Stella gasped awake like a drowning woman breaking the surface, her lungs burning as they dragged in air that tasted of lavender and expensive linen. Her heart hammered against her ribs—too fast, too hard, the frantic rhythm of someone who'd forgotten how to be alive.
She was supposed to be dead.
The thought came first, crystal clear and impossible to deny. She remembered dying. Remembered the way her heartbeat had slowed to nothing, the way darkness had pulled her under like cold water closing over her head. She remembered her last breath rattling out of her chest, remembered the strange peace that had settled over her in those final seconds.
So why could she feel silk sheets beneath her fingertips? Why could she smell flowers and hear birds singing outside a window?
Stella's eyes flew open, and immediately she had to squeeze them shut again. Sunlight—warm, golden, abundant—poured through what sounded like large windows, so bright after an eternity of basement darkness that it felt like knives stabbing into her skull. She turned her face away from the light, breathing hard, trying to make sense of sensations that shouldn't exist.
Slowly, carefully, she opened her eyes again.
The ceiling above her was painted a soft cream color, decorated with elaborate molding that looked hand-carved. A crystal chandelier hung in the center, catching the morning light and scattering rainbows across the walls. It was beautiful. Expensive. Nothing like the cracked concrete and water-stained pipes of her tomb.
This wasn't the basement. This wasn't death.
So what the hell was it?
Stella sat up too quickly, and the room spun around her in a nauseating whirl of cream and gold and too much light. She gripped the edge of the mattress—a massive four-poster bed that could easily sleep four people—and waited for her vision to steady. Her hands looked wrong. Too pale, too clean, the nails perfectly manicured instead of broken and bloody. She turned them over, studying palms that should have been raw from pulling against chains but were instead smooth and soft.
The chains. Where were the chains?
She looked down at her wrists and found them unmarked. No cuts, no bruises, no metal cuffs biting into skin rubbed raw. Just flawless, creamy skin that looked like it had never known a day of hardship.
"What..." Her voice came out as a rasp, and even that was wrong. It sounded different—still feminine, still her, but with a slightly different timbre, like hearing a familiar song played in a different key.
Panic clawed its way up her throat. Stella threw off the silk duvet—because of course it was silk, because nothing about this made any sense—and stumbled out of bed on legs that felt both too strong and too unfamiliar. She was wearing a nightgown she didn't recognize, pale pink and delicate, the kind of thing she'd never owned in her life. The Romano family had money, but Stella had always preferred simple cotton pajamas, practical and comfortable.
She needed a mirror. She needed to see her face, to confirm she was still herself, still Stella Romano who died in a basement because her brothers valued their empire more than her life.
The bedroom was enormous, decorated in soft feminine colors that should have felt soothing but instead made her skin crawl with their wrongness. She spotted a door that might lead to a bathroom and lunged for it, nearly tripping over her own feet because her center of gravity felt off, her body responding to commands just a fraction of a second differently than it should.
The bathroom was all marble and gold fixtures, dominated by a massive mirror that took up most of one wall. Stella gripped the edge of the vanity and forced herself to look up, to meet her own reflection.
The woman staring back at her was a stranger.
"No." The word fell from lips that were fuller than hers, painted a soft pink that Stella never wore. "No, no, no..."
She raised a hand to her face—these wrong hands with their perfect manicure—and watched the reflection do the same. The bone structure was different. Higher cheekbones, a more delicate jawline, a nose that turned up slightly at the end instead of straight like Stella's had been. The eyes were still brown, but a lighter shade, more honey than the dark chocolate of her own.
And her hair. God, her hair. Instead of the dark brown waves that had fallen past her shoulders, this woman—this stranger wearing Stella's consciousness—had honey-blonde hair that cascaded down her back in perfect, salon-styled waves.
Stella touched her face, watching the reflection mirror her movements, and felt her mind fracture around the impossibility of what she was seeing. This wasn't her body. This wasn't her face. This wasn't—
Pain exploded behind her eyes, sudden and blinding, and with it came a flood of memories that weren't hers.
Angela Rossi. Twenty-five years old. Daughter of Marco Rossi, a minor player in the famiglia hierarchy, a man desperate to elevate his status through his daughter's marriage. Engaged to Matteo Ferrari, heir to one of the most powerful mafia families in Italy. A marriage arranged by their fathers, a political alliance she never wanted but couldn't refuse.
Lonely childhood. Mother dead from illness when Angela was twelve. Father who saw her as currency, as a tool to buy his way into the upper echelons of power. A life of luxury but no love, of everything money could buy but nothing that mattered.
And three days ago, alone in this bedroom, swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills because she couldn't face a future chained to a man she didn't know, a life that wasn't hers to choose.
The memories hit Stella like a tsunami, drowning her in experiences and emotions that belonged to someone else. She saw Angela's life play out in fragments—birthday parties where she smiled for cameras while dying inside, her father's cold calculation every time he looked at her, the weight of expectations that crushed her spirit year by year. She felt Angela's despair, her resignation, her final desperate act of defiance against a fate she couldn't escape.
And she understood, with terrible clarity, that Angela Rossi had died three days ago. Had chosen death over a life she couldn't bear to live.
The same day Stella Romano died in a basement.
"This is impossible," Stella whispered, but even as she said it, she knew it was true. Somehow, impossibly, she'd been given a second chance. Not in her own body—that was gone, rotted or disposed of by brothers who wouldn't even give her a proper burial—but in this one, in Angela Rossi's abandoned shell.
She should have been terrified. She should have been screaming, clawing at this foreign face, rejecting the cosmic impossibility of what had happened to her. Instead, as the initial shock began to fade, something else rose to take its place.
Opportunity.
Stella looked at her reflection—at Angela's reflection, at this face that was now hers—and felt a smile curve lips that weren't the ones she'd been born with. Angela Rossi was engaged to Matteo Ferrari. The Ferraris were untouchable, their power absolute, their protection impenetrable. As Matteo Ferrari's wife, she would have resources her brothers could never match, influence they could never reach, and most importantly, she would have the perfect cover to destroy them.
Because Luca, Enzo, and Paolo had no idea their dead sister was alive. They thought they'd won. They thought their secret was buried with her body, their empire safe from exposure, their conscience—if they even had one—clean.
They had no idea that Stella Romano was about to walk back into their world wearing someone else's face, armed with the kind of power that could burn their entire operation to the ground.
"Angela Rossi," she said to the mirror, testing the name on this new tongue. It felt strange, foreign, like wearing someone else's clothes. But she would make it fit. She would become Angela so thoroughly that no one would ever suspect the woman beneath.
A knock on the bedroom door made her jump. "Miss Rossi?" A female voice, young and uncertain. "Are you awake? I heard movement. Should I come in?"
Stella's mind raced. A servant, probably. Someone who knew Angela, who would expect her to act a certain way, speak with certain mannerisms. She pulled Angela's memories close, sifting through them for information about the household staff.
Maria. Young maid, hired a month ago, sweet and a little timid. Angela had been kind to her, one of the few bright spots in the girl's life.
"Just a moment," Stella called out, and was relieved to hear that the voice sounded more natural now, more like it belonged to her. She grabbed a silk robe hanging near the door and wrapped it around herself, taking a deep breath to center herself in this new reality.
When she opened the door, a girl of maybe nineteen stood there with a breakfast tray, her eyes wide with concern. "Miss Rossi, I'm so glad you're awake. We've all been so worried. After you... after what happened, the doctor said you needed rest, but it's been three days and—" Maria's words tumbled out in a rush before she caught herself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't babble. Let me bring your breakfast in."
Three days. Stella had died three days ago, and Angela had died three days ago, and now she was here, inhabiting this second chance like a ghost possessing a living body.
"Thank you, Maria." The words came easier than she expected, Angela's memories providing context and warmth. "I appreciate your concern."
The girl's face brightened as she set the tray on a small table near the window. "Your father wanted to be informed as soon as you woke. And Mr. Ferrari called yesterday, asking about your recovery. Should I send word to them?"
Matteo Ferrari. Her fiancé, in this new life. A man Angela's memories painted as cold, distant, and frightening in his controlled intensity. A man who had agreed to this marriage out of duty, not desire.
A man who could give Stella everything she needed to destroy her brothers.
"Not yet," Stella said, moving to the window to look out at grounds she'd never seen with eyes that weren't hers. A sprawling estate, meticulously maintained, wealth on display in every manicured hedge and marble fountain. "I need some time to... recover. To clear my head. Give me a few hours."
"Of course, Miss Rossi." Maria hesitated at the door. "I'm glad you're alright. We were all so frightened when we found you."
After the girl left, Stella stood at the window and let herself feel the full weight of what had happened to her. She'd died. She'd been given a second life. And she had a choice to make about what to do with it.
She thought about Luca's cold eyes as he condemned her to death. Enzo's silent complicity. Paolo's betrayal, sharp and personal because he'd been the one she trusted most.
They thought they'd silenced her. They thought their secret was safe.
They were wrong.
Stella Romano was dead, but Angela Rossi Ferrari—soon to be Angela Rossi Ferrari—was very much alive. And she had a wedding to plan, a husband to win over, and three brothers to destroy so completely they'd wish they'd shown her mercy when they had the chance.
She smiled at her reflection in the window glass, and it was the smile of a woman who had nothing left to lose and everything to gain.
Let the game begin.