Chapter 1 · Chapter 1
I died on Easter Sunday.
At least, that's what it felt like when I woke up three months later in a hospital bed with no memory of how I got there, no phone, no wallet, and a nurse who looked at me like I was a ghost.
"Miss, you've been unconscious for twelve weeks," she said, her voice trembling. "We didn't think you'd wake up."
I should have called my fathers immediately. Should have screamed for them the second I could speak. But something in my gut—some primal instinct—told me to wait. To watch. To learn what had happened while I was gone.
So I discharged myself against medical advice, took a cab to the sprawling estate in the hills that had been my home for twenty-three years, and stood at the iron gates with my heart in my throat.
The guards didn't recognize me.
"State your business," the one on the left said, hand resting on his holster.
I stared at him. Marcus. He'd been with my family for fifteen years. He'd taught me to throw a knife when I was twelve.
"Marcus, it's me. Sienna."
His expression didn't change. "We don't know any Sienna. Move along."
The world tilted sideways.
I could have argued. Could have demanded to see my fathers—Dominic, Rafael, and James, the three most dangerous men in the city, the crime lords who'd raised me with blood-stained hands and fierce, protective love.
Instead, I walked away on shaking legs and watched the estate from the hillside across the road.
That's when I saw her.
A girl, maybe twenty years old, stepping out onto the balcony of my bedroom. My bedroom. She wore a soft yellow sundress, her dark hair pulled back in a braid, and she was laughing at something someone inside had said.
Then Dominic appeared behind her, my stern, unyielding father who rarely smiled, and he was grinning as he wrapped a shawl around her shoulders.
My chest cracked open.
I watched for three hours as my family moved through the evening routine I knew by heart. Dinner on the terrace at seven. Rafael pouring wine. James telling stories that made everyone laugh. But I wasn't there. She was. This stranger who'd stolen my life.
When I finally tore myself away, I had one destination in mind: the only person outside my fathers who'd ever mattered to me.
Uncle Vincent's bar sat in the warehouse district, a front for money laundering that served the best whiskey in the state. I pushed through the door at midnight, and the bartender—Vincent's nephew, Tony—looked up with a welcoming smile.
"What can I get you, sweetheart?"
"Tony." My voice cracked. "It's Sienna."
He blinked at me. "Sorry, do I know you?"
I gripped the bar to keep from collapsing. "Where's Vincent?"
"In the back. But he's busy—"
I didn't wait. I shoved through the staff door and found Vincent in his office, counting cash with the practiced efficiency of a man who'd been in the life for forty years.
"Vincent!"
He looked up, his weathered face creasing in confusion. "Can I help you, miss?"
"Stop." I was shaking now, rage and terror mixing into something poisonous. "Stop pretending you don't know me. I'm Sienna. Dominic, Rafael, and James's daughter. You're my godfather. You gave me my first gun when I was sixteen. You—"
"I don't have a goddaughter," Vincent said slowly, standing. His hand moved toward his desk drawer. Toward his weapon. "And Dominic, Rafael, and James don't have a daughter. They have Mara."
Mara.
The name hit me like a bullet.
"Who the hell is Mara?"
"Their daughter. Always has been." Vincent's eyes narrowed. "Now I'm going to need you to leave before I call them and tell them some crazy woman is using their dead daughter's name."
Dead daughter.
The room spun. I backed toward the door, hands raised.
"I'm not dead. I'm right here. I'm—"
"Sienna died three months ago," Vincent said, and there was genuine sorrow in his voice. "Easter Sunday. I was at the funeral. We all were."
I ran.
I ran until my lungs burned and my legs gave out, collapsing in an alley six blocks away. My phone—I needed my phone, needed proof, needed something—but I had nothing. Everything I'd owned was gone. My bank accounts, when I checked at an internet café using a guest login, were closed. My social media accounts didn't exist. My apartment had new tenants.
Sienna Moretti had been erased.
And in her place, they'd put Mara.
I spent that night in a homeless shelter, lying awake on a thin mattress, trying to piece together what had happened. The last thing I remembered was Easter brunch. My fathers had been tense, talking in low voices about a shipment, a deal gone wrong, a threat from the Volkov family. I'd gone upstairs to change clothes, and then—
Nothing.
Three months of nothing.
When morning came, I knew what I had to do. I couldn't approach my fathers directly. They wouldn't recognize me. No one would. But I could watch. I could investigate. I could figure out what the hell had happened to me.
And I could find out who Mara really was.
The public library became my base of operations. I used their computers to dig through news archives, social media, anything I could find. There was no record of my death—no obituary, no news story. The Morettis kept their private tragedies private.
But I found Mara.
She'd appeared on my father's social media three months ago. The same week I'd vanished. Photos of her at family dinners, at charity galas, standing between Dominic and Rafael with James's arm around her shoulders. She looked so normal. So innocent. Nothing like the daughter of crime lords should look.
The comments were full of people welcoming her, saying how lovely she was, how lucky my fathers were to have such a devoted daughter.
No one mentioned me.
No one remembered I'd ever existed.
✦
They Replaced Me