All Chapters of The Don's Perfect Forgery: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

Eight elite stylists knelt around my feet, their faces as white as if they were preparing a corpse for burial."Donna, please don't move. Just a little longer. Don personally inspected the last batch of test strands and said they weren't good enough." The head stylist trembled as she begged me. "His orders were absolute. Not even a fraction of an inch of your natural dark brown roots can show before the wedding. Please. We don't want to die."I stared blankly into the full-length mirror. A beautiful, exquisitely made wax figure stared back, with no soul behind her eyes.Seven years ago, I had been America's youngest neurosurgical prodigy. Now Victor Moretti, the Don of New York, kept me caged in a Manhattan penthouse.Victor could not live without me, yet he treated me like a pet stripped of all personal dignity.Three tiny fragments from an explosion seven years ago remained lodged deep in his brain, pressing against nerves near his brainstem. Whenever a storm rolled in, they triggere

Chapter 2

"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

Chapter 3

Seven years of intimacy meant nothing beside Isabella's belongings.The combat knife was already at my throat. Its edge sliced through a lock of hair across my forehead.To keep it away from my carotid artery, I neither screamed nor waited to die. I had no choice but to dodge right.I raised the right hand that had saved countless lives and clamped my palm around the blade.Blood streamed between my fingers and soaked the front of my white dress, but I did not so much as flinch.Seizing the opening, I snatched a shard of glass from the floor and plunged it into the attacker's neck with all my strength.The gunfire beyond the room fell silent. Moretti reinforcements had arrived and quickly eliminated the remaining attackers.Still visibly shaken, Victor emerged from the hidden room clutching Isabella's portrait and belongings to his chest.Dust covered his suit, but he had kept the blonde woman in the painting pristine."Elena..." Victor's voice died as his gaze fell to my right hand.T

Chapter 4

The rebel leader flashed yellow teeth, lust in his eyes, and reached out to tear open my collar.But my left hand, trailing in the sand, closed around a shard of glass from the wreckage.Then, a split second before his filthy hand touched me, the air split.Bang!The rebel leader's head exploded, spraying me with blood and flesh.Before the others could react, a heavy armored vehicle roared from behind a dune, and a massive man close to six and a half feet tall jumped out.Half a cigar hung between his teeth. A vicious knife scar cut across one side of his face, and his eyes were savage.He did not even bother taking cover. Holding a modified machine gun in one hand, he mowed down the remaining rebels in seconds. He was even more ruthless than Victor.Soon, nothing remained but the howl of wind over sand.He exhaled smoke and strode toward me through the carnage.In this lawless stretch of the Middle East, killers were everywhere. To this man, I was nothing but war booty to sell, silen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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