Married To The Consigliere: The Canary's Revenge

I was the secret pen pal of Xavier Falcone, the ruthless Heir to the Syndicate.

We spent six months trading ciphers and falling in love in the dark.

But my half-sister Natalie stole my burner phone and claimed my identity as his "Canary."

When I ran through the pouring rain to his territory to tell him the truth, his eyes were devoid of mercy.

He believed her lies about my jealousy and handed me over to his men without a second thought.

He locked me in his heavily guarded penthouse and forced a laced glass of vintage scotch down my throat.

The cramping started ten minutes later, blood soaking through my white dress as he killed our unborn child.

"A rat does not deserve to bear my blood."

He stood over me with a blank, aristocratic face, mocking me as I bled out on his cold marble floor.

Until my last breath, I didn't understand how the man who wrote me such tender words could be so heartless.

Why did he refuse to recognize my soul? Why did he leave me to die so brutally in the dark?

Opening my eyes again, I was back on the day Natalie pointed a gun at me to steal my phone.

This time, I didn't fight back.

"Take the phone, Natalie. It is yours."

I handed over the man I loved and signed a contract to marry Gabriel Romano, the most lethal architect of death in the Underworld.

In this life, I would rather marry a true monster than ever look at Xavier Falcone again.

Chapter 1

Serena Sinclair POV

I stared down the cold, circular void of the barrel, but the true sentence was not held in my half-sister's gun; it glowed from the screen of the burner phone in her left hand.

The screen read: "I am coming to claim you tonight, my Canary."

If I told Xavier Falcone-the ruthless Heir to the Syndicate-that I was the actual woman he had been secretly writing to for six months, he would execute my sister for identity theft. But my first life had taught me a more visceral lesson.

If he discovered it was me, he would lock me in his heavily guarded penthouse, force a laced drink down my throat to kill our unborn child, and mock me as I bled out upon the polished veins of his marble floor.

I pressed my knuckle against the cold steel of the barrel, and a tendon in my hand twitched involuntarily as I pushed it aside.

"Take the phone, Natalie," I said, my voice hollow. "It is yours."

Natalie lowered the weapon. A sneer pulled at the corner of her mouth, distorting her features. "You are a bastard child, Serena. You have dirty blood. Do you really think the Heir to the Falcone Famiglia would ever marry someone like you?"

I did not. I held no such delusion.

I reached into the drawer of my mahogany desk, pulled out the decrypted ledgers, and slid them across the polished wood.

"I am ceding him to you," I vowed. "I will maintain Omertà. I will never speak a word of this to anyone."

Natalie snatched the papers. Her eyes, narrowed with avarice, darted across the complex ciphers I had spent months decoding for him. "You better keep your mouth shut," she hissed. "If you try to ruin this for me, I will have the Soldiers drag you to the basement."

The threat of it made a familiar acid rise in my throat. I remembered the basement. I remembered the grit of cold concrete pressed into my cheek in my past life.

I remembered running through a torrent of rain to Xavier's territory, begging him to believe I was the girl on the encrypted phone. I had whispered the private codes, the Macallan 1926, the encryption shifts only we could know, but Natalie had already branded me a thief who had stolen the Canary's journal. His eyes had been devoid of mercy. He had informed me that Natalie had already issued a warning about her jealous, spying half-sister. Then, without a moment's pause, he had gestured me over to his men.

I blinked away the memory. The phantom, damp smell of rain faded, replaced by the heavy, saccharine perfume Natalie wore.

"I just want out," I told her. "I want a clean trust fund. I want an arranged marriage far away from New York and the Falcone territory."

Natalie smirked. She walked over to my printer and connected her phone. A minute later, she tossed a freshly printed property deed and a financial settlement onto my desk.

"Sign it," she ordered.

I picked up the pen and looked at the numbers. It was enough money to guarantee I would never have to rely on our father, Silvio-a greedy Capo who only cared about his legitimate daughter. I signed my name on the dotted line, the ink bleeding slightly into the paper.

"Xavier is at the Commission's VIP banquet right now," Natalie said, checking her reflection in my dressing table mirror. "He is rejecting every daughter from every Boss in the city. He told my father he only wants the Sinclair girl."

Because of the messages. Because of the cyphers we had passed back and forth like secrets in the dark.

It had all started at an exclusive mafia gala in the Hamptons. I was bored, sitting in an alcove draped in shadow, decrypting a coded ledger for fun. Xavier had walked past, and his gaze had fallen upon my work. He did not say a word, but an hour later, a waiter had slipped a burner phone into my purse. We never used our real names. We never met in the light.

"I am meeting him in the alley behind the banquet hall tonight," Natalie continued. "Right after he leaves the Commission's table. I am going to confess that I am his Canary."

I nodded slowly. That was exactly what she had done in the previous timeline.

"Just remember the rules," I said, keeping my voice perfectly flat. "Never call him from that phone. Only text. Use the encryption key on page four."

"I know how to read, Serena. I do not need a bastard telling me what to do."

She turned on her heel and walked out of my heavily guarded wing. The heavy oak door clicked shut behind her, severing the light from the hallway. On the desk, the freshly printed property deed seemed to absorb what little light remained.

I sank back into my chair. My hands began to shake, so I pressed them flat against the desk until the wood bit into my palms.

I had survived the first hurdle. I had given up the man I loved-the man who had eventually hollowed me out and left the shell behind-to save my own life.

My phone buzzed with an alert from my bank. The trust fund had been transferred.

I looked out the window at the dark, sprawling estate grounds. I was finally going to walk out of this wing, past the guards who never met my eyes. I didn't yet understand that leaving the cage doesn't mean the cage leaves you.