Once I regained consciousness, I was lying in my room, wrapped in a soft quilt that smelled faintly of lavender and starch. Fresh bandages covered the wound on my shoulder where the rope had bitten deepest, the gauze clean and neatly tied by hands more careful than any that usually touched me in this house. I heard movement near the door, the quiet shuffle of flat shoes on hardwood, and then the servant's voice, pitched low as if she'd been instructed not to startle me.
"Miss, you're awake? Mr. Falcone was very distressed after bringing you down from the tree yesterday. He told me to take special care of you."
Distressed. The word settled in my chest like a splinter. Dante Falcone, who had strung me up in the courtyard sun with his own order, was now distressed. I said nothing. My thumbnail found the inside of my wrist beneath the quilt and pressed until a pale crescent appeared, the small flare of pain a more honest thing than anything spoken in this room.
The servant pointed toward a large box beside the bed. Cream-colored, tied with a satin ribbon, the kind of packaging that belonged in a boutique window on Via Condotti. It looked obscene sitting on the nightstand next to the water glass and the roll of medical tape.
"Mr. Falcone also had someone deliver this this morning. It's an alliance ceremony gown. He said it's been altered to your measurements and wanted you to try it on." She paused, smoothing the front of her apron. "Your ceremony is the day after tomorrow."
I turned my head to look at it. Once, a lifetime ago, I had imagined this moment. The dress arriving. The careful fitting. The promise of standing beside Dante at the altar of whichever cathedral his family favored, watched by the silent hierarchy of both houses. That girl felt like a stranger now, someone I could barely remember and no longer pitied. The gown lay in its tissue paper, and my heart felt completely cold.
Without saying much, I threw off the quilt and climbed out of bed. My legs ached. The wound on my shoulder pulled with every movement, a dull heat running down into my arm. I didn't even spare the dress another glance as I walked straight toward the door, leaving it boxed and ribboned like a gift no one had asked for.
As I stepped into the hallway, the floor was dark polished wood that reflected the wall sconces in long amber streaks. Serafina appeared at the far end, walking toward me. The moment she saw me, she froze. Her lower lashes fluttered once, too quickly, the reflex I had learned to read years ago as the hinge between whatever face she was wearing and whatever she actually meant. Then her expression settled into something familiar. Disdain. Mockery. The practiced cruelty of a girl who had been told since childhood that she was the daughter who counted.
"Well, well, Bianca. You really are something." Her voice carried through the corridor, pitched to be overheard by any staff within earshot. "You were hanging from a tree yesterday, but now you've somehow made Dante feel sorry for you? What's your plan now? Seduce him in a ceremony gown and ruin our marriage? I—"
I cut her off, my voice flat and stripped of anything she could use. "I don't care about the gown. I'll give it to you. I have no interest in fighting you for Dante. You'll be the one marrying him, not me."
Serafina was frozen by my words, completely caught off Neri. Her lips parted, and for half a second the mask slipped, something almost like confusion underneath it. She had come armed for a fight, and I had refused to meet her on the field. In this house, that was the only weapon I had left.
Ignoring her, I continued past without a backward glance. My body was still weak, the muscles in my legs trembling faintly with each step, but I forced myself down the stairs one by one, gripping the banister with my good hand. The front door of the Falcone estate was heavy oak banded with iron, a relic Dante's grandfather had supposedly brought from the old country. I pushed it open with my shoulder, and a cool breeze brushed against my face, clearing my head.
Dante's empty gestures and manufactured concern meant nothing to me now. The bandages, the gown, the instruction to take special care. They were set dressing. Props arranged around a girl he had already decided was expendable. What I needed wasn't to stay in this suffocating house, breathing the same air as people who traded daughters like territory. It was to prepare to leave in two days. And to make sure that everyone who had hurt me paid the price.
I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked along one edge from the courtyard, but it still worked. My fingers were steady as I typed the message to Sofia.
In two days, release all the evidence to every major media outlet. Immediately begin the network sabotage on every Moretti and Falcone front account. Freeze the clean-money channels first.
I sent it and watched the delivery confirmation appear. Then I made a promise to myself, standing on the Falcone threshold with the breeze pulling at the hem of my borrowed nightgown and the wound on my shoulder still seeping faintly through the gauze.
To the Moretti Family and the Falcone Family: I will make you pay.
Before I could put my phone back into my pocket, a hand suddenly clamped over my mouth and nose from behind. A strong, pungent chemical smell filled my nostrils, sweet and acrid at the same time, the kind of thing that burned the back of the throat before the darkness came. I tried to twist free, but my shoulder screamed and my grip on the phone failed. My vision spun. The gravel drive, the iron gate, the distant shape of the guardhouse all blurred into a single wash of grey, and then went black.
——
When I woke again, I was tied to a cold iron chair in a dark, damp room. The air smelled of standing water and old concrete, the kind of basement that existed beneath warehouses on the dockyards, the places men were taken when the Family wanted answers and silence in equal measure. My wrists were bound behind me with zip ties pulled tight enough to numb my fingers. The wound on my shoulder had reopened; I could feel the slow warmth of blood soaking through the gauze beneath my sleeve.
In the corner, Serafina was tied to a matching chair. She sobbed softly, her head bowed, her hair falling across her face. The sound was high and thin, practiced in a way I might not have noticed if I hadn't spent years listening to her rehearse tears in the next room.
Before I could even process what was happening, a tall man with a scar carved diagonally across his face walked toward us. The scar ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, puckered and white, the kind of wound that had been stitched by someone who didn't care how it healed. He moved with the loose confidence of a man who had done this before and expected to be well paid for it again. One knuckle rubbed slowly along the seam of the scar as he considered us both, as though he were running numbers in his head.
He casually picked up a phone from a table cluttered with tools I refused to look at, dialed a number, and turned on the speaker. The line rang twice.
"Mr. Falcone. Come now if you want to save your woman."
His voice was unhurried, almost conversational. The tone of a man discussing delivery logistics rather than human lives.
Ten minutes later, Dante burst into the room. He came through the door the way he always entered any space, expecting it to reorganize around him, but this time the room did not cooperate. His eyes swept from Serafina to me and back again, and panic flashed across his features, raw and uncontrolled, the first honest expression I had seen on his face in weeks. Two soldiers flanked the scarred man near the far wall, arms folded, faces blank. This was not Dante's territory. Here, his name carried no automatic weight.
Rocco Greco toyed with a dagger, turning it lazily between his fingers. The blade caught the single overhead bulb and threw a thin line of light across the ceiling. A cruel smile spread across his scarred face.
"I heard one of them is your promised bride. Here's a game for you." He gestured with the dagger, the point swinging between Serafina and me like a pendulum. "Choose one."
Dante froze. His mouth opened, but no words came out. His right hand moved involuntarily to the signet ring on his finger, turning it over the knuckle, back and forth, the metal catching the dim light. The hesitation filled the room like poison, thickening the air until even the two soldiers against the wall seemed to lean forward.
"I…" he stammered.
"Stop wasting time!" Rocco barked, the conversational ease gone in an instant, replaced by something blunt and impatient.
He grabbed both Serafina and me by the neck, one massive hand on each throat. His grip was practiced, the pressure exact, enough to cut the air without collapsing the windpipe. Not yet. Our breathing turned frantic and shallow. I felt my pulse hammering against his palm, felt the edges of my vision starting to grey at the borders.
"Dante! I'm scared! It hurts so much! Please, save me!"
Serafina's screams were high-pitched and desperate, echoing off the wet concrete walls. The sound filled the room, bouncing and multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. I said nothing. I watched Dante's face instead, watched the war playing out behind his eyes, and I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist where the zip tie allowed just enough movement, pressing until the pale crescent appeared, because I already knew.
Dante's fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. His eyes darted between us, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. The signet ring had stopped moving. He had made his decision.
Finally, he spoke, his voice trembling. "I choose to save Serafina."
The words landed in the silence like a stone dropped into deep water. Rocco released Serafina's throat and shoved her, chair and all, toward Dante's side of the room. Then he turned to me.
He yanked me forward by my hair, dragging me out of the chair with the zip ties still biting into my wrists, and shoved me toward a deep pool set into the concrete floor nearby. I hadn't seen it in the dark. The water was black and still and smelled of rust. Before I could draw a full breath, he forced my head under.
The icy water swallowed me whole. My lungs screamed for air. The cold was absolute, a fist closing around my chest, driving every thought from my head except the primal, animal need to breathe. It suffocated me, made me tremble, made every muscle in my body convulse against the hand holding me down.
Once. He dragged me up by the hair, let me gasp a single ragged breath, and shoved me under again.
Twice. The water flooded my nose, my mouth, filled my ears until the only sound was my own heartbeat and the muffled, distorted echo of someone laughing above the surface.
I was dragged up only to be forced back under until my consciousness began to fade, the darkness behind my eyes no longer the darkness of water but something deeper, something that didn't care whether I fought. Finally, they pulled me out and dumped me onto the cold, wet floor. I lay on the concrete gasping desperately, coughing and choking, my body curled in on itself as water streamed from my hair, my nose, the corners of my mouth. Each breath was a knife.
Rocco laughed, the sound low and cruel, and rubbed his knuckle along the scar one final time. "Mr. Falcone, you really are decisive."
Somewhere behind the roaring in my ears, I heard Serafina's sobs change pitch, just slightly. The desperation was gone. What replaced it was quieter, and if I hadn't been lying on the floor half-drowned and shaking, I might have missed it entirely. Relief. Satisfaction. The sound of a woman whose gamble had paid off exactly as planned.
Before I could recover, before I could do anything more than press my forehead to the wet concrete and force air into lungs that felt full of broken glass, the men dragged both Serafina and me to two large sealed iron cages at the far end of the room. The metal doors shrieked on their hinges. I was shoved inside, and the lock clicked shut with a sound that was quieter than it should have been, a small, precise finality, like the closing of a ledger.
