Sister Sofia had an affair with her lover

She hung me in the wine cellar, whipped me with a belt, and made me lick her shoes.

Father merely shook his head and walked away.

Pregnant with a bastard child, she was to marry the Balzini family heir.

She used me as a substitute bride, giving me to Vincenzo, the 'sickly invalid' confined to a wheelchair.

She poisoned me with a mother-child toxin—if she died, I must die too.

On our wedding night, Vincenzo rose from his wheelchair.

He wasn’t a cripple at all—he was the true emperor of New York’s underworld.

At the council meeting, I exposed that my sister carried her lover’s child.

She was executed on the spot.

To save me, Vincenzo forced our father to hand over the antidote.

I survived, spitting black blood.

...

"Stop it, Marco."

"Not on the boat... that mute's watching."

Sofia, my sister, resisted half-heartedly. She shot me a contemptuous glare, yet her eyes were hazy as her arms wrapped around Marco's neck.

Marco snorted. "What does a mute know?"

His icy gaze swept over me like I was a piece of furniture in the way. "Alesia's mind was gone long ago. If she had any sense left, she wouldn't watch her sister get intimate with another man."

"She's nothing but an empty shell without a soul."

Sofia traced circles on his chest with her fingers. Suddenly, he gathered her up and thrust her into the shadows of the cabin. Soon, only stifled gasps and the sound of bodies colliding filled the space.

I sat in a corner of the deck, stuffing olives into my mouth while watching the seabirds. After a while, curiosity drew me into the cabin. It was pitch-black inside, impossible to see anything. When I emerged, a man's hat—Marco's—had appeared on my head.

Sophia came out, her hair dishevelled, searching for her diamond bracelet. She turned to see me flinging the two-hundred-thousand-dollar chain into the sea with a splash.

She was both humiliated and furious. Back home, I was dragged straight into the wine cellar.

"Useless piece of trash! Why didn't you die on the street with your whore of a mother? You're an eyesore alive!"

"You asked for this today, so don't blame your sister for teaching you a lesson..."

She ordered the family thugs to hang me up and flog me with a leather belt. I neither cried nor screamed. The pain made my body convulse, but I remained utterly silent. Silence was my only weapon, and the proof they took as evidence of my "stupidity."

Father, passing by, heard the commotion. He paused at the doorway for a second, shook his head, and quickened his pace away.

Sophia, enraged by my silence, strode over, yanked my hair violently, forcing me to look up at her. Her face was contorted with fury.

"Want to live?"

I stared back, my eyes hollow.

Sophia extended her expensive, bespoke stiletto heel. "Then lick my shoe clean. A speck of dust, and I'll make sure you never speak again."

I didn't move. The thugs behind me kicked me hard in the back of the knee, sending me crashing to my knees before Sophia. They pinned my head down, forcing it close to the dust-covered shoe.

"You worthless scum! It's your privilege to lick the young mistress's shoes!"

My stomach churned violently. Closing my eyes, I resigned myself to my fate. Just then, the butler's urgent shout pierced the silence.

"Miss! Falconi requests your presence! Distinguished guests!"

Only then did Sophia release me. Before departing, she delivered a vicious kick to my midsection.

"Lock her in here. No food. No water."

The door locked. In the darkness, the hollow at my mouth slowly retracted into a cold, thin line.

Sofia.

The real show is only just beginning.

Everyone believes me to be a simpleton. But they don't know I'm merely pretending.

As a child, I witnessed my mother shot dead in the street by members of a rival family, a bullet grazing my scalp. The immense trauma robbed me of my speech. Ruo Wan—Sofia's mother, my father's second wife, the woman who climbed to power by betraying her former husband—needed a "foolish" daughter to accentuate Sofia's perfection. Thus, I became the disgrace and plaything of the entire Falconi family.

She coveted the betrothed chosen for my mother, Marco, a man of modest influence within the clan. So, under the pretence of taking me out to sea for recreation, she repeatedly met Marco in secret aboard the yacht.