Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 01

Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 01

The night my fiancé put his hand on my stepsister’s pregnant belly, I tore up the wedding invitation, set the dress on fire, and signed a marriage contract with the man the entire city called a corpse.

What nobody knew: the “dead” mafia heir they pitied had a resting heart rate of 68 and controlled half the East Coast underworld.

And me? The “useless daughter” they laughed at? I was the surgeon who’d kept three bullet-riddled crime bosses breathing on a kitchen table.

But I didn’t correct them. Not yet.

I stood in the marble bathroom of the Verona Hotel, sliding the engagement ring off my finger. The diamond caught the light one last time before I dropped it into the toilet. Plunk. I flushed without blinking.

My phone buzzed. My father.

“Catalina. Get back out there. You’re humiliating this family.”

I almost laughed. “Humiliating? I just watched Marco rub Bianca’s stomach while she announced she’s carrying his child. At my engagement party. In front of three hundred guests.”

“Lower your voice. These things can be settled quietly.”

“He’s been sleeping with my stepsister for two years, and you want me to settle it quietly?”

“Marco Ferraro is the future of the Ferraro family. This alliance protects everything we’ve built. If you walk, the Marchetti name is finished.”

I stared at my reflection. Mascara streaked. My twelve-thousand-dollar gown crushed where my fists had clenched it. I looked like exactly what I was—a woman gutted in public and ordered to smile.

“Then let Bianca marry him,” I said softly. “She’s already carrying his child. Seems like a perfect fit.”

“Don’t be absurd. Bianca is fragile. She could never survive that world—”

“That world? Funny. I’ve survived this one for twenty-six years.”

His silence was an answer. When he spoke again, his voice turned cold, transactional. “Fine. If you won’t marry Marco, then you’ll honor the old arrangement. The Castellano family. Their heir needs a wife before the inheritance locks.”

My blood turned to ice.

Everyone in the city knew about Dante Castellano. Heir to the most feared crime empire in the country. Shot three times in an ambush four years ago. Brain-dead, they said. Bedridden. Silent. His family had spent fortunes searching for a wife willing to marry a man who would never wake—a glorified nurse, in exchange for blood money.

“You want me to marry a vegetable,” I said flatly.

“I want you to be useful for once,” my father snapped. “Bianca would never last in that house. But you—you’re cold enough to survive it.”

Cold enough. The words cut like a blade wrapped in silk.

“Fine,” I heard myself say. “I’ll do it.”

I hung up before he could answer, then gripped the marble sink until my knuckles went white.

I wasn’t doing this for my father. I wasn’t doing this for the family name.

I was doing this because six months ago, Dante Castellano’s medical file had landed on my desk—smuggled to me by a frightened night nurse who didn’t understand what she was seeing.

But I did.

His brain wasn’t damaged. His scans showed something else entirely. Something everyone had missed.

And if I was right, the “corpse” my family was throwing me away on was about to wake up—and become the most dangerous man alive.