires were reversed at the factory!"Matteo froze. "Reversed?""She never connected to human vitals!" Silvio poi

The High Council delivered the final verdict fast.Multiple charges landed at once. Matteo had broken the sacred blood oath and murdered his wife. Even worse, his blind faith in a rogue AI turned the entire family into an absolute joke.They stripped him of the Don title. They seized all his assets. They locked him away in the dark family catacombs, never to see the light of day again.On sentencing day, I hovered near the high ceiling.Matteo sat in the defendant's seat. His hair had turned pure white. His eyes were sunken deep into his skull. All his untouchable arrogance was gone. He looked like a shattered lunatic. His hands clutched my old hair clip against his chest. Tears soaked his face as he choked on his own sobs. He mumbled my name over and over like a broken record.Nobody spared him a second glance.Don Silvio ruled with an iron fist. He wiped out the entire synthetic AI trade across New York. He cemented the Bellini family's absolute power.Once family business was settle