The Truth in the Fold: A Family's Secret

The Truth in the Fold: A Family's Secret

Lian Lian

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My hands bled on the cracked asphalt, muscles burning, but I kept dribbling. This was it: my third, final shot at a basketball scholarship-my ticket out of this dead-end town and the crushing poverty that had always shadowed my life. I' d just nailed a private tryout, the scout promising a scholarship, but my euphoria shattered the moment I unlocked the door to find my older brother, Leo, waiting in the dark with his thick leather work belt, his first strike searing across my shoulders. My screams brought our neighbors, then my coach, Mr. Henderson, but the fear in their eyes wasn' t for me; it was for something Leo showed them on a crumpled legal document, which turned their sympathy to cold pity as they told me to give up my 'foolish dreams' and walk away. Left bleeding and abandoned, waking in a hospital bed, Leo and Coach brazenly told Deputy Miller I was mentally unstable, hurting myself because of basketball pressure, and the same terrifying paper made the deputy' s eyes flicker with doubt-why did everyone believe these monstrous lies, what power did this paper hold? A jolt of frantic energy propelled me, my good hand seizing the document from Leo' s jacket, and as I read the chilling words-a pact tying his freedom to my failure, revealing he was a hostage, not a villain-I knew I had to shatter my own dreams to save him.

Introduction

My hands bled on the cracked asphalt, muscles burning, but I kept dribbling. This was it: my third, final shot at a basketball scholarship-my ticket out of this dead-end town and the crushing poverty that had always shadowed my life.

I' d just nailed a private tryout, the scout promising a scholarship, but my euphoria shattered the moment I unlocked the door to find my older brother, Leo, waiting in the dark with his thick leather work belt, his first strike searing across my shoulders.

My screams brought our neighbors, then my coach, Mr. Henderson, but the fear in their eyes wasn' t for me; it was for something Leo showed them on a crumpled legal document, which turned their sympathy to cold pity as they told me to give up my 'foolish dreams' and walk away.

Left bleeding and abandoned, waking in a hospital bed, Leo and Coach brazenly told Deputy Miller I was mentally unstable, hurting myself because of basketball pressure, and the same terrifying paper made the deputy' s eyes flicker with doubt-why did everyone believe these monstrous lies, what power did this paper hold?

A jolt of frantic energy propelled me, my good hand seizing the document from Leo' s jacket, and as I read the chilling words-a pact tying his freedom to my failure, revealing he was a hostage, not a villain-I knew I had to shatter my own dreams to save him.

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I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

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