Chapter 1

Black Hollow took me in when I was a child. I learned only the basics of medicine, but when it came to poison, I mastered it.

From capos with real power to street soldiers hustling on corners, anyone who took one of my poisons had no more than three days left.

Not even Dr. Matteo could undo what I made.

The day I left, he gave me a rosary and told me to use it whenever my temper started to rise.

I remembered.

For seven years, I moved from neighborhood to neighborhood and became the kind of doctor people trusted, the gentle woman who helped anyone who came to her door.

Little by little, people forgot the strange, vicious girl from Black Hollow. They remembered only Alessia, the doctor with the soft voice and steady hands.

Then the Scola family found me and told me I was the daughter who had been switched out of their bloodline years ago.

The night I came home, the Scolas took me to dinner at the Falcone estate.

At the party, Stella, my sister in name only, stood surrounded by daughters from the client families. They whispered behind their glasses.

“I heard she grew up in that kind of place. Who knows if she’s even clean? In some places, women get passed around like merchandise.”

“She’s just the sacrifice for the marriage alliance. If Stella hadn’t refused to marry that disgraced Vincenzo, why would the Scolas have bothered bringing her back?”

My face did not change. I kept my mild smile.

Then someone walked straight up to me, her pretty face twisted with contempt.

“You feral little bitch. Who do you think you are, marrying into the Falcone family?”

She shoved me hard.

I stepped aside, but her fingers caught my wrist.

Pain flashed across my skin.

The rosary broke.

The beads scattered across the floor.

The smile on my face slowly disappeared.

At the same time, not far away, Marco Falcone—who had once had the bad luck to taste one of my poisons—stared at my face, and his expression changed completely.

……

The moment the rosary snapped, I looked down.

The beads rolled across the polished marble, scattering one by one, the sound light and sharp.

I still heard it.

A thin cut had opened on my wrist. Blood seeped out slowly and slid along the bone.

The girl who had shoved me had no idea anything was wrong. She only lifted her chin, disgust written all over her face.

“What are you dodging for? I barely touched you.”

Her name was Isabella. She had been circling Stella all evening, the cruelest mouth among them, the loudest laugh whenever someone insulted me.

The girls beside her immediately joined in.

“Girls from places like that never know how to behave.”

“Isabella was kind enough to teach her some manners, and now she’s giving attitude.”

“She should look at herself first. Does she really think being brought back by the Scolas makes her a real daughter of the family?”

One sentence after another hit me.

I bent down to pick up the beads and said nothing.

At last, Stella stepped forward. She lightly pulled Isabella back, her eyes red, her voice soft as water.

“Isabella, don’t. Alessia only just came home. Of course she doesn’t know the rules here yet.”

That one sentence was sharper than all the mockery.

Only just came home.

With those words, she drew a clean line between us.

I raised my eyes and looked at her.

She looked back at me.

In her eyes, I saw caution. I saw grievance. I also saw resentment hidden deep enough to pass for fear.

Of course she resented me.

For seventeen years, she had been the Scola princess, raised in luxury and loved by everyone. Now that I was back, her place was no longer secure. Even the marriage alliance that should have been hers had landed on me.

Though in everyone’s eyes, that marriage was no prize.

Vincenzo Falcone, the disgraced underboss they called the Ghost, was rumored to be cold, dangerous, and nearly ruined. Marrying him was no different from walking into a grave.

That was why the Scolas had brought me back.

I knew it.

Stella knew it too.

She was afraid I had come to take her place, but the truth was, I did not care.

My identity, the marriage alliance, the Scola family—I cared about none of it.

But they should not have touched my rosary.

Dr. Matteo had given it to me.

On the day I left, he slipped it onto my wrist and told me to use it to calm myself whenever I got angry.

He said, “Alessia, there’s something wrong in you. You’re not like other people. If you don’t hold it down, sooner or later you’ll bring hell with you.”

I thought he was right.

I had never been a good thing.

When I was ten, a boy stole my candy, so I put a laxative in his coffee and left him trapped in the bathroom for three days.

At eleven, a groundskeeper called me a little forest ghost behind my back, so I lured him to the edge of the snake pit and listened to him cry all night.

At twelve, after memorizing a poison manual, I made my first poison by myself and was so happy I could not sleep.

Plants could save lives. But change the order, change the dose, and they could also make someone beg to live and beg to die.

Interesting, wasn’t it?

Dr. Matteo called me rotten by nature. He said it was a waste that I had been born with such a pretty face when everything underneath was black.

But for all his scolding, he never had the heart to throw me out of Black Hollow.

He said letting me loose would hurt people.

So he watched me for ten years.

After I left the Hollow, I spent seven years pretending to be a gentle doctor.

I pretended for so long that these spoiled mafia princesses truly thought I was clay they could shape in their hands.

Seeing that I did not answer, Isabella became even more pleased with herself.

“What? Too scared to talk back? Makes sense. What good could a place like that raise? I heard in some places women get passed around like goods. Who knows if you’re even clean—”

“Isabella,” Stella said softly, frowning.

She sounded like she was stopping her.

But I still saw the faint smile at the corner of her mouth.

I closed my fingers around the rosary and slowly stood.

“Are you done?”

Isabella froze, as if she had not expected me to lift my head.

“You—”

I looked at her and asked again, very softly.

“Are you done?”

For some reason, her face stiffened.