By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

For two years, I endured agonizing chemo for my leukemia, believing my struggling family was sacrificing everything to save me.

But right before my surgery, I overheard my brother and mother whispering outside the door.

I didn't have cancer.

My family, who were actually billionaires in the Syndicate, had been secretly poisoning me.

They needed me weak and dying so my betrothal to the supreme Don could be transferred to their newly found biological daughter.

"Once the betrothal is transferred, I will find the best specialists to cure Clara," my brother said coldly.

But they didn't know I had already made my choice.

Thinking my treatments were starving them, I had just swallowed a vial of lethal, untraceable poison in the bathroom.

I died in excruciating agony on the operating table before they even made the first cut.

When the surgeon announced I had committed suicide, my family's world completely shattered.

My brother found my blood-stained suicide note and the meager cash I had saved to buy them gifts.

"We murdered our own daughter," my father sobbed.

My mother went completely insane, clutching my rotting corpse, while my brother slit his own wrists in a desperate attempt to feel my pain.

They kneeled before my grave, weeping and begging the heavens to let them protect me in the next life.

Floating above them as a ghost, I watched their absolute despair with a numb heart.

I harbored no hatred, but I knew one thing for certain.

In the next life, we will be nothing but strangers.

Chapter 1

Clara POV

Not ten minutes had passed since they wheeled me into this private Syndicate hospital wing. I had pleaded for a moment's pause, a brief use of the restroom. As my slippers padded past a secluded, dimly lit fire stairwell, the muffled sound of a quarrel arrested my steps. I pressed my ear to the cold, industrial steel of the door.

Through the dense metal, I discerned my brother's voice, a harsh, suppressed whisper, declaring my leukemia a fabrication. He was telling my weeping mother that the treatments were nothing more than slow-acting toxins, a cruel pageant designed to steal my betrothal to the supreme Don for his biological sister.

The tragic irony was his alone, for in the moments after that revelation had sliced through me, I had locked myself inside a bathroom stall and swallowed the lethal poison I carried, a self-inflicted sacrifice to save my impoverished family from ruin.

Now, I lay upon the operating table, forcing a stillness into my limbs. I held my breath so shallowly that my own heart, knocking against my ribs, was the only betraying sound in the room.

The cold liquid from the IV line had not yet breached my veins.

The nurse had stepped out to fetch a spare monitor lead. After she departed, the only sound was the frigid drip of fluid in the tube, a clinical 'tick' that sounded unnervingly like the countdown to an execution.

The voices of those I had cherished most, their words from the stairwell, still vibrated against my eardrums.

I recognized my brother Mateo's voice immediately.

It was not the gentle, exhausted tone he used when he carried me to the bathroom after my chemo sessions.

It was a voice forged of ice and steel.

"I believe a doubled dosage of the toxin is in order after this mock surgery," Mateo said, his words filtering through the heavy door.

A sharp gasp followed his words.

I knew that sound.

It was my mother, Rosa.

"You are effacing her, Mateo," my mother cried quietly. "Look at the state of her, how emaciated she has become. She is naught but skin and bone."

Mateo let out a heavy sigh that sounded more like an order than a comfort.

"Elena lacks Clara's inherent grace," Mateo explained coldly. "She was broken by those traffickers. She can never survive the brutal politics of our Syndicate unless Clara is sacrificed for two years to pave Elena's way."

I had stood in the dim-lit hallway, my body a column of ice.

My heart felt like a stone dropping into a bottomless well.

"Once Clara's betrothal to the supreme Don is officially transferred to Elena, I will find the top Syndicate specialists to cure Clara," Mateo continued. "She will have the best rehabilitation money can buy."

"I will give her my own blood and my own kidneys if I have to," he added. "I will leave her two of my luxury mafia estates as compensation. She will be fine."

The words did not make sense to my brain at first.

Syndicate. Betrothal. Supreme Don. Mafia estates.

I was the adopted daughter of a struggling blue-collar family.

My father, Salvatore, worked construction. My mother, Rosa, took in laundry. My brother, Mateo, worked odd jobs to pay for my ballet classes.

But the cold, calculating Underboss standing on the other side of that door was a stranger.

I understood in a sickening rush that my family possessed immense wealth.

I understood I was not dying of leukemia.

I understood I was not facing a life of paralysis and endless medical debt.

The burning sensation in my stomach suddenly flared, a sharp reminder of the choice I had made.

I had emptied an entire vial of a clear, odorless poison my father had once warned me never to touch-a substance he kept locked away, claiming it was a dangerous chemical from his work-in the solitude of the restroom, before they brought me to the pre-op room.

I did it because I thought my treatments were bankrupting them.

I did it because I loved them too much to watch them starve for my sake.

I understood I was already beyond saving.

The nurse walked back into the room, her rubber shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor.

She smiled at me with pure pity.

"We are going to wheel you out to the hallway for a minute so your family can give you a kiss before we go into the main theater," the nurse said gently.

I could not speak.

My throat was thick with a mixture of unshed tears and the bitter aftertaste of the poison.

The nurse unlocked the wheels of my bed and pushed me toward the door.

The door swung wide open.

Mateo and Rosa instantly dropped their intense posture.

Their faces rearranged themselves into masks of agonizing grief and boundless love.

My mother rushed to my side, her eyes red and puffy from crying.

My brother gripped my hand, his fingers warm and strong.

I forced a tearful smile onto my face.

I looked at their familiar features, inwardly apologizing to them over and over again.

Because I knew I would be dead before the surgeon even made the first cut.

And they had no idea that I knew exactly who they really were.