Thanks to the constant injuries, I developed a high fever that refused to break. I was unconscious for three full days. During that time, I had a long, vivid dream.
The dream was filled with warm light.
In it, I was never lost. My parents had never taken in Serafina. They loved only me, their blood daughter, the one they called their precious girl. Dante was still the same boy who used to wait outside the iron gate of the Moretti estate every morning, his coat buttoned wrong, just so he could walk beside me on the way to school.
Later, he told me he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me in a garden thick with climbing roses, away from the families, away from the arrangements that made marriages into territorial mergers. At the ceremony he held my hand and promised me forever, and his voice never wavered, and nobody in the pews was calculating what the union was worth in shipping routes or clean-money fronts. After we married, we had a child, a sweet and perfect thing. The three of us were a happy, whole family, untouched by the syndicate world that had shaped every other part of our lives.
But in the next moment, everything changed.
The warm light went out as though someone had cut the power at the fuse box. My parents' smiles turned cold. Dante's hand, the one that had been so warm around mine, became icy and distant, the signet ring on his finger pressing into my skin like a brand.
The three of them stood at the edge of a cliff. They were laughing, all of them, that particular cruelty that only people who once loved you can produce. And then they pushed me down into the darkness below. I woke with a sharp gasp, my chest heaving. My eyes flew open to an empty room in the family clinic.
My body felt weak and impossibly heavy. My shoulder throbbed with each pulse, a deep, nauseating ache that radiated down to my fingertips as I slowly pushed myself upright. My arm was numb and trembling. With great effort I pulled the IV needle from the back of my hand, pressed the cotton swab over the bead of blood, and slid out of bed. The tile floor was cold enough to make me flinch. The clinic was small, discreet, the kind of place the Moretti Family kept on retainer for injuries that did not need public hospital records. No police. No questions. Just silence and locked doors.
As I stepped into the hallway, I heard hushed voices coming from the nurses' station around the corner. I stopped. My bare feet made no sound on the linoleum.
"Look at those two young ladies from the Moretti Family. Their lives couldn't be more different."
"I know, right? Serafina only had a few minor injuries, but the Boss and his wife stayed by her side every single day, and Dante Falcone never left her for a second. Meanwhile, Bianca was seriously hurt and no one even came to visit her these past three days…"
One of them clicked her pen cap shut, and the other finished the thought she should not have said aloud: "Three days unconscious and not a single family member through that door. Not one."
Their whispers were crystal clear, cutting into my heart like a blade.
My knees went weak for a moment, but I steadied myself against the wall. I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist until a pale crescent appeared, letting the small, focused pain anchor me to the present, to the facts. Nobody had come. Not once. The fact did not surprise me. What surprised me was how much it still hurt, after everything, to have the proof laid out in the mouths of strangers.
It made me not hesitate. After that, I walked slowly to the nurses' station while holding on to the wall for support, and I signed my own discharge papers. The nurse behind the desk glanced up, glanced at my shoulder, and opened her mouth to object. I met her eyes and she looked away. In this world, you learned early: a Moretti daughter's signature was still a Moretti signature, even if the family treated her like a ghost.
When I returned to the Moretti estate, it was eerily quiet. The courtyard fountain trickled in the stillness. No soldiers at the front entrance, no staff moving through the halls. Everyone was out, orbiting Serafina like planets around a brighter sun. I went straight to my room and began packing. There was not much. One small suitcase. That was all I had left in a house where I had lived my entire life. One suitcase, and even that felt generous.
After I finished, I went downstairs to get some water. Just as I reached the living room, I heard the sound of laughter outside the front door. Voices, car doors, the particular note of a family arriving home in good spirits. They were back.
My parents entered first, carefully supporting Serafina as she limped inside. She leaned into them with practiced fragility, her bandaged ankle presented like a medal of war. Dante followed close behind. His eyes were full of tenderness as he looked at her. The four of them chatted happily, warmly, as if nothing had happened, as if I had not spent three days unconscious in a clinic bed two miles from where they stood.
When they saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, Dante's steps faltered. For a brief second, I caught a flash of heartache in his eyes as he noticed my pale face, the way my hand still gripped the banister because my legs were not entirely trustworthy yet. His right hand moved, almost involuntarily, and I watched him roll the signet ring over his knuckle once before he caught himself.
But before he could speak, my mother rushed toward me. Elena Moretti's voice was sharp and full of blame as she confronted me. "Bianca, what is wrong with you? Why didn't you tell us you were being discharged? Do you know how worried we were about you?"
My father immediately added his weight to the accusation. Salvatore Moretti stood with one hand resting on Serafina's shoulder, a display of protection so automatic it could not have been staged. "Serafina already explained what happened. She said she lost her balance that day and accidentally dragged you into the fire. Out of guilt, she pushed you away to save you. She didn't mean it."
He tapped once on the side table with the pad of his thumb, the gesture I had seen a hundred times before a negotiation reduced someone to a number. "And you… you're being ungrateful, leaving the clinic on your own and throwing a tantrum?"
Serafina lowered her head, her expression pitiful and weak, the portrait of a girl still suffering for her innocent mistake. But at the corners of her lips there was a subtle, triumphant smile. It was a smile meant only for me to see. Her lower lashes fluttered once, quickly, the way they always did when the lie mattered.
She looked at me like a victor claiming her prize.
I stared at them all and suddenly laughed bitterly. The sound was thin and hard in the marble foyer, and I saw one of the household staff freeze mid-step in the corridor behind them.
"Worried about me? So worried that during my three-day coma, you only cared about Serafina and never once came to see me?"
My eyes shifted to Serafina and I spoke coldly. "Serafina, this time you're claiming you 'lost your balance' again? You really do change your excuses quickly."
This time, I looked at them coldly. I was no longer the obedient girl they used to know, the one who swallowed every slight and called it love, the one who kept her head down because the Family demanded it.
I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist one final time, felt the crescent bite, and let my hand fall to my side. My voice was level and clear, carrying the way a warning carries in a quiet room full of dangerous people.
"Watch your precious daughter carefully. If she dares to lay a hand on me again, I won't hold back. If I'm not happy, I won't let her be happy either."
After that, I turned and walked up the stairs. I did not look back at their shocked and furious faces. I did not need to. I could feel the silence I had left behind me, heavy as gunpowder before a match.
This house. These people. They were no longer worth a single moment of my time.
