Three Years a Fool, One Night the Godmother

I Ripped Off The Wig My Real Face Came Back

Elena 's POV

The Gulfstream cut through the night sky like a blade. I sat in the leather seat and stared at my reflection in the dark window. The face looking back at me was wrong. Pale. Soft. Submissive.

I reached up and grabbed a fistful of my hair at the scalp. Then I pulled.

The wig came off in one clean motion. My real hair—dark, cropped short, practical—fell across my forehead. I tossed the blonde disguise onto the empty seat beside me. It landed like a dead animal.

My hands went to my face next. The prosthetic cheek pads. The colored contact lenses. The lip filler that made my mouth look fuller and stupider. I peeled it all off, layer by layer, and dropped each piece onto the floor.

The woman in the window changed. The soft lines sharpened. The harmless expression hardened into something cold and dangerous.

I looked like myself again.

I heard footsteps behind me. Heavy. Military. I didn't turn around.

"Donna Elena."

The voice was rough. Shaking. I knew that voice. Dante. My father's head of security. The man who had taught me how to strip an assault rifle when I was twelve years old.

I turned.

He was on one knee. His head bowed. His massive frame trembling.

"The bloodline defense line has been fully activated," he said. "Every De Santis operative in Europe is standing by. We await your command."

I looked at him. At the gray streaking his hair. At the way his hands gripped his knees. Seven years. Seven years I had been gone. And he was still here. Still loyal. Still waiting.

"Get up, Dante."

He stood. His eyes were wet. He didn't blink. He just stared at me like I was a ghost.

"We thought you were dead," he whispered. "When the Moretti dogs took over the territory, we thought they killed you too."

"I know."

I walked past him into the main cabin. The plane was a mobile command center. Screens lined the walls. Maps of the Mediterranean. Satellite feeds. Weapon inventories. Everything I needed to burn Matteo's empire to the ground.

A medical team was waiting. A woman in tactical gear stood by a portable scanner. "Donna, I need to examine your hands."

I held out my arms.

She peeled off the gloves I had been wearing—the thin silk ones I used to cover everything. My hands were pale. The knuckles were swollen. The joints were stiff.

The doctor's face went white.

"How long have you been modifying schematics without proper support?" she asked.

"Seven years."

"You've been holding gun blueprints and adjusting weapon calibrations with your bare hands?"

"I wore gloves."

She made a sound. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a sob. "These aren't the hands of a woman who wore gloves. These are the hands of a soldier who worked in a war zone for seven years straight."

I looked down at my fingers. The joints were deformed. The skin around the knuckles was rough and scarred. The muscles in my palms were overdeveloped from years of gripping tools and pulling triggers.

I remembered the nights. Sitting in that cold study while Matteo slept. Taking apart his shipments. Redesigning the firing pins. Adjusting the barrel alignments. Fixing the jamming issues that would have killed his men in combat.

I did it for him. I thought I was protecting him. I thought I was being useful.

I was being a fool.

Dante stepped forward. His face was twisted with rage. "Let me send a team. I'll have his head on a platter by morning. One bullet. That's all it takes."

"No."

He stopped. "Donna?"

"Killing him with a bullet is too easy."

I walked to the weapons rack built into the cabin wall. I pulled open the drawer. Inside, a pair of black tactical gloves sat on black silk. I picked them up. The leather was stiff. Unbroken. I had never worn them before. I had been saving them for this moment.

I pulled them on. The leather tightened around my fingers. The joints in the gloves were reinforced with carbon fiber. The knuckles were plated with titanium.

I flexed my hands. The gloves creaked. They fit perfectly.

I turned to face Dante. "I want him to watch his empire crumble. I want him to see every dollar, every weapon, every ally disappear. I want him to wake up one morning and realize he has nothing left. Not his money. Not his power. Not his name."

I curled my fingers into a fist.

"Then I want him to know that I did it. That the woman he called a 'useless American trophy' was the one who destroyed him."

Dante's face broke into a grin. It was a terrible grin. The kind of grin that belonged on a man who had been waiting seven years to kill.

"Yes, Donna."

The plane banked. Through the window, I saw lights. Calabria. My homeland.

I walked to the cockpit door. The pilot looked back at me. "Three minutes to landing, Donna. The runway is secure."

"Open the cargo bay doors as soon as we stop."

"Yes, Donna."

I walked back to the cabin. I checked my reflection one more time. The woman in the black tactical suit was not the woman who had been ironing Matteo's shirts this morning. She was not the woman who had smiled and nodded and played dumb while he insulted her in front of his men.

She was the woman who had been buried alive for seven years.

And she was done being dead.

The wheels touched down. The plane shuddered. The engines reversed and the cabin shook. Then silence.

I stood up. Walked to the door. Waited.

The hydraulics hissed. The door swung open. The night air hit my face. Cold. Salt. The smell of the Mediterranean.

I stepped out.

The runway was lined with men. Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand. They stood in perfect rows. Black armor. Black helmets. The De Santis crest painted on their chests—a black eagle with a broken chain in its talons.

I scanned the line. Every single one of them was looking at me.

Dante stepped up beside me. His voice boomed across the tarmac.

"Donna Elena De Santis has returned! Bloodline is restored! The reckoning has begun!"

The men moved as one. They dropped to one knee. The sound of a thousand armored bodies hitting the ground echoed through the night.

"Welcome home, Donna Elena!"

The words hit me like a wave. I felt it in my chest. In my throat. In the burning behind my eyes.

I didn't cry. I wouldn't cry. Not yet.

I looked at the men. At the army I had inherited. At the empire I had been born to lead.

Then I looked up at the sky. Somewhere up there, Matteo was sitting in his empty mansion, thinking I was a weak, pathetic woman who couldn't survive without him.

I smiled.

"Operation Godfather Hunt begins now," I said.