No More Love, Just PaybackChapter 1
The room glowed with soft light, laughter echoing from the end of the long dinner table. I sat opposite Marcus—my stepbrother, my secret—and his ever-loyal best friend, Seth. They were deep in conversation, laughing at something I didn’t quite catch. My mind was elsewhere.
Five years. That’s how long I’d worn this mask, hiding the jagged scar that had once disfigured half my face—an uninvited souvenir from an "accident" I never fully understood. But the surgery had changed everything. The scar was gone. The mirror no longer mocked me.
And tonight, I would finally take the mask off.
I’d rehearsed the moment endlessly—how Marcus' eyes might widen, how he’d see me not as the broken girl he once comforted, but as a woman—whole, strong, in love.
But all that faded when the language at the table changed. Italian. Fluid, elegant… deadly. They thought I didn’t understand.
They were wrong.
I had secretly studied the language after overhearing Marcus speak it once with his friends. I never wanted to feel excluded again. And now, I wished I didn’t understand at all.
“So, you’re really taking Maggie back?” Seth’s voice floated across the table, calm, lazy.