I Took Bullets For Him, Now I Rule His Empire

Six years ago, I married into the Callahan family wearing the face of their dead heiress, a hostage offered up to secure a truce. I took three assassination attempts for them. Three bullets meant for Boss Declan Callahan. And still, to him, I was nothing but a counterfeit he could throw away whenever he pleased. "If she dies, it's just a fake face. Order another one." With that single sentence, he had half the skin torn from my face in front of a roomful of people—for their entertainment. Six years later, I walked into his treaty-renewal negotiations as the Chief Arbiter of the Joint Tribunal of America's Five Families. And Declan's current fiancée was parading around the room with my old false face preserved like a trophy. Only when four godfathers removed their masks and revealed the Arbiter's Marks I had branded into their flesh years ago did everyone who had ever mistaken me for a substitute finally understand one thing: Whose true face, exactly, had they been kneeling before all along?

Oleh Stormborne Princess