Vincenzo's POV
The bullet hits my chest before I hear the gunshot.
I stumble backward, my hand clutching the burning hole in my expensive suit. Blood—so much blood—spreads across my white shirt like spilled wine. Around the long conference table, my most trusted men sit frozen, their faces masks of shock. All except one.
Marco.
My cousin. My brother in everything but blood. The boy I raised from nothing after his father died. He's standing now, the smoking gun still pointed at me, and he's smiling.
"Why?" The word comes out as a whisper, but I need to know. After twenty years of building the Salvatore empire together, why now?
"Because you're weak, Vin." Marco's voice is cold, like I'm hearing a stranger speak. "You still believe in loyalty. In family. In honor among thieves." He laughs, and it sounds like breaking glass. "There's no honor. There's only power. And you've had it too long."
My legs give out. I crash to the marble floor, and the pain explodes through my body like fire. I'm thirty-two years old. I've survived gang wars, FBI raids, and three assassination attempts. I survived watching my parents die when I was twelve—murdered by my uncle who wanted control of the family.
I survived by trusting no one. By being harder, smarter, more ruthless than anyone else.
But I trusted Marco. I loved him.
"The others?" I force the words out, tasting copper in my mouth. "Did they know?"
Marco crouches beside me, his face swimming in my dimming vision. "Everyone knew, cousin. They've been waiting for me to pull the trigger for months. You've been dead—you just didn't know it yet."
Around the table, my "loyal" men start talking, arguing about how to divide my empire. My life's work. Everything I built from blood and sacrifice. They're discussing it like I'm already a ghost.
I think about my mother's last words as she died in that warehouse, bleeding from the gunshots my uncle ordered. "Vincenzo, never trust anyone. Not even family. Especially not family."
I didn't listen. I thought I could be different. I thought loyalty could be earned, that love could protect you.
I was wrong.
The darkness comes fast now, pulling me under like cold water. My last thought isn't about revenge or regret. It's simpler, more pathetic: I don't want to die alone.
Then nothing.
Pain jerks me awake—not the burning agony of a bullet wound, but a splitting headache that feels like my skull is cracking open. I gasp and sit up fast, my hands flying to my chest searching for the wound.
There's nothing. No blood. No hole. No pain except the headache.
"MY LORD! YOU'RE AWAKE!"
The scream nearly stops my heart. A young girl in a servant's dress stands by the door, her hand over her mouth, eyes huge with shock. She drops the tray she's carrying—it crashes with a sound like thunder—and runs from the room, still screaming.
I stare after her, my mind trying to catch up with what just happened.
I died. Marco shot me. I felt death take me.
So why am I sitting in a bed?
I look down at my hands. They're not my hands. These hands are softer, paler, with long fingers that have never held a gun or broken a man's arm. No scars. No calluses from gripping weapons. These are a rich man's hands—someone who's never done real work.
My heart starts pounding. I touch my face. It's wrong. The shape is wrong. The skin is smoother, younger. I scramble out of the massive bed—and immediately fall because my legs don't work right. These legs are longer than mine, less muscular. I crash to the floor hard.
"What the hell is happening?" My voice comes out wrong too. Higher. Younger. This isn't my voice.
I crawl to a mirror on the wall, pulling myself up using a fancy chair. When I see the reflection, my breath stops.
A stranger stares back at me. He's young—maybe twenty-six—with dark reddish-brown hair that falls messily around a handsome face. His eyes are golden brown instead of my dark eyes. He's tall and lean, but soft—no fighter's build. This body has never been in a real fight.
"This isn't real," I whisper to the stranger in the mirror. "I'm dead. This is hell, or I'm dreaming, or—"
Then the memories hit me like a train crash.
They're not my memories, but suddenly they're in my head, flooding my brain with images and feelings and knowledge that isn't mine. I see this body's entire life in flashes:
A cold father who's a king. A cruel brother who's perfect at everything. Growing up invisible, unwanted, drowning the pain in wine and gambling. A beautiful girl with green eyes and a scar. An engagement party where I—where he—said terrible things while drunk. Shame. So much shame.
Prince Cassian Asterion. That's whose body this is. A useless prince in a dying kingdom. The disappointment son. The drunk. The failure.
And somehow, I'm him now.
"No." I grip the mirror's frame so hard my knuckles turn white. "No, no, NO! I'm Vincenzo Salvatore! I built the biggest crime family in New York! I'm not some pathetic royal drunk!"
But my reflection shows Prince Cassian's face. And when I close my eyes, I can feel both lives warring in my head—my real memories of blood and power, and Cassian's memories of weakness and wine.
Footsteps thunder in the hallway. Lots of them. The servant girl must have brought help. In seconds, they'll burst through that door and see me on the floor, talking to myself like a crazy person.
I need to think. I need a plan. In my old life, I survived by being smarter and faster than my enemies. This situation is insane, impossible—but I didn't build an empire by giving up when things got hard.
If I'm really Prince Cassian now, then I need to know: Why? Why did I wake up in this body? Why this prince, in this kingdom, at this exact moment?
The door slams open. Three guards rush in with swords drawn, followed by an older man in expensive robes who must be a doctor. They all stop and stare at me kneeling by the mirror.
"Your Highness!" The doctor rushes forward. "You've been unconscious for three days! We thought— Everyone thought you were dying!"
Three days. Prince Cassian was unconscious for three days, and I woke up in his body. That can't be a coincidence.
One of the guards steps closer, his hand on his sword. "Prince Cassian, are you... Are you well? You look different somehow."
Because I am different, I want to say. I'm a dead mafia boss wearing a prince's skin like a costume.
Instead, I force myself to stand up straight, using every skill I learned commanding men in my old life. I look the guard in the eye and make my voice cold and calm. "I'm fine. Get out. All of you. Now."
They hesitate. In Cassian's memories, he never gave orders like this. He begged and whined and apologized. He was weak.
But I'm not weak. And something in my voice—something hard and dangerous—makes them obey.
As the door closes behind them, I hear the doctor whisper to the guards: "Something's changed. That wasn't the prince we know."
He's right. Prince Cassian died three days ago, even if his body kept breathing.
I walk to the window and look out at a kingdom I don't know, in a world that shouldn't exist. Medieval buildings, horse-drawn carriages, people in old-fashioned clothes. This isn't New York. This isn't even my world.
But as I stand there, a new thought hits me—one that sends ice through my veins:
If I'm in Prince Cassian's body... where did Prince Cassian go?
And then I see it, sitting on the desk near the window. A letter with a royal seal, addressed to Prince Cassian. My hand shakes as I pick it up and read:
"Your Highness, your father the King demands your presence in the throne room at sunset today. Prince Adrian has made serious accusations against you. Failure to appear will result in your immediate arrest for treason. You have six hours."
The letter is dated today.
I look at the sun sinking toward the horizon outside. Maybe two hours of daylight left.
Whatever Prince Cassian did before he died—before I took over his body—it was bad enough that his own brother is accusing him of treason. Bad enough that the King wants to arrest him.
And I have less than two hours to figure out what happened, or I'm going to be executed for crimes I didn't commit.
In a body that isn't mine.
In a world that shouldn't exist.
I survived betrayal and death once already today.
Now I have to do it again.