Sold As Spare Parts: Claimed By Him

I stood at the altar, about to marry Enzo, a notorious and bloodthirsty Mafia Capo.

Suddenly, my own mother stormed the blood-red carpet, hurling illicit photographs at my face to frame me as a used-up club whore.

She screamed to the armed guests that I was tainted, and pulled out my hidden, "pure" twin sister Sienna to take my place.

Enzo immediately discarded me, possessively taking Sienna's hand and announcing her as his real bride.

But he didn't let me go; he dragged me into a soundproof room, his eyes scanning my face like a butcher appraising meat.

That was when I learned the horrifying truth: my mother and sister had sold me.

Enzo didn't want a wife; he wanted a perfect facial donor to graft onto his scarred childhood sweetheart, and I was just the backup spare part.

For years, I had scrubbed floors and surrendered my youth to pay off my mother's crushing medical debts.

I couldn't believe my own family had faked the illness just to drain my blood, only to hand me over to a monster's operating table for a massive wire transfer.

But before Enzo could carve up my face, the ruling Don raided the estate, exposing the gruesome underground lab where Sienna had already died on the table.

Looking at my bankrupt mother begging on her knees in the dirt days later, I didn't feel a shred of pity.

"You signed the contract."

I stepped around her sobbing form and got into the Don's car, completely dead to my toxic past.

Chapter 1

Gianna POV

I stood at the altar beside a man whose reputation involved the slow peeling of his enemies' skin, when my own mother stormed the blood-red carpet.

Using the bride's-mother-privilege as a passkey through the outer cordon of security, she hurled a stack of illicit photographs at my face, screaming to the armed guests that I was a used-up whore who belonged to the streets.

The glossy prints fanned out across the marble, each one a stark black-and-white frame of my silhouette leaving a notorious syndicate nightclub in the dead of night.

A place I had haunted only to service the crushing medical debts she swore were killing her.

I had exactly three seconds to convince the man whose knuckles bore the faint, silvery trace of old teeth marks not to slaughter me right here in front of the entire Cosa Nostra.

The hum of the air conditioners seemed to die. A single champagne flute, dropped by some unseen hand, chimed once against the floor and then there was nothing.

Dozens of Made Men and associates reached inside their tailored suits, their hands resting on concealed weapons, their thumbs stroking the safety catches as they waited for a single nod from Enzo.

Enzo was a rogue Capo with a reputation so drenched in blood that even the ruling Don kept a watchful eye on his territory.

He carried an aura of such dense stillness that the air around him seemed to thicken, to cool.

His grip on my fingers did not loosen; if anything, the warmth of his palm bled away, leaving a pressure that seemed to fuse the small bones of my hand together.

My mother, Rosa, marched closer to the altar.

The men who had wheeled in the wedding cake now dropped their silver trays with a coordinated crash. They tore off their server vests, revealing themselves as a crew of low-level street muscle she had brought in her wake, their dirty boots leaving scuff marks on the sacred wedding runner.

Her finger, with its lacquered nail, rose and trembled as it pointed at my chest.

"Look at her, trying to trap a high-ranking Capo!" her voice pitched to carry, a thin, reedy instrument of malice. "She wants to use your power as a shield for her ruined purity."

The muscles in my throat constricted, and I had to fight the urge to cough against a dryness that felt like dust.

"Mother, be silent," I pleaded, my words a low hiss, a frantic attempt to staunch the wound before Enzo decided to redecorate the altar in her arterial spray. "You do not know what you are doing."

A laugh tore from Rosa's throat, a sound like grinding stones.

"I know precisely what I am doing, Gianna. I am saving this honorable family from taking in a piece of trash."

She turned her back to me and looked directly at Enzo.

"She is a worn-out plaything. She has been passed around the underground clubs for months."

A strange numbness began in my feet, a cold that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. The ornate patterns on the marble floor swam before my eyes.

For her, I had surrendered my education, my sleep, and my youth to keep a roof over her head.

I had scrubbed floors and balanced accounting books in the back room of a mob-run club just to afford her expensive treatments.

Now, she was weaponizing my sacrifice to destroy me.

Rosa snapped her fingers at one of the thugs standing behind her. "Tell the Capo what she looks like under that expensive white dress."

A tall man with a jagged scar across his jaw stepped forward, his gaze a slow, proprietary crawl over my form.

He spoke of things a man could not know.

He used vulgar, graphic language to detail the exact shape of my waist and the curve of my hips.

He described it with a lover's intimacy, a detail known only to the mother who had bathed the child.

A low murmur, a collective intake of breath, rustled through the pews, the sound of a hundred private judgments being passed.

A sour heat climbed the back of my throat, burning my esophagus.

Rosa had given them my private medical information, supplying them with details drawn from my medical records, twisting them into a seamless fiction of my debauchery.

"Will you still honor this arrangement, Capo?" Rosa crossed her arms, a triumphant tightening at the corners of her mouth. "Will you take a tainted bride?"

I slowly turned my head to look at Enzo, my whole body braced for the cold circle of a muzzle against my temple.

Instead, his dark, hollow eyes were fixed intensely on my face.

He was not looking at my body, nor at the photographs that littered the floor like dead leaves.

His gaze traced the line of my jaw, the bridge of my nose, and the exact spacing of my cheekbones.

For an instant, his pupils dilated, swallowing the dark brown of his irises until his eyes were twin voids. The muscles around his mouth tightened, not in a smile, but as if suppressing a reflex to bite. It was a flicker of something so profoundly unhinged it felt like a pressure change in the room.

A memory surfaced-fragments of hushed gossip I had dismissed as barroom tales while cleaning tables at the syndicate club. They said a Capo was searching for a woman with a very specific bone structure, a "perfect match" for some unspeakable purpose. The way Enzo studied my face now made those drunken whispers feel like a death sentence.

The murderous intent vanished a second later, hidden behind a smooth, calm mask.

He squeezed my hand so hard my knuckles ground together.

"The wedding proceeds," he declared, his voice a deep, gravelly command that left no room for argument.