The Mafia’s Scapegoat Bride: A Stolen Life Chapter 08

The Mafia’s Scapegoat Bride: A Stolen Life Chapter 08

I hovered just below the ceiling, gazing down at the body lying on the operating table.

Pale. Gaunt. Lifeless.

A white sheet covered her up to the chin, revealing a face crisscrossed with scars.

Once this had been Olivia Lucchese.

Now it was nothing but a copy of Grace Lucchese’s features.

A bitter smile tugged at my lips.

In the end, I’d never managed to save enough money for the plot next to my foster father Jonathan

The hospital hallway in the small hours was as silent as a tomb.

I tried to drift through the window and escape, yet some invisible force held me fast. I could only

drift back and forth above the room.

I was trapped here by the family’s unspoken chains-unable to leave, yet never truly belonging.

Then I saw Matthew.

He strode forward, his shirt rumpled, eyes bloodshot, a fresh streak of dried blood cutting across

his cheekbone.

Gone was his usual unhurried poise. He only wore this look when Grace was involved.

He paused at the doorway for a heartbeat, then walked straight toward me.

He passed right through my form.

He froze. Whirling around to stare at the empty air, he lifted his palm, still stained with blood from smashing the wall.

His lips moved.

“Impossible.”

He kicked the door open hard.

Mark stood beside my bed, clutching a neatly folded piece of paper.

At the sight of my face beneath the sheet, his hands shook, and the paper fluttered to the floor.

It was a test paper, marked with a bright A+.

Eyan had arrived too. Trembling, he pulled back the sheet.

At the sight of the disfigured face, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the ground.

His lips quivered. He had never looked upon death before.

“Dad… why isn’t she moving? We were supposed to… go home.”

Matthew struck Evan across the face, his expression hollow.

The sharp crack echoed down the hallway.

It was not mere punishment.

It was a harsh lesson-one he would have to learn to survive.

In the mafia world, tears were worthless.

I drifted over to Mark and reached out to stroke his head.

My fingers slipped straight through his hair.

I could touch nothing at all.

“My sweet boy. I saw everything. I’m so sorry… you’ve suffered too much.”

The click of high heels sounded from the doorway.

Grace stepped inside. The tip of her nose was red, not from crying, but from the cold.

Spotting her, Mark shot to his feet and threw a punch straight at her.

“You murderer! You locked her away in prison, and now you’ve killed her on this operating table!”

Grace crumpled to the floor on cue.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she buried her face in her hands, putting on that practiced sobbing she’d perfected over ten years within the family.

“It’s not like that… Every surgery carries risks. Cosmetic procedures only have a 0.01 percent chance of going wrong. Sister was just unlucky. Who could have known it would happen to her?”

I lingered above, watching her performance.

I laughed softly to myself.

Unlucky.

Yes. I was always the unlucky one.

Forced to wear another woman’s face.

Locked in prison in her place.

My foster father driven to his death.

Slaughtered on an operating table.

All of it, just bad luck.

Grace lifted her tear-streaked face and looked toward the silent man in the doorway.

“Matthew, you understand, don’t you?”

Her voice held the soft confidence of someone who already knew she would get away scot-free.

She knew a few tears would make everything fade away. It had worked every single time for five

long years.

I drifted beside Matthew, eager to see his reaction.

I froze.

His gaze was fixed on the body beneath the sheet, locked on that scarred face without moving an

inch.

In his hand, he gripped a scalpel so tight his knuckles blanched white. It was the blade from Grace’s operating table.

When had he taken it?

He walked to the table and stared down at my face.

He studied the cigarette burns on my forehead, the scratches along my cheekbones, the jagged stitches lining my jaw.

He stood there for a long time.

Then he turned and walked toward Grace.

She was still on the floor, tilting her head up to meet his eyes.

Matthew crouched before her, his gaze pinning her in place.

Then he raised the scalpel and sliced it hard across her face.

The blade cut from her cheekbone down to her jaw. Skin split open, and fresh blood welled up. The wound was shallow yet deliberate, an exact match for the scars on Olivia’s face.

Grace’s scream was shrill enough to shake the ceiling.

“Matthew! You’ve cut the wrong person!”

Matthew seized her wrist, dragged her to her feet and shoved her against the wall. He grabbed the stack of documents from the floor-the organ donation records, prison files, screenshots from the surveillance footage-and hurled them straight into her face.

“Read them for yourself.”

Grace’s face drained of color, paler even than her newly wounded flesh.

Matthew stepped back, his voice trembling, just as it had been the day he’d proposed to Olivia.

“You drove Jonathan to take his own life. He was your birth father.”

“You used my name to bribe the prison guards, making Olivia’s days pure agony.”

“You lied and claimed you were the one who donated your kidney to save me, stealing her gratitude.”

“And you were the one who put her on that operating table. You killed her.”

He lifted the bloodied scalpel once more. His voice dropped to a whisper, soft as the vows spoken inside a church.

“Tell me… how am I supposed to thank you?”