VANMUTHER LEAGUE OF EXTRA ORDINARIES

For eight years, I drained the color from my life—black, white, and gray—to be the perfect Donna for Zeno, the ruthless Don of the Falcone Famiglia. He never let me wear red. Said it drew too much attention.

Then the photos came. My husband in a fluorescent yellow cartoon suit. A color he had never once allowed in our bedroom.Our arranged marriage was the bedrock of a multi-billion-dollar syndicate alliance.

But then, photos leaked of my untouchable husband in a fluffy cartoon mascot suit, handing spun sugar to a low-level civilian girl named Liana.

When I tried to enforce our world's strict hierarchy, Zeno publicly humiliated me to protect her. The final blow came when Liana orchestrated a fake assassination attempt on herself. Zeno stormed into my territory, threw photos of her shattered arm on my mahogany desk, and dragged me to her clinic room. When the girl faked a panic attack, he dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around her to physically shield her from my sight.

"Apologize, Bianca. Now."

He demanded, treating his wife and Queen like a monstrous threat.

I stared at the man I had pledged my life to. I couldn't understand how the brilliant, calculating 'Iceman' could be so easily blinded by a street rat's cheap tears. I had sacrificed my identity and youth to build his empire, yet he trampled my honor without a second thought.

My pride bled, but my heart finally turned to ash.

"Strike three."

I whispered, turning my back on them. I walked out of the clinic, called my lawyers to draft a formal mafia divorce, and withdrew every billion from his accounts.

Chapter 1

Bianca POV:

As I pressed my family seal into the cooling wax of a three-billion-dollar treaty, a series of leaked photographs flashed across the surface of my secure tablet. A quiet intake of air was the only sound I made.

There he was: my husband, the untouchable Don of the Falcone Famiglia, encased in the plush, foolish costume of a cartoon mascot, extending a stick of spun sugar to a civilian girl.

If I did not cauterize this breach of dignity, the rival syndicates would scent the weakness bleeding into the water and tear apart the fifty shipping routes and three hundred loyal soldiers that constituted our power.

I stared at the screen, the rhythmic thud of blood against my own eardrums a maddening metronome.

Zeno Falcone was known as the Iceman. He was an executioner in a bespoke suit-a man whose hands were legally clean, but whose reign was built on a foundation of corpses.

Yet in these grainy images, the Don was radiating a domestic warmth I had not witnessed in eight years of our arranged union.

He was looking down at Liana Romano with an unguarded, protective cast to his eyes.

A hollow space opened up behind my ribs, as if a vital organ had been surgically removed.

I pushed the tablet across the polished mahogany toward my syndicate assistant.

"Find the manufacturer of that mascot suit," I ordered, my voice a flat, even line. "Acquire their entire tri-state inventory. I do not care if it is ten or fifty. Have them delivered to the penthouse."

My assistant nodded, his face pale.

"Then instruct the Rossi hackers to purge every copy of these images from the network," I continued, the tone permitting no failure. "Enforce the code of silence. Anyone found possessing a copy forfeits their fingers."

I stood, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from my monochromatic skirt. For eight years, I had drained the color from my wardrobe, a deliberate effort to become a seamless part of Zeno's rigid, achromatic world.

I walked out of the boardroom and into my bulletproof SUV.

"The Falcone Estate," I told the driver.

The ancestral home of the Falcone Famiglia was a fortress of stone and shadow. I walked past the armed sentries, their heads bowing as their Queen passed.

I went straight to the master wing, where Nonna Rosa lay in her massive four-poster bed.

The Matriarch of the Falcone Famiglia was fading, the oxygen machine's soft hiss punctuating the dim quiet of the room.

I sat on the edge of her bed and took her frail hand.

She opened her eyes, their merciless clarity undimmed by her failing health.

"I have seen the photographs, Bianca," she rasped.

Her voice was thin, like dry leaves scraping across stone, but it carried the weight of a woman who had ruled from the shadows.

"Liana claims a life debt, for pulling me behind a vehicle during the shootout," Nonna Rosa continued, her grip tightening. "But a rat saving a lion does not make the rat a queen."

Nonna Rosa squeezed my fingers, the pressure of her bones a surprising, urgent message against my own.

"She has a rat's ambition. Do not let her street-level tricks shake your throne. You are the only Donna of this family."

Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.