The Cleaning Lady Was Your Wife

I dragged my burned, battered body back from a cartel execution squad, disguising myself as a hired cleaner to enter my own New York penthouse.

Instead of a grieving family, I found my husband, my five-year-old son, and my best friend throwing a party to celebrate my assassination.

"We are celebrating because the bad lady is never coming back," my son chirped.

He had sold the sacred protection medallion I bought him to buy his father's mistress a diamond bracelet.

As I scrubbed the floors in secret, I listened to them laugh.

My husband had been sleeping with my best friend for seven years, secretly draining my elite Syndicate payouts to fund her lavish lifestyle.

My pregnancy was a calculated setup just to breed an heir for them so she wouldn't ruin her body.

They even pulled the fangs out of my loyal dog and sold him to an underground fighting pit because he tried to protect my memory.

I had taken bullets in the dirt and built our entire mafia empire from the shadows.

Why did the people I loved and protected repay my blood with such venomous betrayal?

But my husband made one fatal mistake when he orchestrated that cartel ambush.

He didn't make sure I was actually dead.

When the absolute ruler of the Syndicate arrived to deliver my posthumous honors, I wiped the medical concealer from my jagged scars.

I stepped out of the shadows and demanded a blood tribunal.

Chapter 1

Siena POV

I had survived a cartel execution squad and dragged my burned, battered body across the Mexican border just to get back to my family-only to open the door to my own penthouse and hear my five-year-old son tell my best friend how happy he was that I'd been assassinated.

The heavy, sound-dampened mahogany of my New York penthouse door swung inward without a whisper.

I had expected the suffocating silence of mourning.

I had expected to find my husband-a ruthless Capo of the Syndicate-tearing the city apart to avenge my death.

Instead, the air was thick with the rich, comforting scent of roasted garlic and spicy arrabbiata sauce.

It was a sharp, jarring contrast to the strict, bland diet my husband had always insisted we maintain for his athletic training.

A peal of laughter echoed from the sunken living room.

I stepped deeper into the foyer.

I was wearing a drab gray uniform, my face partially obscured by a low cap and the heavy concealer and medical bandages that the underground Syndicate medics had carefully applied to disguise my identity.

They had been trained in counter-surveillance techniques-reshaping the contours of my face with surgical adhesives, mottling the skin tone to mimic a skin condition, and fitting a thin silicone insert against my inner cheek to alter the shape of my jaw.

The underground Syndicate medics had applied over my real, cartel-inflicted burn scars to hide my identity.

On the custom Italian leather sofa sat Valentina, the woman who was supposed to be my best friend.

Curled up against her chest was Leo, my five-year-old son.

He was giggling, burying his face into the crook of her neck while she stroked his dark hair.

Valentina glanced up, spotting me standing in the shadows of the hallway.

She didn't see Siena, the elite Fixer and the woman who had once saved her life.

She only saw a hired cleaner sent by building management.

She waved a manicured hand at me with utter disdain, pointing to a cardboard box sitting by the entryway console.

"Take that trash out to the incinerator immediately," she ordered.

I looked down at the box.

Resting on top of a pile of my old clothes was my official Syndicate Killed-In-Action report.

It bore the wax seal of the Family.

It was the only proof that I had bled for them, that I had died for them.

And she was throwing it away like yesterday's newspaper.

My throat felt like it was coated in crushed glass from the smoke inhalation I had suffered in Mexico.

I forced a raspy, unrecognizable voice past my lips.

"Are we celebrating a special occasion today?"

Valentina didn't even bother to look in my direction.

But Leo sat up, his bright eyes locking onto my disguised face.

"We are celebrating because the bad lady is never coming back," he chirped.

A surge of acidic bile rushed to my throat, and I had to swallow twice, hard, just to maintain the rhythm of my breath.

My lungs simply stopped working.

Leo smiled, flashing a perfect replica of his father's charming, deceitful grin.

"The woman who stood in the way of Auntie Valentina and Papa being together is gone."

He clapped his small hands together, the sound sharp and final in the quiet room.

"And today is Auntie Valentina's birthday, which makes it the best day ever!"

A bitter, broken smile twisted beneath my fake scars.

My agonizing death in the cartel meat-grinder had been nothing but the grand opening to their twisted new life.

Leo reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet jewelry box.

He handed it to Valentina with a look of profound adoration.

"Happy birthday, Auntie Val."

She gasped dramatically and popped the box open.

Inside rested a blindingly bright diamond tennis bracelet.

A fortune in cold, hard stones.

I stared at the sparkling stones, and the coarse synthetic fabric of my uniform scraped against my forearm, raising a fine layer of gooseflesh.

I knew exactly how a five-year-old boy could afford that.

My eyes darted to Leo's neck.

The solid gold, custom-forged St. Jude medallion was missing.

I had paid a master jeweler in Naples to forge that medallion.

I had it blessed by a priest to protect my son while I was out risking my life in the shadows.

He had sold his mother's sacred protection to buy diamonds for his father's whore.

I kept my head bowed, my hands gripping the cleaning caddy so tightly the plastic handle creaked. The boy I had carried for nine months, the boy I had sung to sleep, the boy whose tiny fingers had once curled around mine-had just celebrated my murder. And I realized, with a coldness that spread from my chest to my fingertips, that the child I had loved was already dead. In his place stood a stranger wearing my son's face, a boy who had been taught to hate me before he could even read.